Calendar of forthcoming events, now that DateTags is dead

So have you tried DateTags and found that it doesn't work with MT4? Most MT3 plugins work just fine with MT4.

I saw this the other day, which may help you think in template tags about your problem: Publish only entries with dates (in) the future or past.

Thanks, Dan, for suggesting I just give it a go anyway. When it first appeared on the "not yet compatible" list on the Works with MT4 page, I took it at face value -- but lo and behold! It sort of works with MT4.2! (The DateRange tag, allowing for arbitrary start and end dates for entry printout, works. The MonthHeader and MonthFooter tags don't seem to work, which is a shame.)

I'll look at the link that shenews provided with interest (my thanks), but in the mean time, here's the code we'll use for our calendar of events, in case it's useful to anyone else. In the absence of the DateTags function, I had to roll my own header/footer for each month's worth of entries.

			<mt:SetVar name="header_month" value="banana" />
			<mt:SetVar name="header_year" value="banana" />
			<mt:SetVarBlock name="range_start"><mt:Date format="%m-01-%Y"></mt:SetVarBlock>
		
		<table>
		<mt:DateRange start="$range_start" end="$range_start" end_adjust="364">
			<mt:Entries>
			<mt:SetVarBlock name="this_month"><mt:EntryDate format="%B" /></mt:SetVarBlock>
			<mt:SetVarBlock name="this_year"><mt:EntryDate format="%Y" /></mt:SetVarBlock>
				<mt:If var="header_month" ne="$this_month">
					<mt:If var="header_month">
						<tr>
							<td>(blank spacer row that precedes each month header but the first one)</td>
						</tr>
					</mt:If>
					<tr>
						<td><b><mt:Var name="this_month"/>
						<mt:SetVarBlock name="header_month"><mt:Var name="this_month" /></mt:SetVarBlock>
						<mt:If var="header_year" ne="$this_year">
							 <mt:Var name="this_year" />
							 <mt:SetVarBlock name="header_year"><mt:Var name="this_year" /></mt:SetVarBlock>
						</mt:If></b></td>
					</tr>
				</mt:If>
						<tr>
							<td>(table row containing event details)</td>
						</tr>
			</mt:Entries>
		</mt:DateRange>
		</table>

Hi Andrew -

Though not as robust as Kevin's DateTags, the MT-SomeDays plugin works should work with MT4 (just make sure you get the most recent version): http://everitz.com/mt/somedays/index.php

For the benefit of future seekers: Chad Everett was correct, and MT-SomeDays also worked with MT4. As far as I could tell, SomeDays is slower: it added a couple of seconds to each rebuild of the page, but it also gave me clear, easy month headers and footers, rather than my having to create and compare all those variables. Much cleaner, more elegant code, which will make life easier for future maintainers of our website. The calendar code using SomeDays looked like this:

		<mt:SetVarBlock name="range_start"><mt:Date format="%Y%m01"></mt:SetVarBlock>
		
		<table cellspacing="10" cellpadding="3" border="0" width=100%>
		<MTSomeDays date="$range_start" select="+364">
		<MTSDIfMonthStart>
			<tr>
				<td><$MTSDWorkDate format="%B"$></td>
			</tr>
		</MTSDIfMonthStart>
			<mt:Entries>
				<tr valign=top>
					<td>(table row containing event details)</td>
				</tr>
			</mt:Entries>
		<MTSDIfMonthEnd>
			<tr>
				<td>(blank spacer row)</td>
			</tr>
		</MTSDIfMonthEnd>
		</MTSomeDays>
		</table>

Note that SomeDays tags don't parse in MT 4 if you use the new mt:TagName syntax. Stick with the old-school stuff.