Google Calendar Events, 0.7.2

It’s been a long time since I’ve updated Google Calendar Events. I’ve had very little time to work on the plugin lately, due to other projects that have had to take precedence.

A couple of months back, I did begin a major rewrite of the plugin, with all sorts of snazzy improvements, but it’s a long way off release worthy, or even beta worthy, at present. I’ll continue to work on it when I can, but I thought I’d better fix a couple of minor (yet annoying) bugs in the current version for the time being.

The fixes in 0.7.2 are as follows:

  • There was an issue with the “More details” Google Calendar page link. The URL wasn’t constructed correctly, which resulted in the event details defaulting to the UTC timezone. This only affected the simple display options (not the event display builder), but is fixed now.
  • Previously, setting the cache duration to 0 would be ignored, causing caching to still occur. Setting this to 0 should now work correctly.
  • With FORCE_SSL_ADMIN enabled, the plugin’s Ajax requests would fail in most cases, preventing month navigation. This shouldn’t be the case any longer.

Also, an issue brought up in the WordPress core Trac recently made me realise I’d been using the wrong method (an incorrect hook) for enqueuing the plugin CSS and JavaScript, which could potentially cause an issue with the newly released 3.3 version of WordPress. I don’t think the issue would have affected Google Calendar Events, as I had is_admin() checks in place, but better to be safe (and correct) than sorry!

Before updating, remember that if you’ve made any changes to the main plugin stylesheet (google-calendar-events/css/gce-style.css), you should take a backup first, as changes will be overwritten during the update. If you’ve used the “Custom stylsheet URL” method instead, you shouldn’t need to worry about this!

You can download the update from the plugin directory, or simply update from your WordPress admin.

Feedback, bug reports and feature requests are always welcome. You can add a comment below (or on the plugin homepage), or send me an email.

Thanks!

93 Responses

  1. Hi Ross,
    I love your plugin. It’s clean and completely dependable. I crave colour-coded categories, subscription options, images and location maps so I regularly try out other event plugins. I keep coming back to yours because you deliver what you promise even if it’s not everything I want. Please consider adding colour-coded categories, subscription options, images and location maps to your new version. I’ve paid for plugins before and I’ll do it again, but I haven’t found an event/calendar plugin that I am willing to pay for.
    -Diana

    Reply

    1. Hi Diana,

      These are all great suggestions, and I’ll certainly look into adding them to a future release of the plugin. Google has recently updated the Calendar API to a new version, which may make some of these things easier to implement (definitely the colour-coding, at least) too.

      Many thanks for your feedback!

      Ross.

      Reply

  2. I don’t want to point fingers but there is a WP plugin that promises everything I want: colour-coded categories, subscription options, images, location maps, and the Google calendar feed but I could never get to be reliable for more than 24hours.
    -Diana

    Reply

  3. Instead of having to write out the custom style URL, it’d be nice for the plug-in to look for gce-style.css in the theme folder, and override the default style sheet if it finds it. Other plug-ins use that method and it’s very useful for theme development (since the calendar style sheet usually matches the theme).

    Eric

    Reply

  4. Heej Ross,

    When i add the calendar to a page ([google-calendar-events id="1" type="ajax" title="Groepen" max="0"] the calendar won’t load the next month. It keeps loading. Is there a fix for this problem?

    Reply

    1. Hi Bart,

      This could be caused by several different things. Could you let me know the URL of your site, so I can take a look?

      Ross.

      Reply

        1. Hi Bart,

          This is because the request that is made when clicking the next month link is being sent from http://www.ccpl.nl to http://ccpl.nl. The difference in URL is enough for the request to be considered “cross-site scripting”, which is blocked for security reasons.

          Do you have the “WordPress Address (URL)” and “Site Address (URL)” settings (in Settings > General) set differently?

          Ross.

          Reply

          1. Yes they are different. How can i change this for the best? I know when i change te wrong url the site will not work.

            Bart

          2. Bart,

            I think if you ensure they’re both using www, it should work ok. However, not being familiar with your website and how it is set up, I’m not 100% sure!

            Ross.

  5. First, really great plugin, thank you! One feature request would be for the event day in the grid to also be a link, so that it’s clickable on mobile devices that have touch screens.

    Reply

    1. Hi CS,

      Improving the functionality for mobile devices is something that is definitely on my to-do list!

      Thanks for the feedback,
      Ross.

      Reply

  6. Really really nice plugin. Is there a possibilty to display only the _latest_ event in a list?
    I tried [google-calendar-events type="list" title="Events on" max="1"] but that doesn’t work.

    e.g.

    01.01.2012 – Event 1
    10.01.2012 – Event 2
    20.01.2012 – Event 3

    assumed today is 05.01.2012 I want the list to display only Event 2, because it’s the next latest.

    Reply

    1. Hi Mr. B,

      You’ll probably need to adjust the “Retrieve events from” option in the plugin feed settings. If you set it to “Now” (or perhaps “00:00 today”, whichever is more appropriate), and then use the shortcode parameters you describe above, only the next event should be displayed.

