Tablepress Simple TV Schedule Shortcode Extension
Sample Active Schedule
| Monday, February 17, 2025 | |
| TIMES (Eastern) | EPISODES |
|---|---|
| 8:00am to 9:00am | Season 9, Episode 22, Repack – Best of Season 5(Note: “Season 5” is the internal build season numbering for production company Dorsey Pictures. Fans will recognize these episodes from season 6.) The Maine Cabin Masters show up to get the job done right, always deserving an enthusiastic high five. If you like your camps old, big, haunted or practically starting from scratch they have got you covered! Dixie and Ryan invite you to be a fifth wheel as they go over the Best of Season 5.Release Date: May 27, 2024 |
| 9:00am to 10:00am | Season 7, Episode 3 – Rivalry at the Chadwick Cabin The Chadwick family has purchased a cabin built in 1906 by the Cony family, and now need the Cabin Masters help for a long overdo remodel. Fun fact, the Cony family also built Chase, Dixie, and Ashley's old high school. Not so fun fact, Cony high school is the rival of Ryan, Brad, and Jedi's old high school, Gardiner. Can the team overcome their past schoolyard grudges to fix a rotting roof, completely remodel the interior, and add in a specialty fire pit and outdoor bar all on a tight 8 week deadline? Release Date: Dec. 13, 2021 Owners: Robbie & Suzanne Chadwick Location: Cobbosseecontee Lake, Winthrop Budget & Timeline: $50,000, 8 weeks Special Projects: Boat bar, bottle cap serving tray, Mainely Handrails fire pit |
| 10:00am to 11:00am | Season 1, Episode 1, “Building Italy”, Chase Hunts for an Italian Dream Home Join Ryan, Fletcher, and the rest of the crew for Episode 1 of Maine Cabin Masters: Building Italy. This 6 episode series takes us across the pond to Italy where Chase, his wife Sarah, their 4 kids, and the family dog spend the Winter renovating a family vacation home in the beautiful Italian countryside. Release Date: June 17, 2024 |
| TIMES (Eastern) | EPISODES |
| 8:00pm to 9:00pm | Season 9, Episode 1 – Legacy Camp on Maranacook Lake What do you do when your family has outgrown your lakeside abode? You call the Maine Cabin Masters that's what! Join the gang as they meet the Klinoffs, a huge, lakeloving, family whose cabin has great bones but after decades of add-ons it has a maze-like layout which is not conducive to their growing needs. It doesn’t stop at the interior, the place needs a new deck, dock and fire pit suitable for their massive family gatherings. The guys take on the challenges of construction as Ashley “keys” in on a special breakfast bar using a family relic. It’s a race to the finish, as the Klinoffs need to project done before their annual big family Fourth of July blowout! Release Date: October 23, 2023 Owners: Andy and Mary Klinoff Location: Maranacook Lake, Reedfield Budget & Timeline: $70,000, 12 weeks Special Projects: Glass-top bar made from the family's upright piano keys |
| 9:00pm to 10:00pm | NEW; Season 10, Episode 3 – Pop of Color at Popham Beach The Triangle House is a thing of legend in Phippsburg. It began its journey as a gas station in 1922. After that, it served as a monument to the town’s history for some time before falling into the hands of local artist, Jane Burke, who had admired the funky building since childhood. After a century of wear and tear, the triangle house needs to be saved, and that’s why Jane called the Maine Cabin Masters! Battling rot, ants, antiquated building techniques and a tight deadline the gang gets to work replacing rotten wood, rebuilding the deck and properly waterproofing the structure. Adding to the cabin’s unique personality, the Masters recruit Uncle Leigh to create some shingle reliefs, Ashley repurposes some lobster ropes and the gang finish things off with a paint job that you need to see to believe. Release Date: January 13, 2025 Owners: Jane Burke & Steve Moore Location: Popham Beach, Phippsburg Budget & Timeline: $20,000, 6 weeks Special Projects: Custom library ladder to the loft, lobster trap rope art, shingle "relief art" of fish, whales, sharks, etc., osprey cutout for the peak |
| Monday, February 17, 2025 8:00am: 922 Repack – Best of Season 5 9:00am: 703 – Rivalry at the Chadwick Cabin 10:00am: 101 “Building Italy”, Chase Hunts for an Italian Dream Home 8:00pm: 901 – Legacy Camp on Maranacook Lake 9:00pm: NEW; 1003 – Pop of Color at Popham Beach |
A sample active schedule displaying examples of Repack, “Building Italy”, and Build episodes from the Maine Cabin Masters. The schedule is also split, where Discovery Networks inserts other shows for a time before showing more Cabin Masters episodes the same day. This type of split in their schedule happens often. The Tablepress extension available in the link below is actively displaying this sample schedule using the MCM theme.
