Posted: July 2, 2013 at 4:06 am
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Please forgive me if the answer to any of these questions are completely obvious, I’ve tried to get the answers from the site but I’m not that technical so I may not have understood everything. My step-father runs a number of small bars/clubs across the north of England and after my constant pestering has finally realised the importance of being properly represented on-line. I DJ a little and have worked with a lot of promoters, so he’s asked me to come up with some ideas for the site. It seems to me that a WP site with EE would be the most cost efficient and practical solution for him, but before he goes ahead I just want to see if I can clarify a few things. The good news is if he does go for it then he’ll pay for a professional designer to do the site, so hopefully if there’s anything technical it won’t be too much of an issue! 1/ There’s a range of venues, over a range of cities. With the event calender is it possible to show, for example, all of the events occurring in just Bradford for that day/week, rather than all the events at all the venues? For example a drop down box allowing users to select what area they are in that then displays the relevant events for them. 2/ Each of the venues will be organising and selling tickets to their own events. From reading the features I believe this isn’t a problem, and that no data will be passed between the venues. Essentially they can each operate as their own individual units. However we would also like to allow third party promoters to organise and put their own events onto the website (for example on the less busy week nights). The plan is to give them admin access and allow them to add their nights, we would take the money for ticket sales on the site for them, then pay them (minus our booking fee) after the event was completed. Two things – 1/ Is this possible? 2/ With the mobile ticketing system would these admins be able to sign in and just have access to their events? 3/ A lot of our nights are weekly, and currently people buy paper tickets each week. Our hope is to eliminate that as much as possible, so that they just purchase tickets through the site. Is it possible for these ticket buying end users to sign up to the site so they can quickly get tickets each week? For example they see the event they want, click buy then just sign in and purchase as they have previously registered? 4/ Do EE features transfer to a mobile optimised site? Must of the people we anticipate using the site are going to be smartphone users, so obviously a mobile version of the site would be ideal for them. However I really don’t know how that would be done, or even if it’s possible? 5/ The final thing is something that a promoter I work for spoke about, he called it “white label” ticketing. He sells tickets for his events through a number of big ticket resellers, and some of them allow him to customise a link to that he can put on to his own website to sell tickets directly through that. It is powered by the ticket companies and links to the event he set up with them, but just allows him to promote the event through his own site. Obviously this is not something available at the moment, but would it possible for our developer to come up with his own version and integrate that with EE? If I’m honest I’m not sure it’s something we would utilise, but equally it’s worth checking if it would be possible. Sorry for this long, potentially boring, potentially obvious post, but any help would be appreciated. Obviously it’s going to be a lot of investment so I want to make sure it’s the best option. Thanks in advance for any help |
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Hi, Thanks for considering Event Espresso, I’ll try and answer your questions for you. First off, “he’ll pay for a professional designer to do the site”, make sure the designer is also a developer or at least knows a bit about WordPress and PHP. Whilst designer is often a catch all term, some designers do not know code. Knowing some code will make it much easier to modify templates, etc, if required (often not, but it depends what you need). 1) Currently there isn’t a drop down system for the calendar, though I would also like to see some front end filtering. Perhaps when we redesign the calendar system for 4.0 (the next major release due to be released soon) it may be possible but currently short of custom development it isnt possible. However, you can show events by category, so you could set up various pages with a calendar on each which shows a particular category of events (so an event would need a category adding). It’s not ideal, but it is a solution. We also have shortcodes that can display the events on a per venue basis, so whilst these are in a list format, you could have them styled to suit your needs. Again, an option. 2) 1) yes, with the Roles and Permissions Pro add on. This add on allows you to set different roles for different users and can limit their access to the plugin. So for example, you could have an Admin who has access to everything, or you could set up a role of Event manager for 5 people and give them access to events but not the payment settings. 2) Not currently no, it is built for admin access. 3) Well, they will still need to register for the event. Our add on plugin WP User Integration (members) can help a little bit with this, in that if the user is a registered site user, and logged in, their profile details will transfer to the registration form, making it a bit quicker for them to register for the event. 4) Yes, Event Espresso is mobile ready, but it also requires the theme for the site to be mobile ready as well. 5) Event Espresso doesnt have a white label product available currently. However, the only areas that are visibly branded with Event espresso is the admin area (small footer link), the ticketing scanning apps for iphone, ipad and android and an optional link on events. So from your customers point of view they should never see the Event Espresso brand unless you desire it (by allowing our promotional link, or allowing them access to the dashboard area). Sorry I forgot, the ticket also has a link at the bottom, but one small bit of CSS can remove that, any web designer/developer should be able to resolve it. We have no objection to you removing links like that though we always appreciate publicity! Feel free to follow up with more questions or clarifications, it is what we are here for. |