      Ross.

      Reply

  7. Hi Ross,

    First let me say I really like your plugin – it is by far the best plugin for use with a Google Calendar that I’ve found. Thank you!!

    (If you’ve already addressed this elsewhere, please point me in the right direction. I tried to read through all the posts and comments to see if there was a fix for this but I may have missed it.)

    I’m having trouble with one of my clients’ sites (http://hollywoodtheatre.org/). There is a widget in the right sidebar that pulls in a listing of today’s events. The events are all day in Google Calendar. The settings are all set to Pacific time zone (in WordPress, Google Calendar, and the plugin), yet everyday at 4pm (00:00 GMT) it thinks it’s the next day.

    I have “Retrieve events from” set to 00:00 Today with a 0 offset and “Retrieve events until” set to 00:00 Today with a 86400 offset. I’ve tried shortening the offset with the same result. (I’ve tried a lot of different settings with the same result.) After 4pm, if I set the offsets to -28801 and 0 it pulls in the current day just fine, but it thinks it’s the previous day and when I look in the morning, obviously, it’s still showing the previous day.

    Apparently they had this working a few version ago (I wish I knew which one). They had upgraded, ran into this problem, and their previous web person reverted to the previous version. I think there must be a fix for this that allows them to use the current version; I’m just missing it. Do you have any ideas?

    Thanks,
    TG

    Reply

    1. Hi TG,

      I think I might have a potential fix for this. I’ll update the development version of the plugin sometime today / tomorrow with the changes. I’ll let you know when I’ve made the update.

      Ross.

      Reply

  8. hi Ross,

    I have what I hope to be a simple question:
    on the Events page of my site I have implemented the GRID version of your calendar.
    the events on this calendar come from two different feeds: feed 1 are weekly events, feed 3 are special events, embedded as follows:

    [google-calendar-events id="3, 1" type="ajax" title="Events on"]

    is there a way to have the dates in this grid version of the calendar show up as RED for feed #3 and in BLACK (as now is the default) for feed #1 ???

    thanks,

    Eric.

    Reply

    1. Hi Eric,

      By “dates”, do you mean the number displayed in each grid cell, or the event date itself (within the tooltip)?

      Ross.

      Reply

  9. Hi, Ross. I really love this plugin. Tanx fot sharing with us. I wold like to translate a few words to my native language (portuguese). Exemple:

    Starts:…
    Ends:…
    Location:
    More details

    I can change this in plugin code?

    Tanx

    Reply

    1. Hi Renner,

      You don’t need to alter any of the plugin code to change these strings. They can be adjusted in the plugin feed settings, under “Display Options”.

      Ross.

      Reply

  10. Ross,

    Congratulations! This is the only google calendar plugin that even comes close to doing what I want. There are two additions that would make it perfect for my purpose:

    1. an unformated, non-list option where the events show up within plain text – no list bullets, no css, nothing. Not even new lines unless I put them in the event display builder. That way I could put the data in tables like this:

    my header…[google-calendar-events id="2" type="unformated"]

    2. This is way less important, but the conditional shortcode [if-even]…[/if-even] and/or [if-odd]…[/if-odd] would allow me to add custom html to every other event that shows up.

    If there is any other workaround to get the data in tables, that would be fine, too. This is a GREAT plugin.

    Reply

  11. Rats. You would have to view that comment in html to read the parts of that comment that were within < and > symbols. I meant to write this:

    <table id=”my custom class”>
    lt;tr><th>my header</th>
    …</tr>
    [google-calendar-events id="2" type="unformated"]
    </table>

    Reply

    1. Hi Peter,

      An “unformatted” option is something I could certainly look into adding for a future release, but using some CSS it wouldn’t be too difficult to make the current list output look like a table.

      If you’re looking to style odd / even events differently, you could try the nth-child CSS pseudo-selector, but that might not be ideal if compatibility with older browsers is important to you.

      Ross.

      Reply

  12. Hi Ross,

    Thank you for your plugin! I have two questions as I just installed it on a new site I’m building.

    1) What is the best way to display events for up to one year in the future? Right now I have the start time set to “start of current month” and end time set to specific date/time where the value is 1373476273 which is supposed to be +1 year. However when I display my calendar page all I see is the current month with no option to change months.

    2) This is more of a feature request – for the end date could you offer a setting called “+1 year” to simplify #1 above?

    Thanks again!
    – Tim

    Reply

    1. Hi Tim,

      Perhaps try the following settings:

      • Retrieve events from: Start of current month
      • Retrieve events until: End of current month (with an offset of 31556926)

      There are 31556926 seconds in 1 year, so this should give a date range of 1 year starting from the beginning of the current month.

      You’re right though, it would probably be simpler to have a “+1 year” option of some sort. I’ll look into it for a future release.

