Blog – Tips and Trends For Your Events

Iced Mocha for EE4; a Free Event Theme

Posted by Seth Shoultes on Sunday, June 15th, 2014

Fully integrated with Event Espresso 4

We have recently released our Iced Mocha theme for free on Github. The Iced Mocha Theme by Event Espresso is responsive, packed with features, and fully integrated with Event Espresso 4.

The Iced Mocha theme for WordPress was developed to provide a nice WordPress theme that is fully integrated with Event Espresso 4. Based off of our Arabica – Twenty Fourteen child theme, which is included within the Event Espresso 4 plugin files, we were able to provide great looking event lists and registration forms right out of the box.

Much of the Iced Mocha template code is based on the Twenty Fourteen theme, but with a quite a few event specific features sprinkled in. Such as the ability to automatically showcase events in a slider, widget columns, and/or upcoming events right on the home page.

Lots of easy to use options

We took the EE 4 Arabica – Twenty Fourteen child theme all the way to a full fledged theme with multiple layout and color options. Iced Mocha includes the following features:

• Custom Home Page/Presentation Page
  • Display Custom Sliders
  • Widget Columns
  • Upcoming Events
  • Recent Posts
• Header Settings
• Text and Color Settings
• Post Information Settings
• Featured Image Settings
• and Much More

Our mission to help customers succeed

Often times our customers end up spending countless hours just trying to make things work as advertised with some third-party themes, but have no idea the theme they just paid $40+ for, is crippling shortcodes, overriding core WordPress functionality, reformatting content, or creating massive amounts of errors across their website.

That’s why we have made it our mission to give our Event Espresso 4 customers and developers an example of a well coded, easy to use WordPress theme, that is guaranteed to be compatible with the latest versions of Event Espresso 4. We feel that if we give our customers the tools they need to succeed, they will be much happier and more profitable.

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EE4 Test Drive Now Powered by Ninja Demo

Posted by Seth Shoultes on Friday, June 13th, 2014

We’ve just finished launching our new Event Espresso 4 test drive website, powered by the Ninja Demo plugin for WordPress. Ninja Demo combined with WordPress Multisite, allows our customers to create their own sandbox website with Event Espresso 4 pre-installed, and is even pre-populated with example events and registration data.

Now taking a test drive of Event Espresso 4 is easier than ever!

EE4 in a true-to-life environment

With Ninja Demo, our potential customers can login to a demo site, where they can modify, delete, upload, and test out various areas of the EE4 software. Our customers can easily demo EE4 without leaving anything permanent behind. You can try out EE4 in a true-to-life environment and Ninja Demo cleans up the sandbox site once its no longer needed. This is perfect for customers looking to learn more about EE4’s features, the Espresso Events Calendar, and our Iced Mocha theme.

Already an Event Espresso member?

No problem! Existing Event Espresso 3 and 4 members are highly encouraged to take the new test drive site for a spin. This will help you decide if you’re ready to make the move to EE4. You’ll also have the opportunity to test the new Iced Mocha theme we’ve created, just for EE4, which is pre-installed on each sandbox site.

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New Themes Integrated with EE4 from Event Manager Blog

Posted by Garth on Thursday, June 12th, 2014

The theme developers at Event Manager Blog have added compatibility for EE4 into their gorgeous premium event themes, Fudge, Januas, Tyler, and Vertoh. If you’re in the market for a premium WordPress event theme, we’d recommend you check these out.

Fudge

Fudge allows you to display your event on a single, stylish scrollable page without compromising on functionalities and advanced performer and session management. Perfect for conference website template for Meetings, Annual Events, Workshops, Seminars.

Januas

If you plan multiple events a year, Januas is the perfect solution to display all of your conferences, seminars, meetings or workshops under one roof. You can easily categorize each event and feature events on your homepage.

Tyler

Tyler is a powerful event WordPress theme that offers all the features you need in an event website. Dedicated Speaker and Schedule page, and Social media integration. Perfect for large meetings, conferences and annual events.

Vertoh

Vertoh offers conferences and exhibitions a unique bundle of features to fit any type and size of event. You can add or remove sections to fit your conference/exhibition style.

Using Event Espresso 4 with Fudge, Januas, Tyler and Vertoh

Event Manager Blog has tried to keep the integration with EE4 as easy as possible. All that is required is that you configure your event and use the event-specific shortcode in one location.

Here’s the easy-to-follow documentation on using EE4 with Fudge and Tyler.

Check out these premium themes. We think you’ll like what you see.

Are you a theme developer?