Features
- Simple shortcode usage:
[ tv-schedule scheddate=”abrbitrarytext″ schedtheme=”theme” tables=”hhmmt,tableid…,hhmmt,tableid,…″ / ] - Allows for multiple episode types, defined by customized table layouts in Tablepress
- Allows for multiple “split” blocks of episodes with differing start times in a given schedule
- Allows for the visual indication of New episodes
- Handles the display of season and episode numbering systems
- Allows for arbitrary start times and durations
- Allows for the selection of eight different themes via CSS
- Allows for the optional display of a simplified text schedule to copy-and-paste for graphic usage
Purpose
This plugin was developed to create show-specific schedules for the growing fan base of the Maine Cabin Masters unscripted cabin rebuild show on Magnolia Network. Click here to view the current schedules generated by this plugin.
Background
The Tablepress tables for the now more than 170 episodes (>120 Build, >40 Repack, and 6 “Building Italy”) were built over a period of three years, the first two months catching up from 2017 through 2021, then the rest as new seasons and episodes premiered. All of these episodes can be found on the Maine Cabin Masters Episode Guide on this site, which are displayed using Tablepress. The data in that Episode Guide then became the data source for this plugin in early October 2024.
Design Concepts
Maine Cabin Masters episodes are not always aired in a complete sequence throughout the day. Fairly regularly, the schedule is “split” into two or more broadcast blocks on a given day, where Magnolia Network inserts other shows for a time before showing more Cabin Masters episodes. This type of split happens often enough that handling such splits is built into this plugin, as can be seen in the sample schedule at the top of this page.
A Build episode is the most common, so those episode tables contain much more detail. A Repack episode, however, was originally of a “Top Ten” design, so those tables have less detail. Because of this, the Build and Repack tables are built differently. Then, when the “Building Italy” mini-series of six episodes aired during the summer of 2024, those tables had almost the same detail as the Repack episodes.
| Build Episode Table | Repack Episode Table | “Building Italy” Episode Table |
 |  |  |
The plug-in currently only supports durations of 30 and 60 minutes.
The design of the tables themselves can be rather arbitrary, and as can be seen here, they can either be simple or complex. Note that the Duration and Episode Type rows are set to Hidden, so they don’t show up in the Episode Guide.
The < img > code that provides the image is inserted in Tablepress using the “Add Image” button for that cell. The image widths are all set to 300px for consistency.
The design of the plugin itself can be easily modified by a PHP developer for the needs of any show or set of shows
.
Prerequisites
- Ensure you’re running the latest version of WordPress on a server having the latest version of PHP.
- Download, install, and activate the main Tablepress plugin, either from https://tablepress.org or from the WordPress.org plugin directory.
- Download, install, and activate the Single Cell Content Shortcode Tablepress extension from https://tablepress.org/extensions/table-cell-shortcode/.
- Download the Tablepress Simple TV Schedule Extension from the link at the top of this page, and install and activate the plugin.
- Download, install, and activate the Duplicate Page plugin by mndpsingh287 from https://wordpress.org/plugins/duplicate-page/ .