      If you’re still unable to navigate between months, you may need to increase the “Maximum number of events to retrieve” option. Also, check that you’re using the AJAX version of the calendar (if you’re using the [google-calendar-events] shortcode, set the type parameter to ajax, or if you’re using the widget set the “Display events as…” drop-down in the widget settings to “Calendar grid – with AJAX“).

      Many thanks for your feedback!

      Ross.

      Reply

  13. Thank you for your quick reply Ross!

    I’m using the shortcode in a page and everything works now. I did bump the number of events too as you suggest on the settings screen.

    - Tim

    Reply

  14. Ross, I am using google apps for education, I did what it says here

    http://wordpress.org/support/topic/google-calendar-events-error403

    My Feeds are these

    https://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/institutohumboldt.edu.mx_mh0tvs4p056flarl6msn24a0e8%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic

    https://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/institutohumboldt.edu.mx_v7keob1mos2n8ug7pge5890h98%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic

    https://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/institutohumboldt.edu.mx_d2s05etc7pljfchhnulovitqf0%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic

    But look at my website, it still shows 403 error, any idea?

    Reply

    1. Hi Jaime,

      So, in the Google Calendar sharing settings for each calendar, you have the “Share this calendar with others” and “Make this calendar public” checboxes enabled, and the drop-down box set to “See all event details”. Is that correct?

      Reply

  15. Hi Ross,
    I’ve been experimenting with your plugin and finding it really useful! I’ve just encountered one issue which you might be able to give me some pointers on.

    I’m trying to add a calendar feed that pulls in all the events on the Sunday of the week it’s in. My wordpress is set to using Monday as the first day of the week and I’ve set the following offsets:

    Retrieve events from Start of Current Week 514800
    Retrieve events until Start of Current Week 604800

    The feed works fine Monday to Saturday and pulls in all the events for the following Sunday. However as soon as it gets to Sunday itself it jumps a week and shows the events for the next Sunday!

    Wondered if there is anything you could recommend trying.

    Thanks.

    Reply

    1. Hi PJ,

      Hmm, it might be a timezone issue. Do you have the WordPress timezone (Settings > General) option set correctly?

      It may be worth trying out the development version of the plugin. It contains a fix for some timezone issues that may be affecting you.

      If you’re still having problems, let me know.

      Reply

  16. Was having issues loading the calendar on my site with your plugin… I am getting the following error…

    1 or more of your feeds could not be displayed. The following errors occurred:

    Feed 1: Operation timed out with 0 out of -1 bytes received Please ensure your feed URL is correct.

    I have checked the feed, I have uninstalled and reinstalled the plugin… I have deleted and recreated the feed… all with the same results…. Could Goggle have changed their format and now its not working?

    Reply

    1. Hi Rich,

      It looks like something is preventing your server from being able to make remote requests successfully. I don’t think it’s a Google issue.

      Could you let me know the feed URL you’re using, just to check whether or not it works for me.

      Do other things that make remote requests work correctly (the “WordPress Development Blog” and “Other WordPress News” dashboard widgets, for example)?

      Reply

    1. Hi Stisi,

      The shortcode on your page is enclosed in HTML <pre> tags. If you edit your page using the HTML (not visual) editor, you should be able to remove these <pre> tags, which will allow the text to wrap normally.

      Reply

  19. I found a way to solve my problem:
    [google-calendar-events id="2" type="list" title=""]

    with the center command, the text breakes and does not run out anymore

    Reply

  21. Hello Ross,

    Havent used the Google Calendar yet but had a question to see if this plugin is the one that will solve a issue we are having on our site. We are going to have one Google Calendar which will be shared Google Calendars from four other people. Is it possible if I visitor only wants to see Events put up by one specific person to unclick all the other ones to see that one persons Events like how the Google Calendar currently works?

    Thanks,

    Mike

    Reply

    1. Hi Mike,

      Yes, I did.

      There isn’t anything built into the plugin that provides this functionality. It could probably be done using a little custom JavaScript though. I’ll also add it to my to-do list, as something to look into implementing “properly” for a future release.

      Reply

  25. Thanks again for a really great plugin…and, well documented. In fact the best Google calendar interface I have come across just because it is so easy to skin to my website.

    Question and probably out of the direct scope of your plugin. I am just learning and implementing I-Frame tabs to the various Facebook pages I administer. Many of these pages are athletic in nature with training and racing dates.

    My question is I guess how I would create a blank “template” based on the theme of the WordPress site I am working on and create a page that is the prescribed width of the Facebook tab. (I think it is 815px) Then, with this page not part of the site navigation I could just refer to this page for the I-Frame. What I like about your solution is the ease of branding. If you had a canned PHP package where I could just build the php pages in Dreamweaver and upload those to the server. That way I give the customer/groups the ease of entering dates/events but have it populate on the Facebook page.

    Again, I realize this is probably outside the scope of your plugin but thanks for your great work.

    Reply
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