Here a few resources  to assist theme developers who want to integrate with EE4:

• Iced Mocha theme for Event Espresso 4
• _s_ee – a Underscores base theme that integrates with Event Espresso 4.
• GitHub – access our private repository.
• Theming in Event Espresso 4.
• CPTs in Event Espresso 4.

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Prices Increase June 1, 2014

Posted by Garth on Wednesday, May 7th, 2014

In the December 2013 newsletter, we mentioned that our plugin prices would be increased in 2014. However, we’ve been so focused on building, testing and releasing EE4 (with 50+ features) that we’re just now finally able to make the official announcement (six months later).

It has been nearly two years since we have raised prices. By sharing Event Espresso with your friends and colleagues you have helped us grow and keep prices low. As you continue to share Event Espresso with others, it might be another two years before prices are increased.

We understand that no one likes higher prices for things, so out of respect to our customers, we want to be transparent and give you three ways to get greater value and choice.

So, please keep in mind that Event Espresso is an open source and mostly community based project. The revenue that comes from support license sales goes right back into the project and helps to provide for our families, as we work to add new features and maintain and support the ever expanding codebase.

We hope you see this announcement as fair and respectful. The following changes take effect June 1, 2014:

An 11% Increase for EE3 Support License, 25% Increase for EE3 Add-ons

In general, the core EE3 Support Licenses prices will be increased by 11% while the EE3 Add-on prices will increase by 25%. As always, we try to offer you the best value which is why we left the Support License prices as low as possible.

We see your purchase of Event Espresso as an investment that funds the development of new features and improvements to the quality of the product. We know Event Espresso users can save time and make more money by using Event Espresso than without EE–and we have heard this from many users. However, some customers may feel the new EE3 plugin prices are too high, and we understand that sentiment. In that case, we encourage customers who need a lower-priced option to take a look at Event Espresso 4 which is priced at about 50% less and includes more (just not identical) features than EE3.

What about EE4 prices?
While “in Beta”, Event Espresso 4 Beta will be discounted significantly (approx. 50%). As the EE4 Beta matures to a “stable” development status, the price will rise. Those who purchase at this discounted rate are still entitled to 12 months of support and upgrades.

Buy/Renew before June 1 to Get The Lower Rates

You can take advantage of this notification period (the time between this announcement and June 1 when prices change), to buy a Support License or renew your current support license to extend it an additional 12 months.

• New customers can buy now to save 11% off their first Support License (rather than pay more after prices increase).
• Existing customers can renew now to save 36%-61% (rather than renew after the prices increase). We have triggered the renewal process for all existing customers who have purchased in the last three (3) months. You should have received an email with the links to help you renew, or you can look for the renewal buttons from your EventEspresso.com Account page. If your account does not expire in the next three (3) months but you want to renew, then please contact us.

More Power and Choice with Event Espresso 4

If you’ve taken some time to install or demo EE4 (which you can do for free at demoee.org), you will notice that EE4 is a real advancement. EE4 has many of the new features that you have been requesting. EE4 also has a new interface, data structure and coding method; not to mention a significantly lower price than EE3.

If you were not already aware, EE4 core is available to existing EE3 customers. Today we’re also announcing that customers who purchase an EE3 support package will have access to the equivalent add-ons in EE4 (based on availability). This means that if you have access to an add-on for EE3 and we release that same add-on for EE4, you will also have access to the EE4 add-on for free as part of your EE3 support license. This offer will be available as long as the prices for the EE4 support licenses and add-ons are less than the equivalent EE3 support licenses and add-ons. We’re more concerned that you have access to the solution that can best meet your needs.

Please note that regardless of your access to EE3 or EE4, your support license only entitles you to upgrades and support for one website (regardless of the version you are using).

If you’ve not already read, we have A New Direction for the Event Espresso 4 Support Licenses. This new direction will allow you to purchase and renew only the products you need and want. We do intend to offer package discounts in the future, but our core EE4 Support License will offer you more flexibility now.

We aim to be respectful and transparent and help you be successful in your event business. We hope that the new pricing structure is easy to follow, but if you have any questions or comments, please contact us or comment below.

We’re excited about the future for Event Espresso and are continually re-investing time, money, and energy to improve our product and save you time and money in return. Your support makes all this possible, and for that we thank you.

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LearnDash (a Learning Management System) is Now Integrated with Event Espresso 4

Posted by Garth on Wednesday, May 7th, 2014

Today we are excited to announce that LearnDash, an elearning platform for WordPress, is now integrated with EE4. LearnDash is a Learning Management System (LMS) designed for selling and delivering e-learning courses from your WordPress site. With the LearnDash-Event Espresso add-on, you can now easily associate any offline event with one or more online courses. After signing-up for an event in Event Espresso, users are automatically enrolled into your course(s) of choice – a great way for offering online training content in conjunction with your live event!

