Posted by Seth Shoultes on Wednesday, June 10th, 2015
Thanks to the efforts of our development team, sponsors, and support team, we have just released the Multiple Event Registration (MER) for Event Espresso 4.
What is Multiple Event Registration?
The premise behind this great add-on is that the easier it is for people to register for an event, the more events they are likely to attend. With the Multiple Event Registration add-on, attendees can register for several events at once and even add additional attendees to any of the same events–in the same checkout process. Additional attendees also get the customized registration form as the first/primary attendee.
The Multiple Event Registration add-on is super easy to use. Just install the plugin on your site, then the EE4 ticket selector and registration system is automatically updated to allow registrants the ability to add events to an “Event Cart”. Going forward, your customers will be able to add multiple events to their cart and checkout in a single, streamlined registration.
Watch a Two Minute Video
Here’s a quick step-by-step overview of the Multiple Event Registration process:
Customers are shown a list of events to register for, in which tickets can be added to the “Event Cart”.
Customer adds events to their cart, then checks-out. Additional tickets can be added/removed in the cart.
Customer is taken to a single registration page for all of the events in their cart.
Customers can reuse information from the first form, across all registration forms on the page, or pick and choose which form data to reuse.
After the registration forms are completed, the customer is taken to the payment page to finalize the registration.
That’s it! The customer is registered for as many events as they want in one checkout.
Great News! We’ve recently launched a new Third-party Add-ons directory on our website. So now Event Espresso 4 customers can explore an ever growing selection of plugins, and themes from third-party developers.
Short Backstory About Our Event Ticketing & Registration Framework
As we were building out the Event Espresso 4 core event ticketing and registration framework for WordPress, we took extra time to make sure it was as extendable, and scalable as possible. With many hours of very careful planning, and development, we were able to build in hundreds of action hooks, and filters throughout the core Event Espresso 4 codebase. Therefore exposing an enormous amount of data, and WordPress accessible endpoints throughout the EE4 framework. Leaving Event Espresso 4 wide open for developers to build great new extensions, and features on top of.
Well, as time progressed, we started seeing more and more developers getting involved, and asking about promoting their theme’s, and/or plugins somewhere on the Event Espresso website. However, we didn’t really have a place for developers to promote their new extensions. So, I went ahead and built a small directory for third-party developer’s to promote their add-ons.
The add-on directory has actually been available for a while, but I got busy with WordPress security updates, testing and documenting new features (Multiple Event Registration and Promotions), and never got around to telling anyone about it, until now.
What add-ons are we launching with?
So far I’ve added three popular themes, two gateways, and a plugin integration.
Also, it’s TOO EARLY to promise anything right now, but it sounds like there might be an integration with a popular affiliate plugin, and maybe even a redesigned calendar widget. So be sure to keep your eyes peeled for new stuff from other third-party developers.
Public Github Repository Now Open
In other news, we’ve recently opened up our Event Espresso 4 Github repository to the general public. Since then we’ve seen an influx of new developers, who are starting to build exciting new integrations for Event Espresso 4. Any developer with an account on Github.com can now download and install the EE4 Core Plugin on their development sites, without having to purchase a support license. This means that WordPress plugin and theme developers can now build add-ons for EE4 much faster than ever before.
Calling all WordPress Plugin & Theme Developers
Say what!?!? Did you hear the great news above, about our Github repository going public? And now you want to know how to get started developing add-ons for Event Espresso 4, right?
Start learning about developing for Event Espresso on our Developer Resources page, right away!
Submit Your Add-on!
Submitting a new add-on to our repository is easy, and will help your add-on get noticed by thousands of Event Espresso customers. Just fill out the form at the bottom of the Third-party Add-ons page to get started.
Have an idea for an add-on?
If you have an idea for a new feature/plugin/theme, or are currently developing an add-on to integrate with Event Espresso 4, please be sure to post about it in the comments below, or use the Github Issue Tracker to let us know.
We are look forward to seeing what you will come up with next!
Live in, or around Pennsylvania? If so, you might want to make sure you check out WordCamp Philly this year. Why? Because WordCamp Philly is freaking awesome, and we just happen to be a Silver Level sponsor this year.
If you want to learn more about WordPress, meet new people, and have a great time while doing so, then WordCamp Philly is the place to be. You might even get to meet some of the biggest names in the WordPress community, such as Brad Williams, Lisa Sabin-Wilson, and Dre Armeda from WebDev Studios, as well as an astounding group of speakers.
This looks like an amazing event, and we hope to see you there! If you plan on attending, please let us know in the comments section below. I (Seth Shoultes) will also be there, handing out shirts, so if you’re around, come say hello 🙂
This year’s schedule looks jam-packed with great speakers, and lot’s of great sessions!
