Duplicating Events in The Events Calendar

The Events Calendar by Modern Tribe has been our go-to calendar for a few years now (ever since the Code Canyon days) and here’s a quick tip that might make your life a little bit easier.

If your events are complicated (requiring lots of data-entry time) and they occur multiple times throughout the year but they occur sporadically to where a recurring event won’t work, one plugin and a five minute install (max) will save you a lot of time.

To Tri.be’s credit, the Events Calendar Pro uses standard Wordpress custom post types for the events, venues and organizers—meaning we can simply duplicate those posts, then edit only the data points (presumably date, possibly time) that have changed.

[blockquote_left] Post Duplicator:”This plugin was created to make an exact duplicate of a selected post. Custom post types are supported, along with custom taxonomies and custom fields.” [/blockquote_left]

Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t offer that out of the box but there’s several plugins out there which accomplish this basic task.  The one we used with great success is called Post Duplicator. Don’t let the small number of downloads fool you—it’s the new kid on the block.

The plugin description meets our requirements exactly—in this case, the events are custom post types, the event categories are custom taxonomies and the custom fields are things like the event cost, or even other fields not included that we’ve added through the admin interface.   This plugin was made for us—and it couldn’t be easier to use.

Simply install and activate, then go to the list of events. Mouse over the event you’d like to duplicate and the edit navigation will pop up under the post title —click ‘duplicate event’ and you’ll be on your way.

One note — if you’re concerned about SEO, you’ll want to watch your permalinks (URLs) – Post Duplicator will add a “-2” to the URL (and if you duplicate a post 6 times you’ll have “-2-2-2-2-2-2” in the last event’s URL).  It’s an easy fix, just edit the permalink to something more SEO-friendly (like the title and date of the event) and you’ll be on your way.

Word of caution: While Post Duplicator is the plugin to use for Events Calendar Pro, it does not work for copying custom field groups created with Advanced Custom Fields.  I learned this the hard way—and the problems it creates aren’t visible on the surface (in other words, it appears to work just fine until you get a bit further along).  For that, take Elliot’s advice and use Duplicate Post.  Clearly this is a space where you should exercise caution and backup your database before trying for the first time.