To start, we will deal with the easy part first. For this, we need to reuse the instructions from Part 2. You need to create a new page template, but this time instead of integrating the regular calendar, we’re going to add the 2nd part of the Blog mode. Don’t forget to change the name of the template in the code. Here, I am just adding the Blog list code as-is from the official docs for reference.

<?php
$EPCBLOG=2;
$template="blog.php";
$DF = "l, F j, Y";
require ("calendar/calendar.php");
?>

Then you will want to create a page that uses your new template. That will give you a URL… you want to make note of it, we’ll be using it later.

Now onto the guts of it… For this part, we need to go back to the sidebar. Here’s the gist of what we’ll be doing. First, we change the calendar mode to be the first part of the Blog mode. Then, we need to fake the calendar into thinking it’s somewhere else than it really is. And finally, we disable the default navigation and create our own.

To use the Blog mode, simply add $EPCBLOG=1; before the require. Then we set $thisFile to the URL we saved earlier, and set $noNav=1; to disable the default navigation. At this point the require is called, and right after we destroy the $thisFile variable. To create the replacement navigation, refer the post Create your own navigation table.

So here is the code that you would have in the sidebar, but note that I am omitting the navigation table code as it is a literal copy-paste of what is in the post mentioned just above. Of course, you would be setting $thisFile to your own URL.

$EPCBLOG=1;
$noNav=1;
$thisFile="/wordpress/calendar/blog-page/"; // use your own URL here
require("epcal/calendar.php");
unset($thisFile);
// add the navigation table code here

So there you have it. With this solution, a visitor can browse the calendar on the page they are currently viewing, and when they click on a date, it will direct them to a new page that has the event details.

This concludes the series, but look forward to new posts coming in the near future. Using widgets on your site? Stay tuned…

In case you missed the other posts in this series, please go to:

Once again, I won’t be getting into specific code as it deals with a file that is theme specific. You should be able to find where to add the code in your own files. Here’s a quick overview of what we’ll be doing :

• First, we will create a new page template
• Then, we will create a new page that uses that template
• Finally, we will tweak the code to add your preferred calendar mode to the page

The easy way to create a new page template is simply to copy and rename page.php. If you already have a page template that you would want to reuse for your calendar page, feel free to use that one instead. You will find that file in /wp-content/themes/*your-theme*/. Once you have your new file created, you will want to take out the code that is in “the loop” and replace it with some placeholder text for now.

What “the loop” is defined as is the area between two very specific lines of code :

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<!-- This here is the loop -->
<?php endwhile; else : ?>

So you can add any text you want as a test where I have put the comment. At the very top of the page, you will want to add the template name so that you can use it.

<?php
/*
Template Name: Calendar Page
*/
?>

When you are done, save the file and upload it to your theme folder. That completes creating the template.

Now, we create the page. This is the easy part. Simply go in your admin screen, to the Write -> Page section. You can name the page anything you want, but the text you add in the page section will not be added to the actual page. Then select the page template to apply (it’s in one of the possibly collapsed sections underneath the page text). Save your page, publish it, and then check it out to make sure that the text we added as a test is showing up. If that all checks out, then you can proceed to adding the calendar code.

Go back to the template file that was created in the first step, remove the test text and replace it with the calendar code. Here you can add any of the modes that you want, and any plugins or options you would like. For the purpose of this tutorial, we’ll use the TOC as it is probably going to be a very popular selection, and it is also one of the simplest modes. So, replace the text in “the loop” with this :

<?php
$TOC=1;
require("calendar/calendar.php");
?>

If you view your page again at this point, you should now see the TOC mode, and part two is now completed. Should you want to add the List mode, or the multi-calendar, then follow the official integration instructions for each of the modes.

On the last part, we’ll add the Blog mode to this page here, and create a custom redirection for the sidebar calendar. Stay tuned…

In case you missed the other posts in this series, please go to:

This tutorial will make some assumptions, like your WordPress is installed in your web root (not in a sub-folder), and you already have the calendar installed in the /calendar folder. Also, in order to be able to perform the integration, you have to make sure that the calendar uses the same database as your WordPress installation.

Let’s start easy with setting up the proper permalink structure. Go to your WP administration interface, in the Settings section, and then Permalinks. You will have to use the “Default” setting. This is so that the calendar navigation work. Using any of the other modes and you will not be able to navigate to different months.

Now, we’re getting into the guts of things. Here, you can use the Theme Editor, but I strongly suggest that you do not. Instead modify the actual files. All of the files that are modified are in your /wp-content/themes/<your theme>.

