If your event has sold out that’s great, nobody likes empty seats and shows you are doing a great job promoting your events so congratulations!
However, when an event sells out, registration closes for that event which means you no longer capture details from your customers and you’re missing out on potential sales. Creating a waiting list for your events allows you to continue to obtain attendee details when your event sells out. That’s where Ninja Forms can help.
While we are working hard to add a waiting list feature to Event Espresso 4, in the meantime you can capture the attendee details using the excellent Ninja Forms plugin (free download) and a small custom function to call one of the forms on your events page.
Ready to learn how to use Ninja Forms as a waiting list?
Just head on over to our documentation, where we created a step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to use Ninja Forms as the wait list for your sold out events. (more…)
Many good software developers struggle and become frustrated when contributing to open source software. That’s because the skill set required for contributing to open source software is different from that required for writing closed source software.
About three years ago we decided to put our flagship WordPress plugin, Event Espresso, on Github in order to facilitate community contributions. It has always been open source (meaning the code that runs it is viewable by anyone who downloads it), but that made it much more accessible for contributions. Since then we have received numerous pull requests (requests to have code added to it), but not all contributions were ready. The purpose of this post is to help software developers better understand how to contribute to Event Espresso, WordPress, or any open source software. (more…)
Did you know we released some exciting improvements for Event Espresso this summer? It’s now possible for your audience to purchase multiple tickets from multiple events in one checkout, you can offer promotions and discount codes, you can list your approved attendees on a page, and much more! We think you will like what we’ve done.
Let’s take a closer look, shall we?
This is not an exhaustive list of enhancements, bug fixes, and security updates. For that information, please see our changelog.
Multiple Event Registration
Yes! It’s here, the long-awaited Multiple Event Registration add-on for EE4! Now you can create a shopping cart experience and allow your attendees to add multiple events to a cart for checkout.
Now your audience can register for multiple events with multiple tickets in one checkout using @EventEspresso http://evts.io/1KLClfT Tweet this
Here is a two-minute overview of the EE4 Multiple Event Registration add-on features:
With MER we introduced the ability to add events to a cart. In Event Espresso 4.7.7.p we added an enhancement to allow removal of multiple events from the cart simultaneously. This can be accomplished by setting the quantity to 0.
For more information, see the MER documentation here.
Promotions and Discounts
The Promotions & Discount Codes add-on for Event Espresso 4 adds powerful and flexible promotional pricing features to your events. You can create discount codes and promotions that can provide discounts for your attendees when they are registering for an event or buying tickets.
You can now give your event attendees promotions and discounts with @EventEspresso http://evts.io/1KLClfT Tweet this
More on the new Promotions and Discounts add-on for EE4 here.
Event Espresso 4 REST API Add-on
The Event Espresso 4 REST API Add-on is available now! The current version gives you read access to all EE4 data. That means you can build client-side Javascript code, mobile apps, and programs in any language (and on any server) that can read data used in Event Espresso 4.
More on the Event Espresso 4 REST API Add-on here.
The Attendee List Shortcode
The Event Espresso 4.6.31.p update brought Attendee List shortcodes. Attendee lists can be helpful in a variety of ways, whether you want to create a password protected page to allow certain users to view the attendee list, or if you want to build social credibility by showing your potential attendees who has already registered for the event.
With the new [ESPRESSO_EVENT_ATTENDEES] shortcode, you can display lists of approved attendees for your events. There are several parameters that can be used to display different kinds of lists, like lists for a specific event, datetimes, tickets, and even certain registration statuses. With no parameters set, the default shortcode shows the attendees for the earliest active event or if there is no active event, then the earliest upcoming event is shown. If it is used in the event description area (via your event editor), then it will show the attendees for that specific event.
The Events CPT Slug
In version 4.7.3.p, we added the ability to change the event slug for the Events custom post type. Previously, the slug defaulted to /events/. You can now change the slug in Event Espresso > Events on the Templates tab.
WP User Integration Enhancements
In version 2.0.1 of the WP User Integration add-on, we added the [ESPRESSO_MY_EVENTS] shortcode to display list of registrations for user on a front end WordPress page.
Click the image below to see it in action.
“Your Registrations” page now available in the Event Espresso 4 WP User Integration Add-on! http://t.co/Guve91T3Ta #WordPress #eventtechTweet this
Read more about the “Your Registrations” page here.
Event Check-In Now More Mobile Responsive (WP 4.3+)
We added mobile styles to the event check-ins and other EE admin list tables (WordPress 4.3+ only). We also moved attendee the list table search field closer to the top of the mobile view for easier access.