Basic Usage
Develop whatever template tables that are needed for your usage. The Duplicate Page plugin will provide a Copy function within the list of tables, so you can then create episode tables from those templates as needed. Be as complete as you can in those templates though, as any future changes or updates will need to be made to all other tables.
The specific shortcode displaying the sample schedule at the top of this page is:
[ tv-schedule scheddate=”Monday, February 17, 2025″ schedtheme=”teal” tables=”0800t,292,180,293,2000t,271,321n” optcopypaste=”true” ]
The shortcode attribute “scheddate” is a simple string for display only, so its content is arbitrary. It can be a date, a broadcast or streaming channel, a classroom or meeting room, a location of a public space, etc.
The second item, “schedtheme” is a theme name. The code does, however, default to the “spreadsheet” theme, with no error generated.
The basic format of the “tables” array is hhmmt,tableid,tableid…,hhmmt,tableid,tableid…. Hhmmt is 4-digit military time (hhmm), followed by a “t” to identify the array item as a time. Any other format will display an error instead of a schedule. Also, the first item in the “tables” array must be a time, or another error will be generated.
To create a split schedule, add the next start time as hhmmt, then follow that with the necessary table ids. Any amount of splits can be used.
There’s no limit to the number of tables that can be included in this array. However, it’s recommended a different shortcode be used for different days, for the sake of the reader.
If the shortcode itself looks good but you’re getting the constant error of “Table not found”, make sure you’re editing the shortcode in a WordPress Text editor. Any of the Visual editors will automagically add the dreaded < span > tag to the shortcode, which will break its usage.
Note: While an “MCM” theme is included which duplicates the look and feel of their official web site, the copyright of the design is the property of the Maine Cabin Masters, and remains under their ownership.
After each schedule in our usage, you’ll see a copy-paste schedule.
This is the version of the schedule we use to create the graphic. Note that this version of the schedule doesn’t parse the season and episode numbers as the full display does. Note that this feature is Disabled by default. There’s an optional shortcode attribute that will enable this separate schedule:
Mods
While these modifications are relatively simple, doing them incorrectly can break your site. You do these at your own risk. If you do break your site, connect to your server and delete this plugin file, then re-upload a fresh copy and re-activate.
Time Zone
Note that “(Eastern)” shows up in the Times column. This is simple text in the PHP code, and can be modified or deleted as desired.
Episode Types
The differing Tablepress table layouts for the Build and Repack episode types as described above are handled when the HTML code for the displayed schedule is assembled. This code block is at the bottom of the foreach loop. The table-info shortcode, which is built in to Tablepress, is used for displaying the Tablepress table’s title. The table-cell shortcode from the Single Cell Content Shortcode plugin to retrieve data from the desired cells in a given table layout. Modifying this code block will allow for any desired schedule designs.
Why Not Use a ‘Screen Scraper’ or TV Schedule API to Populate the Schedule?
You could, if the episode titles and numbering matched regardless of where they were used. However, with the Maine Cabin Masters there are three sets of titling and numbering that I’m aware of, that are also apparently fluid when it comes to carrier usage. There are APIs available for gaining access to the daily schedule metadata “pushes” from Discovery Networks / Magnolia Network, but these are expensive and contain data that doesn’t match the Maine Cabin Masters own Episode Guide. A pseudo-cross-reference does exist at the top of my Episode Guide. I’ve found though that I can create a day’s schedule in about 5 minutes, so that’s actually simpler than jumping through all the other hoops necessary for the cross-reference algorithm to be worth the work.
More Background
A little deeper background … Back in 2021, when I first began volunteering as a Moderator at the Cabin Masters‘ Official Friends Who Like Maine Cabin Masters Facebook page for their fans, I took a hard look at the show’s pages on IMDb. Once I realized those pages needed work, I decided to adopt them and continue the work. I then created the Maine Cabin Masters Episode Guide on this site using Tablepress. This Episode Guide contains more detail than the IMDb pages I keep it synced with, in order to create a source for answers to questions from the show’s fans.