Calendar Enhancements - vB Event Forums

Introduction

This is a continuation of my Event Forums plugin/addon from 3.5. You can find the old version here. The original plugin was developed by Endquote, and I have since taken it over to bring it to what it is today. I hope you can find it useful!

What is this addon?

This is a plugin which allows you to create relationships between calendars and events, giving each event a thread of its own for users to discuss. I have tested this alot, and I am running it myself on a live board.

Sure, so whats it do?

Some examples of the features this plugin offers

• When a new event is created in a calendar, an associated thread is created in the linked forum.
• Links to events in the calendar are forwarded to the associated thread, or optionally a seperate New Event button can be added with a minor template edit.
• New thread links in the event forum are redirected to a new event form.
• A summary can be shown at the top of the event forum which shows the up and coming events over the next 'x' days.
• The date and time shown in the thread and post title, is calculated on the current viewing users timezone. In other words, times always show in the users timezone, not forced to GMT.
• Full moderation support.
• Editing a thread or event, will update its associated event/thread.

Screenshots

Some screenshots of this plugin

• Admin Options
• Event Thread
• Event Thread with Reply
• Thread List

How do I install it?

For upgrading, please see the section below.

Summary

• 1 xml import.
• 1 (optional) template change.
• 1 (optional) gif file upload.

Step 1

Install the product
Download the product XML file.

Goto your Admin CP at your forums, then goto Plugin System -> Manage Products. Click [Add/Import Product] at the bottom of the page. Browse to the location where you downloaded the xml file and then click the Import button.

Step 2

Calendar ID:
Goto your Admin CP at your forums, then goto Calendar Manager. Find the calendar you want to link to a forum, then click Edit.
Right at the top of the page you should see:

Calendar: NAME (id: ID)

Make a note of the ID, you will need this soon.

Forum ID:
Goto your Admin CP at your forums, then goto Forum Manager. Find the forum you want to activate as your event forum, then click Edit Forum.
Right at the top of the page you should see:

Forum: NAME (id: ID)

Make a note of the ID, you will need this soon.

Link a Calendar to a Forum:
Goto your Admin CP at your forums, then goto vBulletin Options and find Event Forums.
The first option you should see is Calendar/Forum Map.
Enter in your IDs into the box, as CALENDARID:FORUMID.
Example, my Calendar is 5 and my Forum is 14:

5:14

Click Save.

Step 3

Base permissions check:
You will need to check that users using the Event Forums, have basic permissions to both the Linked Forum AND Calendar.
Basic Permissions include: Can View Forum and Can Post Threads and possibly some others.

Step 4 (Optional template edit)

Add the New Event button:
You only need todo this if you want to show a seperate New Event button next to the New Thread button.

First of all, upload newevent.gif to your images/buttons folder. NOTE you will need to upload this to any custom image folders too for different styles you might have.

Second, open up FORUMDISPLAY template for each of your styles you want to show the button, find and add the highlighted code below:

<td class="smallfont"><if condition="$show['newthreadlink']">
<a href="newthread.php?$session[sessionurl]do=newthread&amp;f=$foruminfo[forumid]" rel="nofollow"><img src="$stylevar[imgdir_button]/newthread.gif" alt="$vbphrase[post_new_thread]" border="0" /></a>
<if condition="$show['neweventlink']">&nbsp;<a href="newthread.php?$session[sessionurl]do=newevent&amp;f=$foruminfo[forumid]" rel="nofollow"><img src="$stylevar[imgdir_button]/newevent.gif" alt="$vbphrase[lv_vb_eventforums_phrase_post_new_event]" border="0" /></a></if>
<else />&nbsp;</if></td>

Lastly, go into the Event Forums options, and change the option Show the New Event button on the thread list to yes.

Step 5

Install on VB.org:
Browse back to this thread, and click the INSTALL button so you can recieve updates whenever I update this plugin.

How do I upgrade it from an old version?

Step 1

Import xml
Download the product XML file.

Goto your Admin CP at your forums, then goto Plugin System -> Manage Products. Click [Add/Import Product] at the bottom of the page. Browse to the location where you downloaded the xml file. Make sure the overwrite option is set to ON and then click the Import button.

Can I give you money to make this?

This isn't a commercial plugin, and can be used by anyone for free. However, a few people have said to me that they would like to donate some money for my time working on the plugin and for picking it up and continuing the development of new features etc. If you do want to donate some money my way, then you can do so through paypal by clicking this link. Thanks!

