GigPress 2.0 released!

Posted by Derek on Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 | 21

I’m happy today to announce that GigPress 2.0 (formerly known as GigPress 1.5) is available for download. This is a major upgrade that has seen most of the plugin rewritten and a tonne of new features added, and I’m pretty excited to finally have it out the door.

Some of the new features have already been covered in the previous post, but I’ll recap here and touch on some of the other additions as well.

I do strongly encourage you to read the updated documentation — it explains the new shortcode parameters, templating and other features in more detail. Please also note that GigPress 2.0 requires WordPress 2.6.5, and that due to the scale of the rewrite, this release only includes localizations for Bulgarian, Dutch, French, German, Norwegian, Russian, and Swedish. Hopefully more translations will come in soon.

New features

GigPress now supports multiple artists — perfect for record labels or booking agencies. If you’re using GigPress for a single artist or performer, don’t worry — the multi-artist feature won’t get in your way. If you only have a single artist in the database, GigPress won’t needlessly display your artist name.

Venues are now saved in the database — no more re-entering data for shows played at the local clubs or anywhere else. You can easily add new venues on-the-fly when adding a new show as well, and edit venue info at any time.

GigPress is now completely template-driven — customize some or all of GigPress’ output using modular templates for both the main shows display and the sidebar widget. From small language changes to complete rewrites of the HTML, it’s up to you. All of your changes are safe from plugin upgrades, so customize-away.

More calendar-iffic-ness — GigPress now includes both Google Calendar and iCal download links for each show, plus an iCalendar feed for all shows, each artist’s shows, and each tour’s shows. RSS feeds have also been added for each artist’s shows and each tour’s shows.

Import from CSV — import a history of past shows, or move shows between GigPress installations using the built-in CSV export. Artists, venues and tours will be matched-up and/or created during the import process, and duplicate shows will be skipped.

Some other changes of note:

The age restrictions menu is now customizable — add any type of age restrictions you like to the “Age restrictions” dropdown.
You can now control the title of automatically-created related posts using simple tokens which represent the artist, date, city and venue of the related show. Plus, you can choose to publish the related post on the day of the show (for those using a future-posts plugin.)
You can now optionally display full country names instead of country codes.

As always, please review the changelog for the blow-by-blow.

A note about tours in GigPress 2.0

The behaviour of tours has changed somewhat in version 2.0. First, tours no longer have a display order — instead, they are dynamically grouped within the list of shows, with a heading, and then with a CSS class applied which makes them visually distinct from the other shows. Because of this, the “group by tour” option is gone, as tours are always grouped, but within chronological order.

So if you have 3 shows, then a tour of 5 shows, then a break with 2 one-off shows, then the tour resumes with 5 more shows, all of the dates will be in proper order, with two groups of shows for the tour, each with an inline heading, each visually distinct from the non-tour shows.

Those of you who have been using “tours” as “artists” pre-2.0 can automatically migrate all of your tours into artists by visiting a special URL on the new “manage artists” screen, like so:

yourwebsite.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=gigpress-artists&gpaction=import-tours

Also of interest

I’m now handling all support for GigPress through Get Satisfaction. This will hopefully help GigPress users learn from each other by searching the support history there, and subsequently cut down on support emails.

I’ve also setup a Twitter account for GigPress, so you have another avenue by which to get news of updates and pending features — or cool examples of GigPress in the wild — pushed your way.

And lastly, you’re reading this on the newly-designed GigPress website. Not really my usual design aesthetic for sure, but I thought this would be a good place to play with a slicker design style, and use some progressive-enhancement with CSS3 properties and transparency. I hope you like.

I welcome your feedback as always. (As well as your donations!)

« GigPress 1.5 on the horizon

Seeking beta testers for GigPress 2.1 »

21 comments

Amy Gail
September 29th, 2009
1:16 pm #

Great work Derek! This has been an exceptional plugin for awhile – now it really rocks!
I’m still tweaking the site – but you can see it in action at www.burntsugarindex.com

Your new site design is beautiful as well.
JLeuze
September 29th, 2009
9:07 pm #

Wow, you’ve been hard at work Derek, can’t wait to check out these cool new features. Keep up the great work!