New Messages Shortcode Picker UI
We made creating or modifying message templates easier by adding a message shortcode picker which displays the shortcodes that are available for each field.
Click the image below to see it in action.
So, what do you think about these improvements? Have you used any of these new features? If so, what do you think?
The “Your Registrations” page is a front facing page for logged-in members of your website to view their registration history. Just by logging into your website, and viewing a specific WordPress page on the front-end of your website, users can view events they’ve registered for in the past.
If you are using the EE4 WP User Integration add-on in your WordPress website, just add the [ESPRESSO_MY_EVENTS] shortcode to any page and your users will see a nice looking table of past registrations.
That’s not all!
We’ve also packed it full of other nice features, such as:
Responsive table design
Expandable rows that allow your user’s to:
view purchase history
view/edit personal details
download ticket(s)
print receipts
make a payment
Customizable using shortcode parameters:
template : defaults to simple_list_table. Can be either simple_list_table or event_section as the template slug (see screenshots above for difference. This has been designed so developers can hook in their own templates down the road if they want (or we can add additional layouts at whim as well).
per_page : defaults to 10. This allows the user to set the limit of rows that are shown before pagination kicks in on the main table (the event_section template does no pagination of tickets listed for each event).
your_events_title : defaults to localized “Your Events”. This allows for users to customize the label for the listing.
your_tickets_title : defaults to localized “Your Tickets”. This allows for users to customize the label for the listing of your tickets. Note, the “Your Tickets” label is currently only used with the event_section template.
Customizable templates. Developers can override the templates by copying the files from the template directory into your theme.
It’s a great day to be an event promoter! We are pleased to announce a that we have added a “Ticket Selector Embed Code” feature to Event Espresso 4. This is just one, of many features that was requested and added to Event Espresso 4, based on a feature request from an Event Smart (our hosted event registration and ticketing system) customer.
What is the Ticket Selector Embed Code?
Ever wanted to make it easy for registrants to find your events? What about allowing prospective registrants to select tickets right from a third-party website? Well, the new “Ticket Selector Embed Code” feature for Event Espresso 4 allows anyone with the embed code for your event, to display a ticket selector for that event, on almost any HTML website, Facebook page, WordPress.com and/or WordPress.org posts and pages.
It’s very simple, really. All you have to do is copy the embed code and place it into an HTML page, blog post, or page on any website and the ticket selector for your event will display in an iframe. When a ticket is selected an the registrant submits the form, they are then taken to your website to finish the registration. Easy, right?
This screenshot shows what appears when the “Embed” button is clicked:
Finally, this screenshot shows the embed code placed directly into a WordPress blog post, but actually, as stated previously, the embed code can literally be added to almost any web page on the internet!
What are your thought about this new feature?
Are you as excited about this feature as we are? How will you use the new ticket selector embed code? Please share your examples and feedback in the comments below.
Ever wanted to add details about an event sponsor to each event? How about adding a custom downloads or course curriculum section on the thank you page? Or better yet, access to training videos?
Look no further! Using the Advanced Custom Fields plugin for WordPress the event presentation and content delivery possibilities are endless.
Over 20 Custom Field Types!
Fully customize WordPress edit screens with powerful custom fields. Boasting a professional interface and a powerful API, it’s a must have for any web developer. The Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin allows you to take full control of your edit screens & custom field data. With over 20 field types (free, premium and user submitted) to choose from, custom data management couldn’t be easier, or look any better!
Easy Integration with Event Espresso 4
Once ACF is installed, simply create a field group, add your fields and define the location rules. The custom fields you create will appear in the EE4 event editor and are ready to accept custom data. Fields that are populated with data can be displayed throughout your event and registration pages. ACF will allow you to add just about any type of custom content to your Event Espresso 4 registration pages. Such as event sponsors, course curriculum, downloads, video tutorials, and much more. The possibilities are endless!
How Do I Get Started?
Itching to get started, but don’t know how? Don’t worry, we have you covered! I have created a couple of examples to get you going, and will add a few more as time goes on.
Simply follow along with the tutorials below, and I will show you how to add a course curriculum and/or event sponsor section to your registration pages.
This tutorial covers using the ACF plugin and the EE4 “Thank You” Page Actions & Filters to create a course curriculum/downloads section that will be displayed on the EE4 “Thank You” page. So once someone registers for a class/event, the curriculum/downloads section will be displayed and allow registrants to start downloading files immediately.