Bugs / Support

If you find a bug, then please post in this thread and let me know. There are a few bugs that haven't been fixed since the old version, so i'm hoping that we can fix these soon. I will do my best to support the plugin as much as possible, however I also have a busy job which takes up alot of my time.

Known Bugs

Here is a list of known bugs to date

• Soft delete actually hard deletes the thread.
• Search doesn't search the first post of an event thread.
• Inline ajax edit bugs thread title. Need to remove date and time from it before edit.

Feature request list

Here is a list of the requested features. Please note that because it makes this list, doesn't mean it will be added.

• Intergration with the event attendance plugin.
• Customisation of the order of the custom fields in the thread title.
• An option to "import" all the previous events from a Calendar into threads.
• Extra post options support (Attachments, Post Icons, Sticky etc).
• Custom ordering of the %datetime variable.
• Custom ordering of %custom variable.
• Better handling of recurring events.

Credits

Thanks to endquote for originally creating the plugin.
Thanks to the Ninja :ninja: for helping me infiltrate the vb code and finding those hidden hooks!
Thanks to anybody that helps test this plugin.

Changelog

Version: 3.3

• Added Farcasters Event Attendance patch to the mod. I've added a self check so it will only run when the Event attendance mod is installed and active.

Version: 3.2

• Fixed a bug which was prevent the thread from being deleted when you try to delete an event.

Version: 3.1

• Fixed a bug which would cause an error with undefined function on the forum display page when summary is turned on.

Version: 3.0

• Version now compatible with 3.6. Please note this plugin will no longer install on a board older than 3.6. I would recommend you upgrade your board as soon as you can!
• Added an optional template edit to show a New Event button next to the New Thread button.
• Plugin no longer in BETA. I feel this has been running enough stablely to take this out of BETA. There are still some bugs which need fixing, but as a whole it works and is used by quite a few people.

Version: 2.7 and below

• See the old thread here

[rcwild]

Installed 3.7.1 last night and installed this mod this afternoon. Hadn't read all of the posts in this thread beforehand. The mod seems to be working fine.

[Ronseal]

I've been using version 3.3 of this Mod on vB 3.6.8 for a few months.
I upgraded to vB 3.7.1 last week and have had no problems with this Mod and it works fine for me.

[m_k]

Great hack! I first saw this HERE, and then came looking for how to do it myself... got everything working fine, *except* for some reason the events at the bottom of forumhome only show "Todays Events" and not "Upcoming Events for the next xx day(s)"

Is it supposed to work by default, or is there some tricky fix required? Seems to work fine over at englishforum.ch where I first saw it - in fact the event listing at the bottom of their main page was what caught my attention in the first place.

[gr8rcake]

Is there a hack I could add to make recurring events thread display the day of the week / month on which the event occurs? at the moment it just shows the date range and a time.

[FamChap]

<a href="http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/8246/74554077ew8.gif" target="_blank">http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/8246/74554077ew8.gif</a>
^screenshot

i've 2 questions.

1. how can i get the width of the first post to match the width of the rest of the layout?

2. there's some abitrary text appearing on the postbit and nowhere else on the forum except when i install this hack and only on an event thread. how do i remove it? i can't identify the source of it anywhere... and all my postbits are defaults.

[drgonzo120]

Originally Posted by Tanpapasmurf

Would anyone be willing to update this for 3.7.1 ??

I would be willing to give anything for this as my site depends on stuff like this.

yes, it would be very nice ... although no one seems to have any problems... but it's better to be 100% sure about such issues .... "you never know ..."

[drgonzo120]

i'm willing to pay some guy ... who's also willing to pay and about what amount are we talking ???

[gr8rcake]

I got around my problem by making the event forum hidden. That way users can only access the threads through the calendar. That was the only way I could find, short of hacking the code, to get visitors to know on what day of the week / month the recurring event occurs.

I think the fix lies in calling the fetch_event_criteria function in includes/functions_calendar.php somewhere in the Mod.

The problem with my fix is that the threads now become hidden from the search engines unless I allow them to crawl the calendar. That's not a good thing.

[IvyKeepMommy]

Originally Posted by gr8rcake

I got around my problem by making the event forum hidden. That way users can only access the threads through the calendar. That was the only way I could find, short of hacking the code, to get visitors to know on what day of the week / month the recurring event occurs.

I think the fix lies in calling the fetch_event_criteria function in includes/functions_calendar.php somewhere in the Mod.

The problem with my fix is that the threads now become hidden from the search engines unless I allow them to crawl the calendar. That's not a good thing.

We just don't use recurring events on our site... if the event repeats, each instance gets added to the calendar separately.

[intrigue]

this works on 3.7 also