What is WordCamp?
WordCamp is a conference that focuses on everything WordPress. WordCamps are informal, community-organized events that are put together by WordPress users like you. Everyone from casual users to core developers participate, share ideas, and get to know each other.
Posted by Darren Ethier on Wednesday, June 3rd, 2015
Hey folks, there are some significant improvements coming to the EE4 date and time system with Event Espresso 4.
Note, these improvements will impact any custom code and/or third party add-ons that utilize the Event Espresso Datetime system. So developers will want to take note of them and prepare your code for these changes as soon as possible.
Summary of Changes
As we improve systems in Event Espresso 4, our goal is to make them simple, clear, and as flexible as possible; these datetime improvements do just that. Here’s a summary of these improvements, but please see the Important Changes to EE_Datetime System coming to EE article on the Developer Portal for complete details:
1. Dates continue to be saved in the database in mysql format (Y-m-d H:i:s) and UTC+0. Nothing changes there.
2. Dates live within the models and model objects as PHP DateTime objects.
3. Any unixtimestamps coming into the EE Date Time system are considered to be a true unixtimestamp (time()) and not a timestamp with the calculated offset that current_time('timestamp') provides.
4. Formats are now required for when instantiating EE_Base_Class objects with date time strings that are not a unixtimestamp.
5. New helpers are available for setting up strings for date related queries.
6. New EE_Base_Class helper for displaying localized date.
7. Extensive unit test coverage
When will these improvements be released?
Right now all the changes are found in the FET-3456-promotions-spco branch of Event Espresso 4. This branch is currently available on our Pre-release Channel (prc) (sign up via your account page) for those who wish to try it out. We strongly encourage developers to checkout the branch via github and make sure any of your custom code and/or custom add-ons work with the new improvements.
For existing Event Espresso 4 users, we have already updated all our core add-ons that are impacted by these improvements so they work both with the current datetime system and the new datetime system. So you should see no impact when we release this on the stable channel.
Have any questions or feedback? You can leave a comment below, post in the forums, or even create an issue in Github.
We regularly collect feedback from awesome members like you via our support forums and our user survey. Since releasing 4.6 in early February, we’ve pushed out 30 maintenance releases with fixes, new features and enhancements; and 12 add-ons have been released or are in progress. We would like to ensure that you are aware of these awesome improvements.
The events listings page shows your events in a list format and single event pages are for displaying individual events. The template options screen for these pages has been relocated to WP dashboard (WP-admin) –> Event Espresso –> Events –> Templates. There are now options for making changes to the ticket (pricing option) selector including hiding the ticket details link, hiding ticket sale information, and even hiding expired tickets.
Embed Your Ticket Selector Anywhere
Along with additional template options, we have also introduced a ticket selector embed option and it can be found in the event editor below the event name and next to the duplicate event button:
Registration Checkout
Registration checkout handles collecting of the attendee/registrant information and collects payment if necessary.
You can now change the order that payment methods appear in by adjusting the PMD order through each payment option in WP dashboard (WP-admin) –> Event Espresso –> Payment Methods.
We’ve also made the following improvements to registration checkout:
Removed success notices as a registrant moves through registration checkout. This means that your registrants can complete checkout faster than before
Added additional CSS classes to the form fields to offer more flexibility with styling changes
Allow HTML tags to be used for the payment method description that is shown before a registrant/attendee pays for their registration. This help messaging can be changed for each payment method in WP dashboard (WP-admin) –> Event Espresso –> Payment Methods.
Default the state/province dropdown and country questions to a null value. This requires attendees/registrants to select their actual location from the dropdown menus.
Allow immediate download of an invoice at the end of registration checkout
Improved Workflow in the WP Dashboard
We’ve added next and previous links to the Registrations Details screen. This is the screen that is shown when you are viewing a specific registration record within your WP-admin (WP Dashboard).
Venues are now sorted in alphabetical order in the event editor. This is helpful if you are working with a lot of venues.
New shortcodes for the messages system which handles notifications for event admin (event authors) and registrants/attendees. We’ve added the following shortcodes:
[RECIPIENT_ANSWER_*] – retrieve and display and answer to a question for a registrant
[PRIMARY_REGISTRANT_ANSWER_*] – retrieve and display and answer to a question for a primary registrant
Added resources for developers in the new Developers tab in WP dashboard (WP-admin) –> Event Espresso –> Help & Support –> Developers.
Progress of Releasing Add-ons
Available Add-ons
In addition to all those great features and enhancements, we’ve also released many awesome add-ons to give your online registration and ticketing more power and give your audience a better experience.