I hear you, the old design appealed more to my design tastes. But the new design is definitely slick, you did an awesome job building a theme that fits well with the nature of your plugin.
Mikael
September 30th, 2009
2:52 am #

Great news! Looking forward to trying it out.
Like the new theme as well!
Jonathan
September 30th, 2009
1:26 pm #

First, let me say that you outdid yourself with this version. It is wonderful and much easier to mow through, entering data and all. Thanks!

Question: I assume the little “plus” symbols to the left are to help add the date to a calendar? When I press one it displays the calendar link url in the address bar, but the page remains the same…nothing is brought up or opened. What am I missing? I’ve tried looking before asking this question.

Again, many thanks!
Derek
September 30th, 2009
1:34 pm #

Thanks for the kind words people.

Jonathan – your assumption is correct. The problem I believe is that your theme is calling version jQuery 1.2.6, and then initiating noConflict mode, both well after WordPress is already including jQuery and calling its own noConflict mode. See the section of your head that starts with .
Rich Gilberto
September 30th, 2009
2:25 pm #

Hey Derek, thanks for doing such a great job on this plugin! I’m currently working out the template design in a sandbox environment since I did a lot of code snipping of your 1.5 version, but I’m so itching to get this thing running on the site!

By the way, now that these updates have come out, I’ll be able to implement this on several more sites in the near future. Thank you!
Jonathan
September 30th, 2009
4:27 pm #

Thanks for having a look Derek. I’ll have to see what I can do! Is there any quick way for me to comment out the add function until I get it fixed?
Derek
September 30th, 2009
4:32 pm #

@Jonathan – have a look at shows-list.php. Copy that file into wp-content/gigpress-templates and make your changes there.
Jonathan
September 30th, 2009
4:33 pm #

I deleted the noConflict section in the header but am still not seeing a difference. I’ll play around with it. If I figure it out, I will post here. Thanks.
Jonathan
September 30th, 2009
4:34 pm #

Wow, you’re quick to the punch. Thanks!
James
October 2nd, 2009
9:44 am #

Woo hoo! We’re developing a website with GigPress as one of the main features, and I’ve been really excited about this new version! Awesome!!!! Thanks D
Bob Andrews
October 2nd, 2009
1:05 pm #

thank you! great work. beers and pizza on me.
Derek
October 2nd, 2009
1:06 pm #

Thanks Bob – your donations and kind words are much appreciated!
tigtog
October 2nd, 2009
5:58 pm #

Derek, this upgrade is fantastic. The new features make everything so much easier to manage. (I was initially panicking about my sidebar widget until I came here and read about importing Tours into the Artists manager, but now it looks fantastic. And I can use this new Tours feature to add an extra information page! Super exciting.
mapi
October 3rd, 2009
11:46 am #

this is the best thing i c so far in wp! thx!
mapi
October 3rd, 2009
1:07 pm #

have one question though…
is it Related Show post dynamically generated? if it’s so, can you post some example code please?
thx u!
Derek
October 3rd, 2009
3:15 pm #

@mapi – just choose “Add new post” from the Related Post menu when adding a new show.
mapi
October 7th, 2009
4:36 am #

i had this contemplation..
it would be beautiful to have fully customizable shortcode template call..
for example tu use template=1 in a shortcode call so you can use more than one template…
then gp would be complete.. (as it is now)
Phil
October 14th, 2009
4:35 pm #

awesome plugin, upgrading to 2.02 from 1.4.5. Stocked to see the multiple artist feature, hopefully it’ll stop me having to make a tour for everything. The templates look good too.. I know what I’ll be doing for the rest of the afternoon haha
NativePaul
October 16th, 2009
7:00 am #

This is such an awesome plugin. 10 minutes to install, configure and add a batch of gigs!
I think it took me longer to update the menu to link to the live page: johnmckeown.net/live/
Thank you very much.
Ben
November 11th, 2009
5:38 pm #

Hi Derek,

I just find GigPress a couple of minutes ago, but just now I just love it. Very great thanks man! I love the fact, that you live vegan(, too – working on that!).
At the moment I am a bit short on money, but I will donate in december oder january – promised!

Love GigPress so much – it’s so very cool and powerfull for our site. A huge thanks again mate <3

Greetings from germany
Ben

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