Features

• Easily map an event to a course: When creating your event, simply select the course you want to associate with the product.
• Associate one, or many, courses: You can associate as many courses as you like to a single Event Espresso event. A registrant will be enrolled into applicable courses immediately after signing up for your event.
• Drip-feed course content leading up to an event: Leveraging the LearnDash drip-sequence feature, your event attendees can be delivered valuable training content leading up to the live event.
• Works with any Event Espresso payment gateway: Choose any payment gateway for selling your course, it will also work for free events.

How to Use the LearnDash Add-on

1. Purchase and activate Event Espresso Version 4. 2. Download the LearnDash-Event Espresso Add-on from the LearnDash support site. Once downloaded, upload the integration via Plugins > Add New. After uploading, there is no configuration necessary. The integration will create a new “LearnDash” menu option under the Advanced Settings so that you can associate your event with LearnDash courses.

LearnDash setting in EE4.

3. Once you publish an event with an associated course(s), registered site users will be auto-enrolled into the course(s) once signing-up for an Event Espresso event.

Download and Purchase Info

This Add-on is available for free to all LearnDash customers. To purchase the LearnDash plugin, please visit the LearnDash website.

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Scheduled Website Maintenance – April 25, 2014 at 10PM EST

Posted by Seth Shoultes on Thursday, April 24th, 2014

Starting April 25, 2014 at 10PM EST, the Event Espresso website will be shut down, for approximately 2 to 3 hours, as we move to our new FireHost web server. The support forums and purchasing capabilities will be off-line during this time. However, you can follow us on Twitter (@EventEspresso), or visit us at http://status.eventespresso.com, for realtime updates and information related to the move.

Thank you to all of our loyal customers for your patience! We look forward to providing you with a faster, secure, and more reliable website experience.

About Our New Web Host

FireHost is the leader in secure cloud hosting, capable of protecting sensitive data and brand reputations of the world’s enterprises. With infrastructure built for security, compliance, performance, and service, companies choose us to help de-risk collection, storage, and transmission of payment card and healthcare data.

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Website Outages April 16, 2014

Posted by Garth on Thursday, April 17th, 2014

What happened?

At approximately 1pm EST the EventEspresso.com website host, HostGator experienced a network outage. HostGator guarantees 99.9% uptime with all their dedicated servers which means that our website server should not be down (unexpectedly) for more than 9 hours the entire year—but yesterday alone our server was down for more than 12 hours!

We know this was really bad timing for everyone. Just 10 hours earlier we released Event Espresso 4.2 and  began sending email notifications to users to download the update. We apologize for the interruptions and inconvenience this caused. We are taking actions to try and ensure something like this doesn’t happen again.

Going Forward

HostGator use to be very reliable, but the recent disruptions (this was not the first, nor the second interruption)  indicate that we can not rely on them for the level of service we need for EventEspresso.com (99.9%+ up-time). Within the next 30 days we intend to move EventEspresso.com to a new hosting service that has a better infrastructure to meet those types of expectations and guarantees. Our hope is that any downtime in the future is intentional and/or scheduled.

This means that there will be some additional disruptions as we go through the process of changing hosts. However, we hope these disruptions are intentional, controlled, and relatively brief. Once we have made the full transition to another host we expect that you will find that the EventEspresso.com website loads faster and is more reliable.

Thank you for your patience, and please pardon the construction as we change the filters on the Event Espresso machine.

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A New Direction For the Event Espresso 4 Support Licenses

Posted by Garth on Wednesday, April 16th, 2014

Since February when we released EE4 without any add-ons, we’ve realized that many people don’t need add-ons (such as the calendar); all they need is the core plugin. These users also do not want to be required to purchase something they do not need. As such, we’ve changed our method of packaging add-ons with the core plugin. The Event Espresso 4 Personal and Developer Licenses will no longer include add-ons. Add-ons can be purchased separately by anyone with at least a Personal Support License (whether EE3 or EE4 Personal Support License).

What is happening to the EE4 Developer License?

The EE4 Developer License is now an even better value. The EE4 Developer License includes five license keys, and more can be added at any time. Plus, when you purchase any of our add-on products, you can use those licenses across any of your active developer sites. This makes the EE4 Developer License more valuable with each add-on you purchase because you get even more great event registration software at a greater discount.

