Very Simple Event List

About

This is a lightweight plugin to create a customized event list.

Add the shortcode on a page or use the widget to display your events.

You can personalize your event list via the settingspage or by adding attributes to the shortcode or the widget.

How to use

After installation go to menu item “Events” and start adding your events.

Create a page and:

• Add shortcode [vsel] to display upcoming events (including today)
• Add shortcode [vsel-future-events] to display future events (without today)
• Add shortcode [vsel-current-events] to display current events
• Add shortcode [vsel-past-events] to display past events
• Add shortcode [vsel-all-events] to display all events

Or go to Appearance > Widgets and use the widget to display your events.

Settingspage

You can personalize your event list via the settingspage. This page can be found via Settings > VSEL.

Several settings can be overridden when using the relevant (shortcode) attributes below.

This can be useful when having multiple event lists on your website.

Shortcode attributes

You can also personalize your event list by adding attributes to the 4 shortcodes mentioned above.

• Change the number of events per page: posts_per_page="5"
• Pass over one or multiple events: offset="1"
• Change date format: date_format="j F Y"
• Display events from a certain category: event_cat="your-category-slug"
• Display events from multiple categories: event_cat="your-category-slug-1, your-category-slug-2"
• Change order of the upcoming and current events list: order="desc"
• Change order of the past and all events list: order="asc"
• Change text if there are no events: no_events_text="your text here"
• Change CSS class of the event list: class="your-class-here"
• Disable event title link: title_link="false"
• Disable featured image: featured_image="false"
• Disable pagination: pagination="false"

About the offset attribute: pagination is being disabled when using offset.

Examples:

• One attribute: [vsel posts_per_page="5"]
• One attribute: [vsel-past-events event_cat="your-category-slug"]
• Multiple attributes: [vsel posts_per_page="5" event_cat="your-category-slug" class="your-class-here"]

Widget attributes

The widget supports the same attributes. Don’t add the main shortcode tag or the brackets.

Examples:

• One attribute: posts_per_page="5"
• Multiple attributes: posts_per_page="5" event_cat="your-category-slug" class="your-class-here"

Featured image

WordPress creates duplicate images in different sizes upon upload. These sizes can be set via Settings > Media.

By default the “post-thumbnail” size of your theme is being used as source for the featured image. This size may vary by theme.

And the maximum width of the featured image is by default 40% of the event info section.

You can change the featured image size and maximum width via Settings > VSEL. Use both settings together, in order to get the size you want.

The featured image on native archive pages and the single event page is handled by your theme.

Advanced Custom Fields

You can add extra fields to the event details section by using the Advanced Custom Fields plugin. The most commonly used fields are supported.

Create a field group for post type “event” and add fields to this group. This field group will be added to the single event page in dashboard.

The extra fields are displayed in the frontend of your website underneath the location field.

Native support

Plugin has basic support for theme template files that are being used for the single event page, the event category page, the post type (event) archive page and the search results page.

Support for the single event page is needed, but support for the other 3 pages is added to make VSEL compatible with page builder plugins. These 3 pages are not generated by VSEL. Events are not ordered by event date.

More info about the single event page is listed underneath.

Plugin activates the post attributes box in the editor. In the post attributes box you can set a custom order for events with the same date. Custom order is not needed when event has start time and end time.

Plugin makes it possible to add events and event categories to your menu via the menu page. This support is added to make VSEL compatible with page builder plugins.

Single event

In most cases PHP file “single” is being used for the single event page. This file is located in your theme folder.

Because a theme file is being used, it might not be displayed properly.

If you want to customize it and you cannot succeed with custom CSS alone, create a duplicate of file “single” and rename it “single-event”, add this file to your (child) theme folder and customize it to your needs.

iCal feed

You can share your most recent events with an external calendar via an iCal feed.

You can activate the iCal feed via via Settings > VSEL.

Uninstall

If you uninstall plugin via dashboard all events and settings will be removed from database.

All posts of the (custom) post type “event” will be removed.

You can avoid this via Settings > VSEL.

Question?

Please take a look at the FAQ section.

Translation

Not included but plugin supports WordPress language packs.

More translations are very welcome!

Credits

Without the WordPress codex and help from the WordPress community I was not able to develop this plugin, so: thank you!

Enjoy!