Support » Plugin: The Events Calendar » Previous Events in Wrong Chronoligical Order

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 23 total)
  • Brook

    (@brook-tribe)

    Thanks for your feedback! As I noted in that post, it is something that one of you three should certainly post as a feature suggestion, and I outlined how. Then you and anyone else interested can vote on it!

    Referenced post: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/change-order-of-past-events-listed

    I also expounded a bit on why it is the way it is. But if you want an option to change it, by all means request such an options. Thanks suavepotato!

    – Brook

    Thread Starter suavepotato

    (@suavepotato)

    Can you please explain why I need to file a feature request for a bug that tribe has already acknowledged? Did you even read the links that I’ve posted?

    Tribe has already acknowledged this as a bug… Why are you backtracking on this now?

    Agreed. Looking for a solution to this bug as well.

    Hey folks! Thanks for the follow-ups here; I head up Modern Tribe’s support team and wanted to chime in on this since I think there is some confusion – based on the last two replies from suavepotato and johndrogers – about this issue. My apologies to you both for the confusion and for not doing a better job of setting your expectations as to proper default behaviors prior to downloading the plugin.

    Ultimately I would caution against trying to make a connection between the 3.4 issue and the behavior currently found in 3.8 – though they impact similar areas of the plugin, a lot has changed over the course of the releases we’ve had this year. The bug that was reported was in fact patched in 3.4 (as Leah’s reply in the linked thread confirms). But we intentionally changed this behavior as part of our effort to make the plugin code more manageable as part of the recent 3.8 release.

    We put out a blog post each release highlighting high-level changes for users to be aware of, so folks can make sure they’re fully informed about the scope of an update before applying that to their site. For the 3.8 release we covered this in our post (http://tri.be/the-events-calendarproadd-ons-3-8-things-to-be-aware-of/) as part of the #4 item: /upcoming and /past have been removed from list view URLs. It sounds like we didn’t do a good enough job of getting this in front of you guys from the offset, which I apologize for – and in an effort to make the implications of this change 100% transparent, I just added a line to that post specifically calling out the impact it has on list view to spare others the disappointment and confusion you all have experienced so far.

    I do want to combat the perception that this is a “bug,” though – as it was a conscious decision that we made both based on feedback from the community (users didn’t like seeing their upcoming events listed in a different order than their past ones) and future development considerations. If you think of list view as one long events list, and the initial view just places the pointer at today in history, you should be able to move back and forth without messing with the order of events. The goal is to have one fluid list of events past and future – not a defined upcoming list that shows events in one order, and a past list that shows events in a different order. Based on the use cases for viewing past events that we evaluated and feedback we got from the community, we came to the conclusion that showing events with the newest at the top and the oldest at the bottom didn’t make a ton of sense for the majority of our users.

    That said it’s clear there are people upset about this and we want to do right by you. As such I’ve asked Brook to work with our core development team to provide a snippet that reverse the behavior we’ve added for those who want it. While I see requests to make this into a setting, I’d feel more comfortable holding off on that until we see enough demand for it – creating a request for this on UserVoice so we can see how many users request it would be a good way to get the ball rolling on that.

    There are a few relevant threads here on dot-org related to this, but one (https://wordpress.org/support/topic/reverse-chronological-order-1?replies=10) appears closed to new comments so I couldn’t offer up similar feedback there. I’m going to attempt to funnel the discussion on this issue back into one thread so we aren’t creating confusion by having a bunch of voices on a bunch of threads discussing the same issue.

    Beyond that, I welcome any feedback you guys may have – we definitely want to do right by you here and want to make sure this is a product that serves the needs of all our customers. If folks don’t think a snippet approach is robust enough, or simply have other feedback they’d like to share, you can always reach me directly via email at pro (@) tri.be. Thanks again for the feedback and for helping us get better.

    Thanks Rob and sorry if my tone in https://wordpress.org/support/topic/change-order-of-past-events-listed?replies=14 has been perceived as argumentative, not my intention. As far as your assertion that the majority of users prefer past events listed in chronological order, I question that. For example, take email – How’s it sorted? Newest to oldest. Facebook? Newest to oldest. WordPress? Newest to oldest. That’s reverse chronological order in the most common of web activities.

    I’d be willing to bet the world would come to a screaming halt if GMail, Facebook and WordPress started sorting oldest to newest. But hey, that’s me. Looking forward to the snippet.

    Thanks!

    Brook

    (@brook-tribe)

    Howdy again guys,

    Just to followup on what Rob said I am working towards having a snippet for you next Friday that will set reverse chronological order on past events pages. You should be able to paste said snippet in your theme’s functions.php file, or even turn it into a mini plugin if you wanted.

    I too wish to apologize. I should have addressed the fact that the behavior had changed so recently. To be honest, we had decided to change the behavior so long ago that I did not even remember it was 3.8 where that change was finally released.

    And again thank you for the feedback.

    – Brook

    Brook

    (@brook-tribe)

    ba95472,

    It is interesting that your bring up Facebook. I was just thinking about that myself. The crux of the problem seems to be that you guys would like a timeline view, a view our calendar does not currently have. Facebook does does though!

    A timeline view could an awesome feature suggestion! Unlike list or archive views like we have crafted, timeline views would inherently solve the use case you are looking for. Imagine having a continuous list of all of your events in chronolgical order. Scroll up to view past events, scroll down to view future ones. Alternatively such a view could even be laid out horizontally, scroll left to view past, right to view future.

    Previously we did sortof try to make list view a hybrid timeline, but then we started facing all of the issues that come when you try and mix two paradigms (paginated lists and timelines). Timelines just do not work very well when paginated. Hence why we opted for a more pure solution.

    Just throwing that out there while it was on my mind. If you are interested in such a feature, please request it. That is something that might gain some real traction with the community. Either way, we will be releasing a snippet for the current list view.

    – Brook

    Thanks Rob, a snippet of code would be awesome 🙂

    horizontally, scroll left to view past, right to view future <— that would be an awesome idea Brook

    Hi Brook,
    Will your snippet be paginated? In other words, will there be a break point of events per page. If so, is that going to be set so that the first page activated by the link is the last in the set or the first? For example, if there are enough past events to span five pages, will the link start at page 1 or page 5?

    Kasia

    (@kasia_codeword)

    Just echoing the other comments that to me, it makes sense for upcoming events to be ordered oldest to newest so visitors can see the events in the order they are coming up, but for archived events to be ordered newest to oldest so users can see what events have happened most recently and keep digging back as necessary. I would like to reinstate this setup and look forward to the code snippet.

    Brook

    (@brook-tribe)

    Howdy again folks,

    Here is the promised snippet. Paste that at the top of your functions.php file. Make sure to delete the <?php line if your functions.php already has one, you do not want duplicates.

    This simply reverses the order of past events views to be reverse chronological, just like it has been in prior versions of The Events Calendar. It does not change pagination or anything. I have tested it a fair measure. Please let me know if it works as grand for you as it has for me. If there are issues we are keen to address them. Thanks!

    – Brook

    Thanks Brook, the code works perfectly for my site 🙂

    Awesome Brook. Thanks! 🙂

    Brook

    (@brook-tribe)

    I am happy to hear that. Glad we could get y’all sites operating as you desired. Cheers!

    – Brook

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 23 total)
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