Where is the EE4 Business License?

In the near future we will offer a “Business License” (might be a different name) that is essentially a package that offers “one of everything” at a significantly discounted rate. This will allow event managers to get access to all our great event registration software for a super price. This support license package is yet to released.

These changes make Event Espresso more affordable and accessible to all event managers and WordPress developers.

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Event Espresso 4.2 and Events Calendar

Posted by Garth on Tuesday, April 8th, 2014

Now Available!

We’d like to announce that Event Espresso 4.2 and the Events Calendar Add-on are now available. EE 4.2 includes over 60 changes and this is the first release of the Events Calendar Add-on for EE4.

Two New Major Features

Support for Mijireh Checkout

Announcing the ability to integrate with over 90 different gateways and payment providers, using the Mijireh Checkout system! Mijireh Checkout is a PCI compliant checkout page that looks exactly like your site, with support for over 90 gateways and payment providers to use on Mijireh’s secure PCI compliant servers. (see the Payment Settings inside EE 4.2).

Mijireh Checkout helps increase your conversion rates by using your existing website design. Your checkout process remains seamless to your customers while Mijireh Checkout securely handles the collecting and transmitting of the credit card data for you.

Calendar Add-on for EE 4.2+

The Events Calendar allow you to display your events in a way that customers are familiar. Make it easy for your customers to find events and to add your events to their own calendars so they don’t forget!

The EE4 Calendar Add-on includes:

• Inline calendar images
• Category filtering
• Venue filtering
• Featured images
• Datetime and format settings
• Tooltips
• Color coded categories
• Better compatibility with themes
• and much more!

Compatible with most responsive themes

EE4 Events Calendar

Calendar Tooltips

Additional Features & Enhancements in EE 4.2

In addition to better out of the box support for themes and plugins, we have added an array of new features. These include drag and drop ordering of tickets in the event editor, ordering of questions within question groups, datetime names and descriptions, and the option to turn off the ticket selector in the event details page, and much more:

• Added support for Mijireh Checkout
• Added support for the Calendar Add-on
• Drag and Drop ordering of tickets in the event editor
• Order Questions by Question Group (no longer ordering questions by question order)
• Option to turn OFF the Ticket Selector in the Event Details page for events without tickets/registrations
• Ability to add/edit Event Datetime Names
• Ability to add/edit Event Datetime Descriptions
• Added Event Datetime Name messages shortcode
• Event Datetime Description messages shortcode
• Added datetime titles and descriptions to the order confirmation
• Added front-end “Maintenance Mode” option
• Added “Register Now” or “View Details” button in the event list when the Ticket Selector is turned off

New Hooks, Filters, and Stuff for Developers

Here are a few more of the new features and cool stuff for developers available in 4.2 and we’d like to invite you to take a look and offer feedback (praises, report bugs, etc.):

• Hook/Filter to Set No-cost events as “Free”
• Add filter so the email messenger CSS file can be swapped out by developers for another CSS file
• Added a hook in the Admin panel after each ticket row description
• Added a hook in the Admin panel after each ticket create and update model
• Added hook in the Front-end after each ticket date on a single event
• Made Single Page Check Out (SPCO) button text filterable
• Models make acceptance of empty strings more consistent
• Simplified the EE_System Constructor and Hook point’s to allow for external module/add-on/plugin development
• EEH_Template::locate_template() to accept full paths as well as relatives paths (from plugin root)
• Filter for adding caffeinated modules to EE_Config $modules_to_register array
• Make Single Page Check Out (SPCO) button text filterable

4.2 Screenshots

Drag and drop reordering of tickets.	Drag and drop ordering of questions in categories	Mijireh Checkout settings
Datetime Editor

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Messages System:
Your Tool for Getting the Word Out

Posted by Darren Ethier on Tuesday, March 4th, 2014

One of the most powerful features added to Event Espresso 4 is the new messages system. In this post, we’re going to give you an overview of what this new system is, some of the terms you’ll come across when working with it, and tell you why we think Messages is so powerful.

What is “Messages”?

The messages system is the engine that powers all the notifications that go out from EE when triggered by different things happening on your Event Espresso powered website. By different things I mean things like:

• when person registers for an event
• when a payment is made
• when a registration is cancelled
• etc.

