Spud FAQ

This topic answers the most common questions about getting your Trumba® calendar spuds to behave the way you want them to on your site.

• Can my spud display a filtered view or specific search results by default?
• My calendar won't display when site visitors select a tab, drop-down, or other hidden section.
• Why don't my spuds display on my WordPress blog?
• When I click an event in a spud, it jumps to trumba.com. I want it to jump to the calendar page on my own site.
• The calendar is wider than the maximum width for my page's content area.
• Nothing happens when I click a date in the Date Finder spud.
• Can I publish the same spud on multiple web pages with different settings or styles?
• Do I have to load the same script file, spuds.js, with each spud?
• Can I create a link to allow visitors to subscribe to my scheduled email or add a particular event to their calendar?

Tip If the question you have is not included in this list, please visit our Product Support Forums, where many more spud questions are answered.

Can my spud display a filtered view or specific search results by default?

Sure. If you use custom fields and/or organize your content by owning calendar or folder, you can use filter views to pre-filter spud content.

For example, suppose a university calendar uses an "event sponsor" custom field to indicate which academic department sponsors each event. This makes it easy to set up filtered views by department. Each filtered view consists of a collection of spuds pre-filtered to display only one department's events. These pre-filtered spuds can then be embedded in each department's home page.

To learn more, see Filter views.

My calendar won't display when viewers select a tab, drop-down, or other hidden section

To display a calendar in a section of a page, such as a tab or drop-down, that is hidden when the page first loads:

• Use a call to the $Trumba.addSpud() method to load the calendar spud when a viewer first displays the hidden section.

  For example, in the case of a tab control, use an event handler to make the call.

• Provide the ID of the div (the tab, drop-down, or other section) that contains the spud by including the spudId argument in the $Trumba.addSpud() method.

  Refresh my memory about how spud code works.

For a demonstration of how to display a calendar in a tab, open one or both of the following files and view the commented source code.

• JQuery Tools tab control
• JQuery UI tab control

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Why don't my spuds display on my WordPress blog?

If you try to enter spud code into a post on a WordPress blog that is hosted by WordPress.com, the only thing that displays in your blog is the text for the spud code.

Blogs hosted on WordPress.com do not support JavaScript (which Trumba Connect uses to display spuds), and the WordPress software deletes script tags from your posts. They do this for security reasons, which you can read about on the wordpress.com site and in their support forums.

If you have downloaded the WordPress software from WordPress.org (a different site from wordpress.com) and set it up on your own host, you may be able to add spud code to posts as long as you turn off the rich editor. Learn more in the WordPress documentation about using JavaScript.

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When I click an event in a spud, it jumps to trumba.com. I want it to jump to the calendar page on my own site.

By default, event links in promotion spuds point to the version of your calendar hosted on trumba.com. You can easily change where event links point by putting the URL for your own calendar page into the Calendar Address field in Publish Settings.

Updating the Calendar Address field affects more than just spuds. It also means that visitors who click event links in your calendar emails and RSS feeds will jump to the calendar on your website.

To update a calendar's address

1. Copy the URL for the page on your website where the main calendar spud is embedded.

   Tip Be sure to include the http:// portion of the URL.

2. In your Trumba account, confirm that the published calendar you want to update is selected.

   

   As shown here, the name of the selected calendar (Academic) is in bold type and it has a dark black check mark.

   To select a calendar, click its name.

3. Click Publish.
4. In the Publishing Control Panel, on the Publish Settings tab in the Publish Settings section, click Edit Publish Settings.
5. For Calendar Address, paste the URL that you copied in step 1.

   

   Tip The calendar address URL must include http:// or it won't work.

6. Click OK.
7. To see and test how promotion spuds respond to your calendar address updates, return to the Publishing Control Panel. Click the Promotion Spuds tab.

   The spud script now contains the teaserBase argument. As shown below, the value for that argument is the URL you pasted into the Calendar Address field.

   <script type="text/javascript">
   $Trumba.addSpud (
   { webName: "yourcalwebname",
     spudType: "upcoming",
     teaserBase: "URL for your calendar page" });
   </script>

   To test where each promotion spud's event and other links take you, click Preview.

8. Copy the updated promotion spud script and replace the original script on your live website.

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The calendar is wider than the maximum width for my web page's content

If you want to make the calendar fit into a set space that's narrower than the default calendar width, you can place it into a div of the best width and height for your page, and use the overflow attribute to add scroll bars to the div container. For example,

Special case: Multi-day template

The Multi-day template requires a width of nearly 800px and currently behaves a little differently than the others. If your calendar uses this template, and you want it to fit into a narrower space, you need to take the code above one step further.

First, you need to create a div for the dimensions you want the calendar to fill on your page. Then you create a second div to hold the calendar. This is what the code looks like:

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Nothing happens when I click a date in the Date Finder spud

If you embed a Date Finder spud into a page that does not contain your main calendar spud, you need to tell it where to direct visitors when they click a link. To do that, you add the teaserBase argument as described in When I click an event in a spud, it jumps to trumba.com… earlier in this FAQ.

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Can I publish the same spud on multiple web pages with different settings or styles?

With both promotion and control spuds, you have the option of creating multiple copies of the same spud for use either on the same or different webpages. Each copy can use different settings to meet your needs.

Why would you want two copies of the same spud? Here's one example. Suppose a health club wants to place, on its home page, a Vertical Crawler promotion spud that displays ten events. The club also uses digital signage in the lobby where it wants to use the same Crawler spud, this time displaying five events.

To create two copies of the same spud

1. Publish a calendar.
2. Add a promotion or control spud.
3. Add the same spud again.

   On the Edit Settings... page, under Spud Configuration Name, you see the default name, SpudConfig2. Replace that default name to make it more meaningful.

   For example, if the health club mentioned earlier created a second Vertical Crawler spud for use in digital signage, the club might name the spud configuration Digital Signage. Meaningful naming makes it easy for you to keep track of each spud's unique purpose.

4. Customize additional spud settings as needed.
5. Embed each copy of the spud wherever you want to use it.

Each copy of the spud shows events from the same calendar using the specific settings you selected.

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Do I have to load the same script file, spuds.js, with each spud?

The short answer is that this script call:

needs to appear only once on each page that contains spuds, before any individual spud code. If you embed multiple spuds on a page, you have a couple of options:

• Include the call with the first spud that appears on the page. Leave it out for remaining spuds.

  For example, suppose your webpage includes a Date Finder promotion spud at the top of the left column, followed by the View Chooser and Search control spuds. The Main Calendar spud appears on the right. The only spud that must include the spuds.js script call is the Date Finder.

• Put this line of code in the <head> section of your page and then omit it from each individual spud's code.

More info

The script above runs a file called spuds.js. The code in this file oversees communication among spuds on a page and between spuds and your source calendar data on the Trumba server. Without this code, the individual spuds cannot function.

Although you should use this script only once on each page that contains spuds, the code appears with all spuds in the Publishing Control Panel. This is because any of the spuds can function as the only spud on your page, and the code must appear once. Running it multiple times does not harm anything, but it can affect performance. For the second or subsequent spuds on a page, do not copy this part of the code from the Publishing Control Panel.