We think the BEST way to theme EE4 really depends on a few factors with the biggest factor being what you want to change. Sometimes all that is needed is a few CSS edits and other times customizations are done via a child theme, or even editing the PHP, HTML, and/or CSS files.
Basically, this means that existing WP theme developers will have an easier time developing customizable event designs for EE4, which in turn can benefit the end user. Developers are encouraged to view the list of currently available theme templates and tags.
Depending on what you want to change and your skill level, here are some options:
Child Themes We want to make things as simple as we can for the end user, but with all the possible themes in use, there is a limit to how simple we can make it to customize things. The best solution (which is what we’ve taken IMO), is to integrate EE4 in “proper” WP ways that the majority of WP developers will understand. This ultimately benefits the end users who hire theme developers, or theme shops, that support EE4 templates in their themes.
Reassembly of the EE4 templates Oh wait! Your theme doesn’t support child themes? No problem, simply reassemble all of the EE4 template parts and combine them with your theme’s templates to make one cohesive archive-espresso_events.php (or single-espresso_events.php, etc) file, that integrates perfectly with your theme. The files that contain the template tags that should be loaded automagically, anytime an incoming request is for one of EE’s CPTs (otherwise they can be found in the /core/helpers/ folder).
The Event Espresso specific template parts include:
Event Details (description)
Event Datetimes
Event Tickets
Event Venues
Event Venue Location
Event Venue Detail (excerpt)
Custom Post Types We think theming Event Espresso will be easier using Custom Post Types (CPTs), because we are now following the WordPress (WP) Theme Development Standards. This makes it easy for WP developers and theme shops to build integrations with their themes and plugins in EE4.
EE4 CPT data includes normal post data including:
Title
Description
Tags
Categories
Featured Image
Commenting
Excerpt
Custom Fields
Slug
Author
This data can be queried and displayed in themes along with other post data.
We don’t know the specifics of your website, so it’s up to you to decide where to go from here. We are happy to recommend a few helpful tips:
If your goal is along the lines of “I want the events page to match my theme better” then the answer is usually a CSS solution. Sometimes a few CSS edits are all that are needed, and if you don’t have a child theme set up (or don’t want to) you can install a CSS builder plugin like this one and customize with CSS (it turns out that you can do a lot with CSS changes only).
Just want to change the wording of a few phrases? If so, no need to hack templates, just use Josh’s WP gettext filter.
If you need to add/remove content that’s not already in the event template, then setting up a child theme and working through the templates and using Event Espresso’s WordPress hooks and filters may be the way forward.
Sometimes, if it’s a PHP, HTML, or CSS based solution, you may need to contact a developer familiar with PHP, HTML, and/or CSS to help out. Our support team is also available in the support forums and will recommend the best solution for what you are trying to accomplish.
Are you a WordPress theme developer? Want to see how Event Espresso 4 integrates with your theme? Request access to the Event Espresso Core (4.0+) GitHub repository and get acquainted with the premier event registration system for WordPress.
We recently heard about an unfortunate event that affected a group organizing a Christian writing workshop. The group hired an outside company to handle its online event registration, only passing along the payments to the organizers once the event was finished. Unfortunately, the registration company’s checks began to bounce, eventually leaving the workshop group short $65,000 in registration fees.
At Event Espresso we were disheartened to hear that one company took advantage of a group that placed a great deal of trust in it. At the same time, this is a good opportunity for us to reiterate the flexibility and security of the Event Espresso model, and assure our customers that their confidence in us is well placed. Here are three reasons Event Espresso customers can rest easy, knowing that they have made the right choice to trust us with their online event ticketing and registration.
First, our customers all receive a copy of our software for their own use. The great draw of our platform is that you get to use EE the way you want to meet your specific needs. Once you purchase your license, it’s all in your hands and we CAN’T run away with your money and you shouldn’t trust anyone who could.
You control your finances. We partner with many of the most secure and trusted payment gateways on the Internet giving you the freedom to choose how you collect payments. All of the supported payment gateways use your account details, not ours, meaning we never hold any of your registration fee’s as you get paid directly.
We have worked with non-profit organizations from our earliest days, including religious and community groups. We understand the unique needs of the non-profit community, and in many cases we even offer discounts. If you think your event merits a discount, we invite you to fill out our Non-Profit Application form; we’ve already given away more than $20,000 in discounts to non-profits.
In short, there is one more reason Event Espresso is the premier event registration and ticketing platform around: trust. With our dedication to constant improvement, and best-in-class support, we’re helping you make the world a little better—one event at a time.
To see some of the great things our customers are saying about Event Espresso, visit our Testimonials and Reviews page.