When one of these things happens (we call them triggers[1]) then the messages system kicks in to prepare and send out notifications about what happened. At this point there are a number of components in the messages system that play a role in assembling and sending a message. Let’s take a look at what those components are:

Message Types

Message Types describe the kind of message that is being sent and describe what the content of the message will be about. In Event Espresso there are currently (as of the time of writing this document) 8 different message types. Three for payment related messages (payment received, payment reminder, payment declined), and five registration related messages (registration approved, not approved registration, registration pending, registration declined, registration cancelled). Message types are attached to triggers[1]

Messengers

Messengers describe the vehicle that delivers the messages. The most common delivery vehicle pretty much all of us are familiar with is email! This is why email is the first and currently only messenger used by the messages system however it is important to note (and I’ll expand on this later) that it is not intended to stay that way.

Contexts

A context describes who or what receives the message. You won’t see the word context much in the UI for messages because the labels for contexts are dynamic and are defined by message types (but can also be overridden by messengers). When defined by the system, they will take on a label that more accurately describes the intent. For instance with all the current message types in the system there are up to three contexts available (which are labelled recipients in the ui): event admin, primary registrant, and registrant. The purpose of the context is to empower you to be more granular in the messages you send out.

As an example, for the Registration Approved message type, the event admin may receive summary details of the registration that was approved, whereas the primary registrant will receive information pertaining to the whole group registered, and the registrant just receives details on their specific registration for the event.[2]

Keep in mind that the number of contexts available per message type and messenger combination is variable depending on how they’ve been designed by us (or the third-party plugin for the messages system). For instance, we didn’t include the registrant context with any of the payment message types because its really only the primary registrant (the one who completed the registration) who is concerned with paying for the tickets.

Message Templates

Message Templates are the blueprint for what the message will look like when its assembled. This is a very powerful component to the messages system because it allows for more granular control of the “looks” of outgoing messages.

The important thing to remember about message templates, is that there is a message template for each messenger, message type, and context combination. So for example, there is a template for the email messenger, registration approved message type, and Event Admin recipient (context).

Each message template will have fields that are defined by the messenger primarily but also supplemented by the message type if there are any additional fields required by the message type. For instance, all email templates will have to, from, subject and main content fields.

Difference between Global and Event specific templates
One more powerful feature with the new messages system is that by default, global templates will apply to every trigger happening with an event. So that means, for example, when a registration is approved (the trigger), all the global templates using the Registration Approved message type get sent. However, the messages system also allows Event Authors to create a custom template for that message type to be used only for that event. If this is done, then when the Registration Approved message type is triggered the message template for that event is used instead of the global message template. This allows you to differentiate different automatic messages for different events.

Message Shortcodes

Message shortcodes are special snippets of text that allow for precisely controlling how dynamic content will display in the message template. If you are familiar with how WordPress shortcodes work then using these shortcodes should be fairly straightforward. Shortcodes such as [EVENT_NAME], [REGISTRANT_FNAME], [EVENT_AUTHOR_FORMATTED_EMAIL] all provide an easy way to indicate where dynamic content will be inserted when messages are sent.

There are also special shortcodes that we call list-type shortcodes. These are shortcodes such as [ATTENDEE_LIST], [EVENT_LIST], and [QUESTION_LIST][3]. These shortcodes are special because when you use it, you are indicating that this is where you want a list of items to be displayed in your template. When the message generator[4] gets to this shortcode, it will signal it to look for a corresponding field in the template to know how to parse each item in the list. So when you see a field in a message template that is labelled with [event_list] then you know that when the [EVENT_LIST] shortcode is parsed, the generator will look in the [event_list] field to know how to parse each event item. Super powerful!

What’s Next?

We intentionally built the messages system so it would act more like a framework for being able to rapidly add different kinds of messengers and message types for Event Espresso. We also hope that third party developers will also find this to be a useful tool for adding their own messengers and message types into the system. Want some examples?

• What about a Facebook messenger for posting notifications to a Facebook page?
• What about a Twitter messenger for posting notifications to your event twitter account?
• Or maybe a messenger to connect data from different triggers[1] with your favorite accounting app via their API?
• Or maybe a messenger to connect Event Espresso with Zapier or If This Then That.

Here’s some message types we are working on for future iterations of EE4[5]:

• a newsletter message type that will allow you to send batch emails to all registrations or contacts (or subsets meeting certain criteria)
• an automated event notification message type that let’s contacts know when you’ve posted a new event.
• automated payment reminder message type that works similarly to the current payment-reminder message type except that this new one will allow you to set a schedule for sending messages to people who haven’t paid for their ticket yet.

There are all kinds of ideas we’ve heard from customers about notifications and how they should work and we’re excited because we now have a solid framework to build out some of those ideas (and for others to build their ideas). Have you tried the messages system in EE4 yet? What do you like/dislike about it? We’d love your feedback!

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