Add-ons In-Progress
We know you have been asking for many of these add-ons for a while, and you want them like yesterday, but we are getting very close to releasing these great add-ons too. We’ll be making official announcements soon.
We hope you can see that with 30 maintenance releases and 12 add-ons completed or in-progress in the last four months that we are working very hard to make sure we give you the most powerful self-hosted online event registration system.
Are you having trouble finding one of the enhancements mentioned above? Your software may be out of date. Try backing up your WordPress site and then updating to the current version of Event Espresso 4 through your WordPress Plugins screen in your WordPress dashboard.
Posted by Seth Shoultes on Wednesday, May 20th, 2015
The Authorize.net SIM Payment Gateway will allow your attendees/registrants to pay for their event registration with a credit or debit card on a secure webpage on Authorize.net.
Authorize.Net SIM is a hosted payment form ideal for handling the secure collection and transmission of customer data. The experience can be tailored to match the look and feel of the merchant’s website so that the customer doesn’t realize they are on a hosted page. No Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate is required; instead, a unique digital fingerprint is sent and authenticated with each SIM transaction.
The Authorize.Net SIM Payment Gateway can handle all the steps in the secure transaction process – payment data collection, data submission and the response to the customer – while keeping Authorize.Net virtually transparent.
Payment gateway hosted payment form employs 128-bit SSL data encryption.
Digital fingerprints enhance security, providing multiple layers of authentication.
Customize the look and feel of the payment gateway hosted payment form and/or receipt page.
We’d like to announce that another Sponsored payment gateway for Event Espresso 4 is available.
Vanco is your specialized payments partner.
Vanco Payment Solutions is focused on meeting the unique needs of clients that count on predictable, recurring revenue. Faith-based, nonprofits and other professional and relationship-oriented organizations—and the software providers and professional associations that serve them—rely on Vanco’s specialized approach to adding electronic payment options and enhancing current capabilities. The company’s experienced leadership team helps more than 30,000 clients across the U.S. conveniently, securely and efficiently accept a broad range of payments, including credit and debit cards, and more effectively manage their operations. Vanco leverages extensive experience in specific industries to help clients confidently and continuously meet financial goals and obligations. Industry leaders Vanco Services (founded in 1998) and Veracity Payment Solutions (founded in 2007) recently merged to form Vanco Payment Solutions.
Vanco Values guide relationships with clients, partners and each other, every day.
We are focused on delivering electronic payment solutions, and doing it better than anyone else. We’re attuned professionals who listen carefully to understand our clients’ point-of-view. We are specialized in addressing the payment challenges unique to the sectors of those we serve. We are a collaborative team, forging partnerships with clients that inspire innovation and excellence.
Vanco is a PCI Level 1 Compliance Provider.
You can contact them about payment gateway services at: 800-675-7430, info@vancopayments.com or visit http://vancopayments.com/ to learn more.
Attention discount loving event promoters! Behold the Promotions add-on beta! Finally, the Promotions add-on is ready for you to test its new, more flexible, publicity boosting, discount-ticket-price-obsessed event promoting features!
The Promotions add-on is compatible with Event Espresso 4.8 (also in beta) and available to download from the pre-release channel.
The new promotions add-on for Event Espresso 4 includes discounting with or without discount codes, cart discounts, and a new UI.
New Automatic (no-code discount) and discount limits features
The Promotions add-on can be used to set up promo-code based discounts and non-promo-code or automatic discounts to help encourage more event ticket buying.
It allows you to set quantity limits on usage, as well as set a range of dates when promotions are applied to the price of an event ticket transaction.
That’s right, the cart total is discounted
When you set up a fixed discount type promotion, the amount will be taken off the price of the entire cart. This is a departure from how EE3 discounted a set amount for each ticket in the cart.
Side note: You can still make it so the discount is increased with each ticket purchased by using the percent discount type promotion.
New UI for inputting and managing promotions
All of the promotions management happens within the promotions management screen, which keeps you out of the event editor. This helps speed up the input and management of promotions. Now you’ll have more time to spend on your other event managery tasks!
You’re welcome.
We look forward to your feedback from testing the Promotions add-on beta. Please feel free to start a new topic in the Pre-release channel forum if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions.
A month ago, we invited our community to participate in a hosting survey. This WordPress website hosting survey is intended as a public service to the Event Espresso and WordPress communities. Our only interest is to provide these communities more information so they can choose the best WordPress host given their needs.
We are pleased to share the (not-statistically-valid) results of our 2015 WordPress Website Hosting Survey. Hopefully next year you will help spread the word about the WordPress website hosting survey to get more results so the data is more representative. We only included results for hosts with three or more complete responses, but you are free to look at the results yourself.