I want to commend you on a fabulous product which is just the right price for a small non-profit. People are happy with the registration process, as are we! ...Thank you SO much for a great product.
At Event Espresso we’re never content with what we’ve already accomplished with online event registration for WordPress. We’re always looking to make improvements so our customers can sell tickets online. There are so many significant developments coming soon to Event Espresso that we wanted to highlight some of the great changes that are on the way.
A New Ticket Selector to Control Every Option
The Ticket Selector in Event Espresso is being completely redesigned. we’ll show you the full redesign later, but just one powerful function will be the ability to control single ticket options.
Part of that redesign includes the power to control the Ticket Quantity, #Uses per Ticket, Minimum Number of Tickets and Maximum Number of Tickets.
Ticket Quantity
WordPress event managers will be able to set how many of each specific type of ticket is available. You may have only one type of ticket, or many different ticket options for attendees. You will be able to offer a limited number of, say, VIP tickets so you can give a certain number of attendees a special experience. You could also limit the number of promotional tickets that are available for sale, and so on. There are a lot of powerful things you can do with setting quantity limits to your online ticket sales.
Pro Tip: We’ll address this again later, but setting quantity limits for individual online tickets will be one form of setting seating limits for your event or venue in Event Espresso.
Number of Uses per Ticket
When you combine Number of Uses per Ticket with our mobile ticketing apps and ticketing add-on, you really become a professional event manager; you also make online event registration a breeze for your attendees. With the Number of Uses per Ticket, you can sell tickets to attendees that can be used any number of times. For example, if want to sell a ticket that will let people return to the same event twice (or more) then you can do that. You could configure your ticket sales so that attendees can reuse one ticket for all the events in your event series instead of having to print off and bring new tickets each time. This also allows you to let attendees use their ticket as a badge. On the other hand, if you want limit how many times someone can go through the food line, then you can do that too!
Pro Tip: What if you want offer unlimited access to your events or unlimited number of uses during a certain time period? Well, you’ll be able to do that too!
Minimum Number of Tickets Allowed to Purchase
It’s obvious that attendees have to purchase at least one ticket to attend your event. But what if you wanted attendees to purchase more than one ticket? You can sell tickets online with WordPress and require that attendees purchase more than one ticket at a time. For example, if you want to sell sponsorships to your event with the requirement that the sponsors purchase more than one ticket for their company, now you can set it up that way. What if you want to sell a family pack of tickets online and offer a discount for purchasing multiple tickets? Well, you can do that too.
Pro Tip: What if you wanted to sell tickets online with tiered pricing? You can now configure the price of each ticket to be different based on the minimum number of tickets they have to purchase. The more tickets you require, the bigger the discount. That’s awesome!
Maximum Number of Tickets Allowed to Purchase
What about the opposite situation, when you knew people would want to attend your event multiple times, but the goal of your organization was to engage with more unique individuals? Now you can specify that someone can only purchase a single (or any maximum you want) number of tickets per transaction. The Maximum Number of Tickets Allowed to Purchase also means you can specify the price of each ticket for a quantity range of tickets (e.g., purchase 5-10 tickets and the price of the ticket is $xx each; purchase 10-20 tickets and the price per ticket is only $x).
Pro Tip: Want to make it less convenient for ticket scalpers to hoard tickets? You can at least get in their way with Maximum Number of Tickets Allowed.
Are you a developer? Are you interested in having early access to Event Espresso 4 for preparing for its release? Take a look at our developer resources where you can request access to our GitHub repo and more.
All these features and more are coming soon to Event Espresso, the best registration and ticketing plugin available for WordPress. These features are in active development and could change between now and the first release. If you have an idea for a feature you’d like to see in the future, let us know! We’d love to hear from you.
We’ve been busy on our YouTube channel lately. In addition to the monthly Espresso Bar hangouts, we just recently produced two new video tutorials and posted them to our YouTube channel. This screencast walks you through creating a recurring event — specifically for the purpose of creating shifts for people to sign up for, but can apply to other types of recurring events as well.
This tutorial walks you through some of the features of the WP User Integration add-on and the two new shortcodes it adds — the My Events shortcode, to display a list of events an attendee has registered for on the front end of your site, and the Edit Profile shortcode, to allow your users the ability to edit their profile without having to log into the WordPress admin.
However, when an event sells out, registration closes for that event which means you no longer capture details from your customers and you’re missing out on potential sales. Creating a waiting list for your events allows you to continue to obtain attendee details when your event sells out. That’s where Ninja Forms can help.
