Add-on Which event manger/calendar for my needs?

[smallwheels]

In my forum we do collect public events by others that are interesting for the forum topic and do have a very small number of events that are organized by forum members for the forum as well (the latter like 3-4 per year)

We do have one "events-Thread" per year where the dates are collected in the start posting and new events are added by the forum members by posting to the thread. This is manual work, but we are talking about like maybe 40 events in total per year, so while not optimal this is doable.

A while ago I installed a calendar solution on top/aside of that, Google Calendar for XenForo, which has a limited featureset, but works flawlessly so far. Is is labeled "unmaintained" but it's free and it works - so nothing to complain. It is a simple calendar, powered by a shared Google Calendar in the Background. So again manual labor, but again doable. Aside from the webpage forum members can (in theory) subscribe to the calendar and will see all upcoming events in their smartphone- or desktop calendar.

Going further there are some points that we currently lack and that would bring us forward:
• the events are widespread geographically, so not every event is interesting to everyone
• there are different kinds of events (like trade fairs, community events, etc.), again, not every event is of interest for everyone
• Only the admin can add events to the calendar as well as to the thread's start posting, which creates a bottleneck - would be good if trusted members could do that as well.
• if members want to meet at one of the events this is currently done via one thread per event but this is neither reliable nor userfriendly
• for the events organized by members of or forum an RSVP function would be even more handy as it helps to keep the overview when organizing
(• note: currently (and for foreseeable time, no change planned) we do not have event fees, so this is not a criteria for us - it is all free as in free beer)

So relatively basic needs:
An event-Calendar that is tied to a thread per event, offers RSVP function, the possibilty for an ics per event, a bit of filter options and the possibility that normal forum members can create events as well, not only the admin. I consider this a pretty basic featureset.

The addons that I found are
• XenAttendo
• Calendar
• Event Forums
• Holidays Manager

Holidays Manager was released just recently, does not seem to fit our needs and got deleted in the last days - so is ruled out already. The three remaining should, as I assume, all be able to cover the featureset needed.
But now comes the nasty part:

XenAttendo
dates from 2018 and seems to be the oldest of the bunch. Seems to work but some people seem to have issues, judging from various threads on the forum. No demo site available, just a video. Latest update was about one year ago.
There is a demo site but the latest event in there is from Dec 2020 - three years ago. So no possiblity to look at things like RSVP.

Calendar
dates from late 2019, has no demo site, no screenshots, no video - simply nothing. Absolutely unclear what I will get. People seem to like and prefer it (at least some) over XenAttendo, but there seem to be some bugs/issues as well. But the general quality seems to be good. Last update was two years ago. Which seems not too convincing given that there are maintenance fees per year.

Events Forums
dates from September this year (2023) but was labeled "unmaintained" shortly after. There are a couple of screenshots but no demo site and the developer has not answered to simple questions by users regarding the addon in the thread tied to the ressource for two months.

So I am a little bit lost - neither of the addons create too much trust in the developer or in future releases. But all could be good.

Any recommendations?



PS: In the meantime I also found Calendar by AndyB but given the reputation regarding code quality throughout the forum I am part of the cohort that rather stays away from his offerings (though others may be happy with them). Plus it does not seem to meet the needed featureset anyway.

 

[Forsaken]

I use Calendar, however in a very limited fashion (we have weekly, and yearly events and we got tired of people asking about the weekly event time).

It supports RSVP, event threads and you can give permission for users to add events as well (as well as enforce things like RSVP, location and event images).

I do not know if threads are recreated for each event if it is recurring, or if it shares the same event.

As far as bugs/updates, @Naz has been busy with XF and I believe his full time job, so chances are updates will pick up once 2.3 releases. In general though, I normally do not have issues with his products, and they tend to work well with his other ones.