The first file to edit is your header.php so that we can add the CSS code required for the calendar. Find the </head> tag and then add the following code just before it.

<?php $CSS=1; require("calendar/calendar.php"); ?>

Now, for this step, you need to find the file that has the <body> tag. I can’t tell you which file to look in, but in my case it was also in the header.php file. Simply find the <body> tag and add this code just after it. This is required if you want to make use of the mouse-over popups.

<?php $OL=1; require("calendar/calendar.php"); ?>

And as the last step for this tutorial, we’ll add the calendar to the sidebar. So, open up your sidebar.php and copy one of the entries that make up the block. Here’s an example from my theme:

<h3>Categories</h3>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_categories('title_li='); ?>
</ul>

Yours will probably be a bit different, but you get the idea. Then, using that, simply modify it a bit in order to display the calendar.

<h3>Calendar</h3>
<ul>
<?php require("calendar/calendar.php"); ?>
</ul>

This concludes this first part of the tutorial. We’ll keep coming back to this one as it will be the basis to many modifications.

In case you missed the other posts in this series, please go to:

Some time last year, I was tasked by a client to create a feed that actually worked. I managed to create something that was simple, yet worked very well. Then I forgot all about it.

This week, I was contacted by another client, as he too was disappointed by what was available for feeds. I dug through my piles of code and found this gem. It was too good to let it go forgotten again, so I decided to expose it to the rest of the world.

It has been created with ease of customization in mind. It will fit for all situations where you need a feed. You can add it as a site feed so that the feed icon shows up in the address bar, or you can provide a feed link for each of your categories, all from a single install. Basically, if you use the List module to display your events, you can provide a feed that will show that exact list to your visitors. Keep your visitors and clients up to date with no effort!

This module follows the regular pricing as previously outlined, and comes with a detailed ReadMe file explaining how to integrate it into your own site. Please contact me before sending any payment so that I can confirm that I have a valid contact email to send the code to.

Each post will include the plugin/module’s price which should make it easier for you to decide if you want to implement it on your website. The general formula that will be applied for pricing will be $15 for plugins, $25 for modules, and $40 with the code-and-tweak packages. “Code-and-Tweak” is the plugin/module that you want, along with one hour of coding that you can use towards installation, or tweaking to ensure perfect integration on your website. Essentially, you are getting the plugin/module for free as my regular rate is $40/h. As always, it is recommended that you contact me first before sending payment, so that I can confirm that I am sending the correct package to the correct client.

You can expect the first one to be posted very shortly.

Please use either the comment function under this post, or use the Contact me form if you don’t want your comments to be visible.

• Putting the table above the calendar, instead of below
• Adding navigation to the List mode (when not using another mode)
• Changing the number of months jumped when using the Multi-Calendar Generator

If you are using either the regular mode, or the Multi-Calendar Generator plugin, you see that you already have a navigation table. So the first thing we want to do is stop that one from showing up. You have two options for disabling it.

The first one is through the Setup Manager, under the Navigation section. Simply set the “Show Navigation Table:” to “No”. The downside to this way is that it disables the navigation table everywhere. This is not viable if you have calendars on other pages. We need a more flexible option.

The answer to that one is to use one of the command line variables. The aptly named “$noNav”. Simply add that variable above the require() that shows the calendar (or multi-calendar). If you have other calendars on the rest of the page where you want the navigation table to show up, use unset() to destroy the variable $noNav. Here’s the code that shows how it would look.

$noNav=1;
require("calendar.php");
// You can remove the following line if you have no other calendars on your page
unset($noNav);

So now, we’ve disabled the table we didn’t want, here’s how we add our own. First, we’ll need to initialize some variables. What the code does is checks if the $mo and $yr variables had been set already, and then assigns the values for the ‘back’ and ‘forward’ arrows.

Most people using the Multi-Calendar Generator plugin that want to modify the navigation, want to move month by month, but should you want to tweak how many months before and after you jump to, change the value on the lines as indicated.

