The Event Information Template defines the event detail displayed when viewing a event by itself (or in a blog archive, NOT a calendar page).

The default settings are aimed at complex recurring events that may have many recurring dates.  These default settings have lots of extra text for each field, partially to assist you in understanding the field.

For a live system, one should probably reduce the text and tailor the content to the type of events you have in your system.      For every event, there are two “types” of event data,

1. “General” event information – the details that are common to all instances of that event
2. Next dates – the next date and time that the event occurs. If the event is a recurring event, this data varies with the current date.  Essentially a miniature calendar for one event!   Sooooo one can customise it JUST like calendar – it has it’s own list type. So if you are familiar with list types from the free plugin , you’re on your way!)

Simpler

A simpler template (with only the ‘next dates’ field) could be this:

Just to emphasis the point, here we have the ‘next dates’ using list type 1 – a silly thing to do maybe, but it is possible!:

Note that the event description (aka the post content) will never be shown in the ‘next dates’ of the event info, as this creates an infinite loop of post content inside itself.

Configuration

1. Decide if you want the event details for each post to display before, after the content or ONLY if you add the eventinfo shortcode to the event content.
2. If the event has already passed, and there is no “next date” – what message should be shown
3. The list type to use for the next dates
4. The layout for the general event info – the event information template

1. General Event Information Template
   • for the fields that are common to all recurrences and that you only want to show once
   • before and after html
   • fields to display once for each wordpress event post
   • one of the fields is the “next dates” ie: a list of the upcoming dates for that event.  This “next dates” list  is configured by the list type for the template.
2. List Typefor the Template
   • for the fields that you want to show with each recurrence in the ‘next dates’ section. It does not matter if the field values will be the same for each recurrence, if you want to show it, you can – it may present better.  (Eg: event times)
   • Configured under the ical-events-list section, similar to the calendar lists.

Simple Non Recurring Events

If the bulk of your events are simple, non recurring events, then you may prefer to use the list type alone, and not the event information template fields (except for ‘next dates’ of course) .

Event Information Template:

1. Drag and drop fields into position and tick them ‘on’
2. Enter html to appear before and after the field IF there is data for that field
3. Any special styling for the whole div can be specified in the ‘big’ before and after box.
4. Note: the preview is previewing with admin css NOT your theme css. You will still need to check whether it all plays nicely together.

List Type: