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Crouton

 as of version 3.11.4

What is Crouton & Why Should We Use It? 

Crouton provides a tabbed user interface (UI) and more for Basic Meeting List Toolbox (BMLT).

  • Quickly display a listing of meetings for that day
  • Provides the options for users to select other days
  • Filter by state, city, neighborhood, Area, zip code, Group, location (facility), meeting format, or other options 
  • Optional map for visual search
  • Very customizable using a variety of shortcode options which allows you to provide your users with a very specific listing of meetings if so desired

How do we get it?

Crouton can be downloaded from the following link:

 

The above link directs to a webpage that also includes installation instructions and a change log detailing updates applied to the plugin over time. 

Source code can be found here: https://github.com/bmlt-enabled/crouton

Installation

The easiest way to install Crouton in your WordPress website is to search crouton in the keyword Search on your plugins screen in WordPress and click the Install Now button. 

Once crouton is installed you will need to set your BMLT Root Server URL and/or select your Service Body

Go to crouton in your WordPress settings. 

Enter your BMLT root server URL in the Default Root Server: field. 
You also have the option to use Tomato for the root server. If you wish to do that, you can just select the checkbox to do so. 

In the Service Body section you need to select your Default Service Body from the drop-down list. As the screen tells you, this service body will be used when no service body is defined in the shortcode.

crouton configuration
click image to enlarge

Those are the only necessary steps you need to take to begin to use crouton on your site. Jump to the Usage section to see how to implement crouton on a page. 

Here is a video showing how to install and setup Crouton

Play Video

Updating (if necessary)

This subsection is only necessary if you need users to do something more than just normally updating the plugin

Usage/Examples

To implement crouton on your site, just enter the shortcode into a new or existing WordPress page.

[bmlt_tabs]

Provides a basic tabbed display of meetings in the service body specified in the settings.

This default view provides the following options:

  • tabs for each day (with the current day being the initial view)
  • the city button to switch the view to an alphabetical listing of all meeting in each city in the default service body
  • drop-downs to filter the display by Cities, Groups, Locations, Zips, or Formats. 
crouton demo
click image to enlarge
[meeting_count] and/or [group_count]

Provides a number of meetings or the numbers of groups in the selected service body.

Example: We now have [group_count] groups with [meeting_count] per week.
meeting count and group count demonstration
click image to enlarge

Troubleshooting

Below are some common issues you can run into while installing, configuring, updating, or maintaining Crouton. Possible solutions to these issues are provided. If you are experiencing an issue that is not addressed in this section, you can find help here.

If the meetings aren’t displaying on your website the way you think they should be, a good thing to do is to reset the Meeting Data and Metadata templates to the defaults in the Crouton settings.

To reset the data templates,

      1. Go to the crouton settings,
      2. Scroll down to the Meeting Data Template and click the “Reset to Default” button underneath the text box.
      3. Click the “Reset to Default” button underneath the Metadata Template text box.
crouton reset templates