I have done WordPress sites for bands before, and have always been annoyed at how there was no good way for them to easily show off upcoming gigs, but that issue has since been resolved with GigPress.

GigPress is a WordPress plugin built specifically for touring bands. As a website developer who was often building websites for independent bands — and always using WordPress as CMS of choice — I was constantly frustrated by the lack of a simple, viable method of incorporating live shows and tours into these websites. So I figured I’d brush up on some PHP and build my own.

GigPress incorporates all the common requests you might have for a plugin of its ilk, including:

• Ability to list both upcoming shows and past shows, chronologically rolled-over as tour dates pass
• Grouping of shows into nameable tours
• hCalendar-rigged
• Auto-linking to Google Maps for venues with a street address
• Fields for venue and ticket-buy URLs, age restrictions, ticket price, and notes
• Built-in functions to display upcoming shows, past shows, and a sidebar listing
• Widget support
• Outputs XHTML-compliant, semantic markup

I am very impressed with this plugin. If you want to see a sample of what it outputs, check out the shows page on GigPress.

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