Tag Archives: reverse

Using two widgets for past and future

Group past and future events so a description can be added

Lightmotion.net (they do fire and light shows) have an interesting use of the plugin widget.   Gerald has used two widgets with different parameters to show “past events” and “future events” that appear to be grouped.   The plugin does allow for past and future events to be styled differently, this would not achieve the grouping. I assume that what he has done is have widgets with following parameters:

  1. widget past (showing events for last 20 days): startoffset=-20 days=20
  2. widget future (showing events for last 20 days): days=20
Grouping past and future events

If you want to do something like this yourself, one thing to bear in mind is that one must balance the number of events with your event frequency and the timeperiod to ensure that the most recent ‘past’ events will show.  Use events=x in the shortcode to override the default number of events (60? or 30? I forget!)

How to show historical dates ie events in the past…

Some folks have asked if it is possible to show historical dates, or rather some dates in the past.   Many possibilities exist either in the shortcode and in passing parameters via the url.  One can use any of the following:

  • listtype=n
  • days=n
  • events=n
  • start=yyyymmdd
  • startoffset=n (number of days – can be negative)
  • hoursoffset = n (number of hours – can be negative)
  • monthsoffset=n (number of months – can be negative, will override days and hours)
  • sort_later_events_first=1 (to reverse the order)

So to start any event calendar from 30 days in the past, add startoffset=-30 to the shortcode separated by spaces.

As always remember that there is both a time limit and a number of events limit. Choose an appropriate combination.

  • As a rule of thumb, unless you only want to show a few ‘x’ events, set the number of events to just more than you expect to have in the time period you have requested. EG: if you usually have 3 events in a month and want to show two months, then maybe set events to 15 just to be sure
  • If you don’t want an excessively long list, set number of events to a reasonable number for the page and then balance the load – don’t go for a hugely excessive time range and then say show only 6 events.  Using the numbers above, if you only ever want to show 6 events and have on average 3  a month, but maybe some months nothing, then maybe set months=4 and events=6.  The plugin has to calculate out all the events, sort and match any adjusting events and then reduce the number to what you requested.

Note: The default css will show the historical dates as slightly greyed out.