Note: This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the hosting links and signup, we may receive monetary compensation.
We’d like to take the liberty to share a couple points of interests about these hosts.
Managed WordPress hosting and caching
The survey responses did not indicate whether or not their Event Espresso 4 powered site is hosted on GoDaddy’s Managed WordPress platform. We can conclude that anyone using EE4 is hosted on the regular GoDaddy hosting package, because Event Espresso 4 does not work as expected on GoDaddy’s Managed WordPress hosting due to their inability to disable caching for specific pages.
WP Engine received high marks for support, which was not a surprise to support staff. This is because we’ve found that WP Engine support staff are very responsive whenever a few initial issues arise due to caching. They’ve been very helpful to Event Espresso customers to who request help with configuring specific pages to be excluded from caching.
Posted by Seth Shoultes on Tuesday, April 21st, 2015
We are happy to announce that development of the Event Espresso 4 REST API has begun. You are invited to get involved with the API development by: sharing feedback on the direction of the API, contributing code, testing what is already completed, and encouraging others to get involved.
Hey #app #developers a brand new #API is available for @EventEspresso https://github.com/eventespresso/event-espresso-core/tree/master/docs/C–REST-API #WordPress #events #plugin #eventtech #mobile.
WordPress and Event Espresso Developers will be most interested in the EE4 REST API, because it will allow for faster development of a wide array of features, including custom reporting tools, mobile application development, and theme development. The EE4 REST API will provide an easy to use API, available via HTTP, to grab your site’s event and registration data in simple JSON format. Retrieving or updating data is as simple as sending a HTTP request.
Purpose of the Event Espresso 4 REST API
As you may have guessed already, the Event Espresso 4 REST API is not a new way to relax or catch some Z’s in between coding sessions. The Event Espresso 4 REST API is actually an application programming interface (API), intended to allow client-side JavaScript, and apps on different servers, to be able to interact with the WordPress Plugin Event Espresso. It is built on WordPress, Event Espresso 4 and the WP API; however once the WP API is merged into WordPress core, it is anticipated that this Event Espresso REST API will likewise be merged into Event Espresso 4 core.
Other WordPress plugins that intend to use Event Espresso 4 data server-side (in the PHP code) generally do not need to use the API, and can instead use Event Espresso 4’s models, config, and other modules directly. Check out developer.eventespresso.com for tutorials on how to use many of these systems.
Example applications could include:
JavaScript and HTML snippets that could be pasted onto non-WordPress sites that could list events from Event Espresso
Mobile applications for signing attendees into events in Event Espresso
WordPress plugin that controls Event Espresso data entirely on the client-side
READ functionality (API clients will be able to read just about anything from EE4, including information from add-ons)
WRITE functionality (API clients will be able to create and update most EE4 info, but we’d like to prevent API clients from breaking the DB so that will be a bit of a challenge)
Single page checkout (SPCO) functionality (we will want to present similar functionality to SPCO, except over the API. This will require rather tight integration with SPCO in order to keep them almost identical)
Progress
Current progress (as of this writing):
READ functionality is approximately 85% completed. We are actively working on the compatibility with the permissions and capability controls that are built into Event Espresso core.
Not a developer, that’s okay! The Event Espresso REST API will allow other applications (other websites, mobile apps, etc) to access your Event Espresso data through an application programming interface (API).
We recommend you share this with your development team, agency or app developers because they will be excited about this. You should ask them to consider building an integration for the Event Espresso 4 API so that you can use your data in their applications.
Hey #app #developers a brand new #API is available for @EventEspresso https://github.com/eventespresso/event-espresso-core/tree/master/docs/C–REST-API #WordPress #events #plugin #eventtech #mobile.
Another benefit of the API is that if you want a certain edge case feature that is not available in our core products, you can hire a developer to build it for you, without having to understand the Event Espresso 4 code base.
For the most part, at the time of this writing, we are still in the planing and development stages. Developers that are interested in the Event Espresso 4 REST API can get involved in the development and planning process from within the EE4 REST API page on Github.com.
Participate in a short survey!
How will you, or your company use the EE4 REST API? Let us know by filling out the survey below.
The Multiple Event Registration add-on is super easy to use. Just install the plugin on your site, then the EE4 ticket selector and registration system is automatically updated to allow registrants the ability to add events to an “Event Cart”. Going forward, your customers will be able to add multiple events to their cart and checkout in a single, streamlined registration.
In other news, we’ve recently opened up our 
Live in, or around Pennsylvania? If so, you might want to make sure you check out 
The 
As you may have guessed already, the 