The last bit of the code is there to handle if you are passing other arguments in your URL

<?php
// check for $mo and $yr from the URL
(!isset($_REQUEST['mo'])?$mo=date('m'):$mo=$_REQUEST['mo']);
(!isset($_REQUEST['yr'])?$yr=date('Y'):$yr=$_REQUEST['yr']);

// setting the variables for the table
$yb=$yr;
$yf=$yr;
$mb=$mo-1; // <-- change this one for month before, don't exceed 12
if ($mb<1) {$mb+=12; $yb=$yr-1;}
$mf=$mo+1; // <-- change this one for month after, don't exceed 12
if ($mf>12) {$mf-=12; $yf=$yr+1;}

$cmo = date("m");
$cyr = date("Y");

// check to make sure not to wipe other arguments
$returnString = "";
if ($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']) {
$queryString = explode("&",$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']);
for ($i=0;$i<count($queryString);$i++) {
$v = explode("=",$queryString[$i]);
if (($v[0] != "mo") && ($v[0] != "yr")) {
$returnString .= (($returnString=="") ? ($queryString[$i]) : ("&amp;".$queryString[$i])); }
}
}
?>

This next section can be put directly after the section we just passed, or can be separated if you want to keep your code clean. This is what actually creates the table. It takes all the values that were set before it and generates your navigation table.

<table class="navTable" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td align="left" width="33%"><a href="<?php echo "$thisFile?".$returnString.($returnString==""?"":"&amp;")."mo=$mb&amp;yr=$yb$anchorTag".$returnString2; ?>" class="navTableText"><?php echo $navLeft; ?></a></td>
<td align="center" width="34%"><a href="<?php echo "$thisFile?".$returnString.($returnString==""?"":"&amp;")."mo=$cmo&amp;yr=$cyr$anchorTag".$returnString2; ?>" class="navTableText"><?php echo $navMiddle ?></a></td>
<td align="right" width="33%"><a href="<?php echo "$thisFile?".$returnString.($returnString==""?"":"&amp;")."mo=$mf&amp;yr=$yf$anchorTag".$returnString2; ?>" class="navTableText"><?php echo $navRight; ?></a></td>
</tr>
</table>

I think everything has been covered. Should you find anything that doesn’t work as expected, please either leave a comment, contact me using the link at the top, or post in the forums.

As always, you are welcome to contact me using the Contact Me form, but now you have the option of posting comments too! So, please provide feedback on the new layout, or what new tutorial you would like to see.

With the amount of tweaks and projects that are being worked on, that is no longer a viable process. Using the PayPal donations button should enable much faster and easier processing of donations.

Funds received will be put towards time spent on developing solutions that will be beneficial to the EasyPHPCalendar community. For example, I am currently working on a proper RSS feed as well as a database backup/export/import utility. People that will contribute funds for the various projects will receive an equivalent rebate on the purchase price of the solution once it is released.

Shortly, I will be posting more details about both these projects as well as other various little things I am working on.

So you’ve been using the blog mode and you realize that most of your visitors want to see upcoming events. Would it be useful to them to display the next month calendar so they could pick the day right from there?

I’m sure you could find other uses for this functionality, but here’s how you enable it.

First, you have to modify your /calendar/calendar.php file. As of the current version (v6.2.23) insert the following around line 126.

if ($MULTIBLOG==1) { $EPCBLOG=1; }

After the modification, the section should look like this

// SHOW MULTIPLE CALENDARS
if ($MULTI==1) {
if (!file_exists($serverPath."config.inc.php")) die ("<font color=red>Server Path Error.</font><br />Please run the Setup Manager to correct this problem.<br /><br />");
if ($license=="" || !isset($license) || !isset($gmt) || $gmt=="") {require ($serverPath."config.inc.php");}
if ($MULTIBLOG==1) { $EPCBLOG=1; }
require($serverPath."plugins/multiShow.php");
$MULTIX=1;
}

Lastly, in the same file, you’ll want to add $MULTIBLOG to the unset on the last line.

unset ($CSS,$PCSS,$OL,$LIST,$TOC,$MULTI,$MULTIX,$MULTIBLOG);

The modifications are now complete. We’ll move on to the implementation or how we’ll end up using those modifications.

Instead of using the $EPCBLOG=1; section as usual, we’ll combine the $MULTI command and our modifications. You can modify the output by using the same variables that the multi-calendar generator uses. So here’s our example of a way to do it.

$MULTI=1;$MULTIBLOG=1;
$epcMultiWidth = "205px";
$epcMultiPad = 10;
$epcMultiNav = "200px";
$epcMultiCol = 1;
$epcMultiRow = 2;
require("calendar.php");

Note that this doesn’t change anything as far as the listing part of the blog mode works. You still have to have the $EPCBLOG=2; section for the Blog mode to work properly.

Later on, I will post a link to a working example and some screenshots.