 

[Wing]

Nixfiftys @Naz calendar addon has my vote. You can see a custom tailored version of it here: https://www.v303rdfightergroup.com/index.php?schedule/

 

[smallwheels]

On Second look it seems possible that the calendar by @AndyB could maybe fit the needs, too - at least in combination with his RSVP-addon that I did not recognize until today. Not sure. However - from the concept it seems a little different from what I am searching for. Plus it seems to lack ics export and judging from the description the other addons seem to fit my needs better.

 

[smallwheels]

Regarding the calendar addon by @Naz I found some good and some bad news as well:

• Good news is that there IS a demo site. Which you'll only find if you dig deeply through the threads on his own support forums. Here it is:
https://xf2.nixfifty.com/events/ There is also the netrider forum, who use the plugin intensively and in a less modified way than @Wing
.
• not so good news is, that in the addon discussions here there have been mentioned a number of issues after the last addon update was released on Dec. 17th 2021 - these seem to be ignores and still unfixed - mostly for more than a year. Examples:

This addon persistently seems to be overlooked in comparison to the other addons It's a shame more time isn't put into this.

Last I looked, the forum had multiple unresolved bug reports and questions. This isn't a personal slight, but it's very frustrating. I'd rather it be unmaintained and passed to another developer for some new love to be put in.

Or moved to XF core. That would be me dreaming, though.

I agree. Absolutely LOVE @NixFifty 's mods. They have suited our board so far really well. But the support forum has left me hanging on 2 questions so far...

View attachment 274305

Experiencing this glitch whenever the event is past the date of attendance. Seems to consistently happen.

Looking for an update to fixing this after event has expired:

View attachment 282700

The addon seems to be pretty good but also a almost dead horse. Not sure if it is really a good idea to bet 60$ plus yearly maintenance fees on such a horse as @Naz seems to be busy doing other things and even within the range of his XF-addons the calendar seems to get the least capacity and love as outlined here.

 

[btmgreg]

Regarding the calendar addon by @Naz I found some good and some bad news as well:

• Good news is that there IS a demo site. Which you'll only find if you dig deeply through the threads on his own support forums. Here it is:
https://xf2.nixfifty.com/events/ There is also the netrider forum, who use the plugin intensively and in a less modified way than @Wing
.
• not so good news is, that in the addon discussions here there have been mentioned a number of issues after the last addon update was released on Dec. 17th 2021 - these seem to be ignores and still unfixed - mostly for more than a year. Examples:








The addon seems to be pretty good but also a almost dead horse. Not sure if it is really a good idea to bet 60$ plus yearly maintenance fees on such a horse as @Naz seems to be busy doing other things and even within the range of his XF-addons the calendar seems to get the least capacity and love as outlined here.

It has a lot of potential, but the endless broken promises and constant low-priority. It's left a bad taste in my mouth.

@Bob is working on his own event management system which is in the early stages. Anything Bob touches is done with a lot of thought and decent support with a common sense approach.

 

[Wing]

Until Bob comes out with something more updated, I am really confident that Naz's Calendar addon is the best option right now on the market. Sure it might look "dead". But I have not had any issues whatsoever with it, and we have highly tailored it to our needs with no issues. Well worth the investment for our community. (And our community revolves solely around our Calendar/Flight schedule).

 

[btmgreg]

Until Bob comes out with something more updated, I am really confident that Naz's Calendar addon is the best option right now on the market. Sure it might look "dead". But I have not had any issues whatsoever with it, and we have highly tailored it to our needs with no issues. Well worth the investment for our community. (And our community revolves solely around our Calendar/Flight schedule).

Out of interest - What kind of tailored changes have you made? Are they all cosmetic?

 

[Wing]

Out of interest - What kind of tailored changes have you made? Are they all cosmetic?

A ton of cosmetic, and some template/phrase changes.

 

[smallwheels]

After digging through the various options I finally decided to follow the advice in the thread here and to go with calendar by @Naz despite my doubts. So on Sunday I created an account on his forums and provided all the information incl. my xenforo license verification. Until now, two days later, I am still awaiting account confirmation on his forum:



So I am not able to buy the addon and the doubts that I finally had overcome have now risen to a new level. I mean: This is not a cheap addon in comparison and with every other addon I bought in the past the process of account creation in the according developer's forum has been typically a question of minutes and not of days.