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Hi Dean, Thank you for your quick reply, I’d read you guys were very efficient when it comes to support but I didn’t expect a reply that quickly! In regard to the designer/developer, yes, I’ll make sure that he gets someone that knows PHP and about WP, so hopefully that will not be an issue. Thanks for ansering the questions, obviously most of the the things we would need would be provided, which is great. I guess now we just need to make the decision on how essential the other factors are. If I could just pick your brain regarding 1/ Would an outside developer be able to code in a drop down menu for cities? Obviously I appreciate we could do it by venue, but the ideal situation would be for us to simply show the events in each city by day/week. 2/ If admins/event managers logged on to the ticket app using their own personal log ins could they be limited to seeing only the events they have created? 3/ Instead of traditional registering, could the user be transfered to a purchase page and when they by a ticket for an event that would class as them registering? 4/ That’s great. Is it also mobile optomised on the back end or just what the end user sees? 5/ I don’t think this is a deal breaker for us, it just would have been a nice touch. I think these other sites just give people the chance to change the colours of the ticket purchasing link, they provide a html code that can be pasted into a site. Maybe you guys might consider it in future? 😉 I really like what you guys do, I feel like 90% of EE would be perfect for us, and obviously it is much easier for us than having a site custom built from scratch (and much cheaper too!). I guess that the only major issue is the 10% of stuff that you don’t do that potentially we would need. The most I know about WP is a blog I had years ago, and I appreciate things have moved on a lot since then. In regards to stuff that you don’t offer would a developer be able to integrate other pluginsto potentially do those jobs? Or as I mentioned earlier would they be able to adjust the code of your stuff? The final thing is that as time goes on we want to develop the site into a more ticket selling venture, as we can take booking fees from independent nights (because we let them take the door), do you think that you guys would be the best choice for that kind of thing? Once again Dean, I really appreciate your help with answering these queries |
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Hi, We try our best! 1) It is possible, this customer here had a post about it https://eventespresso.com/topic/sortingfiltering-event-list-calendar-event-category-filtering-addon-feedback/, but how difficult and therefore how expensive it would be I am not sure about. 2) No, as mentioned it currently takes admin rights to use and admin rights give you full access to the sites. Again it may be possible to modify, but with this I would advise against it as you would probably need to do an awful lot of re-writing of the code. 3) I know some people have tried integrating Event Espresso with an ecommerce system like Woocommerce but I have not heard of their success or failures. We ourselves havent integrated Event Espresso with any ecommerce systems. So in answer, its probably do-able but with the current code structure of 3.1.X it may not be the easiest task. 4.0 would make this a lot easier, but it is only due for release soon and will not have any add ons at the relase point. 4) That is a very good question, I have never logged into a WordPress site from mobile, but the answer is no, it isnt responsive/mobile ready. There is a WordPress app but I’ve heard it isnt great and Event Espresso will probably not work with that. 5) Well, perhaps I misunderstood your question. The tickets themselves can be completely modified, some basic HTML and CSS will improve upon the design, if you are skilful you can create really nice looking tickets. Check the ticket near the bottom of this article https://eventespresso.com/2012/09/haunted-house-ticketing-system/ Any link on the site can be modified with some CSS. Regarding the ticket venture, its hard to say without details, but we have introduced an API (technical term for a way for developers to interact with the plugin) and the next major version will be much, much more developer friendly, so it could well be possible, for instance some users right now are displaying events on sites other than the one with Event Espresso on, thanks to the API. I think I have covered everything, but here is a link to the test drive page and also one to some recommended developers. https://eventespresso.com/product/full-event-espresso-test-drive/ |
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Thank again for your help. I’ll speak to my step Father and see what he thinks about everything. If I can think of anything else I’ll let you konow, and again, I really appreciate your time |
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We’re glad we could help. Don’t hesitate to let us know if you have anymore questions. |
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