He makes it really hard to buy the thing let alone to build up trust. Seems that the addon should possibly better be considered abandoned and flagged unmaintained.

 

[btmgreg]

After digging through the various options I finally decided to follow the advice in the thread here and to go with calendar by @Naz despite my doubts. So on Sunday I created an account on his forums and provided all the information incl. my xenforo license verification. Until now, two days later, I am still awaiting account confirmation on his forum:

View attachment 295265

So I am not able to buy the addon and the doubts that I finally had overcome have now risen to a new level. I mean: This is not a cheap addon in comparison and with every other addon I bought in the past the process of account creation in the according developer's forum has been typically a question of minutes and not of days.

He makes it really hard to buy the thing let alone to build up trust. Seems that the addon should possibly better be considered abandoned and flagged unmaintained.

Welcome to the world of Nix and the uncertainty that comes with it. Even though it has nothing to do with XF as a company - it's not a great look.

Status should definitely be changed, or like I've suggested before - offload it to someone that could give it the love and attention it deserves.

 

[smallwheels]

Got my account finally approved today and bought the addon. Install was flawlessly as expected, now playing around with it on my test environment. Hope that nothing serious occurs that requires support bc at the same time a message appeared that service will be limited until Jan 2nd due to time off.

 

[smallwheels]

I do not know if threads are recreated for each event if it is recurring, or if it shares the same event.

It's the latter and no way to change the behaviour.

 

[FTL]

PS: In the meantime I also found Calendar by AndyB but given the reputation regarding code quality throughout the forum I am part of the cohort that rather stays away from his offerings (though others may be happy with them). Plus it does not seem to meet the needed featureset anyway.

I wouldn't worry about code quality for @AndyB as it's just fine. He's one of the reputable names around here. I use several of his add-ons for well over a year now and they're all great.

Fair enough if they don't do what you need, but not if you think his add-ons are poor quality, as they're not.

 

[smallwheels]

I do not know if threads are recreated for each event if it is recurring, or if it shares the same event.

It's the latter and no way to change the behaviour.

 

[smallwheels]

I wouldn't worry about code quality for @AndyB as it's just fine. He's one of the reputable names around here. I use several of his add-ons for well over a year now and they're all great.

Fair enough if they don't do what you need, but not if you think his add-ons are poor quality, as they're not.

Fair enough - I did not want to badmouth anyone and as I do not have experience with his offerings in practice I cannot judge on them anyway. There have been discussions going on about code quality in the past, easy to find if you are interested. But then this was the past and it is second hand opinion as I have no own experience, so I can't judge.
He seems to be one of the most active developers with many many tiny (and possibly useful) addons. For this type of addons his model of a flat yearly subscription makes total sense in my opinion. I on the other hand follow the philosophy trying to use as little addons as possible (which is hard to stick to sometimes) to keep a slick and clean installation (and hopefully have less trouble through that approach), so this is just not for me, w/o any judgement.

 

[FTL]

Fair enough - I did not want to badmouth anyone and as I do not have experience with his offerings in practice I cannot judge on them anyway. There have been discussions going on about code quality in the past, easy to find if you are interested. But then this was the past and it is second hand opinion as I have no own experience, so I can't judge.
He seems to be one of the most active developers with many many tiny (and possibly useful) addons. For this type of addons his model of a flat yearly subscription makes total sense in my opinion. I on the other hand follow the philosophy trying to use as little addons as possible (which is hard to stick to sometimes) to keep a slick and clean installation (and hopefully have less trouble through that approach), so this is just not for me, w/o any judgement.

Yes, he really maintaines those add-ons well and has about 400 of them, a huge number and that small yearly subscription fee is a bargain. I renew every year whether I need anything more or not, to support him and his work.

I agree with you about using the minimum amount of add-ons in general as there can be problems when it comes to upgrading the forum software, or if the developer stops maintaining them and they provide an important or critical function which could then be lost.

 

[smallwheels]

To give an update what I ended up with: After some testing I went for Events Manger which was released shortly after this thread was written. The initial version lacked features and had bugs, but the developers were very responsive in the beginning and so within weeks it reached a decent state. Calendar was ok in my testing but Events Manager seemed more promising for my needs (plus the devs were responsive in opposite to Naz) and so I took the bet that it will stay like that and I would get a really good product that fits my needs well.

I have it in use since beginning of the year and overall it is ok. There are some glitches, some things that I dislike and some things that I miss but in general it works well enough. Over the course of the year we used it for way more events than we thought initially, so there is a bit of real world experience. Over time at least some users created events themselves which is good - it is pretty easy but the mental barrier seems to be pretty high.

• What I dislike is that past events are gone from the event list - no way to make them visible. The discussion threads are obviously still there, so one can find and view the event though the start posting - but still the behaviour is odd. I asked the devs to change it or make it configurable but they refused.

• repeating events are more than limited. If you have a sequence like "every first sunday of the month" (which is really not uncommon) they won't work. Again I asked the devs for a solution, again they refused.

• there is no way to export the list of attendees in any form - a really massive issue for an organizer. If you are really ORGANIZING an event (an not just collect clicks) you'll need this feature. W/o you end up in a dramatic hell of c+p, cleaning out the mess, transfering it to excel etc. Hours of wasted time. Again I asked the devs for a rudimentary participants list, accessibla for the organizer, again they refused to implement it. (For the record: Calendar has this feature, rudimentary but working well)

• there is no way to close the RSVP some time before the event - again: If you are really ORGANIZING an event you will want this to gain a stable situation for the event you are organizing. With events manager you either have an RSVP (and then it is open for ever) or you have none (which means: no information about participants). Again I asked the devs for the feature, again they refused it.

• there is not function to notify participants of an event, i.e. by sending a private message or such. Again: If you are really ORGANIZING an event you will want this to provide updates, instructions etc.. As this is missing you forseeably end up in the c+p hell mentioned earlier as there is not even a list of participants.

• there is no ics, so no possibility to subscribe to an event calendar. A bit of a comfort feature but a miss. With the latest version you can however download a calendar entry for a single event. This is really rudimentary in my eyes and I cannot say how well it works as it is only in the version for XF2.3 while I am still on XF2.2.

These are the biggest bummers I stumbled upon. And they are really annoying in practice, especially as they cause hours and hous of completely unneccessary extra work for the event organizer.

The biggest event we had this year was a three day event that included six subevents over the three days. This turned out to be a total nightmare with events manager. For the organizers as well as for the participants. But, to be fair: A situation like that may not be uncommon, still it is complex and it was never promised that events manager could handle these kinds of events.

However: In general it works quite ok. Threre are glitches an a lot of possiblities for improvement, especially in terms of ux and efficency of time needed for event creation. But these, annoying as they are, are minor in comparison to the big elephants in the room above.

As the 2.2 version has been depreciated and new features are only in the (incompatible) 2.3 version I did not extend my maintenance license for the time being - makes no sense as long as I am on XF 2.2. The more as it is not cheap: 65$ for the initial license incl. 6 months of updates, then 32,50$ per six months, so 65$ per year for the updates.
Therefor I do only have access for the initial 2.3 version, not for the latest ones that seem to have a bunch of features included. However - my pain points seem not to have been adressed, and so currently a bit undecided if I am willing to switch horses with all the pain that is included in that.

Calendar by @Naz had a repeating events feature, that was somewhat broken when I tested it at the end of last year but after two years of no updates and radio silence there have been some updates for it in 2024 and there has been an update recently that seems to have enhanced this feature massively (with v2.5.3). It also has a working attendee list. And I think one can close the RSVP w/o losing the participants (not sure at the moment). So at minimum two of my major pain points would be solved - but probably with his there would be other, different ones. I'll test further over the next months - not keen on changing the solution, the more, as there already a bunch of events for 2025 in Events Manger with participants that RSVPd to them.