Posted: February 26, 2013 at 3:44 pm
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Hi I recently purchased the Business version of EE to use for a multi-track conference. I have the most recent versions of WordPress and EE installed. I want to create a webpage where our customers can select only 1 of 3 workshops listed per time-slot (each workshop is a separate event). For example: Please select the workshops you will attend below:
Ideally, the workshop choices will be displayed using drop-boxes or radio buttons. I also want the shopping cart to automatically update the event with 1 Attendee (vs the default of “0”). I don’t want the customers to have to do this manually on the registration form. Is this possible and how is it achieved? I know how to use the “Add to Cart” shortcode for multiple events. However, I don’t know how to list multiple events in a drop box and have the selected event automatically update the cart with 1 attendee. Thank you in advance for your help. |
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Ok, I think I might be a closer to a solution. I figured out how to make a drop down list of events by using the “CSS Drop Down” shortcodes in the Custom Files add-on. This could work for my purposes; however, I am unclear how to get it to automatically add the selected event to the cart (instead of taking me to the event details page). Also, I would like it to automatically add 1 attendee to the event after it was selected. Am I on the right track? How do I get the drop down box to add the event to the cart (vs go to the event details page)? |
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Hi Wendy, I havent yet played with the dropdown feature to see how that would work, as I think there is an alternative that may be easier. You could use the [ESPRESSO_TABLE] shortcode or really any list and amend the register link to use the add to cart link instead, but instead of it adding to cart, it will add to cart and send the user directly to the cart so that they cannot (without hitting the back button) add more events. You can use this shortcode in events or convert it to PHP to use in the templates There is no current way of defaulting the ticket number to minimum of one, the user needs to manually do this. |
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Hi Dean Thanks for the suggestion. I tried your “add to cart” shortcode; however, I am actually looking for it to do the opposite. We don’t want customers to be directed to the cart until after they select all the workshops they will attend during our 2 day conference. We got EE with Multiple Event Registration for this purpose. Our conference offers three different choices of workshops that participants can attend every hour during the 2 days. For example: Please select the workshops you will attend during the weekend below:
We want to use drop-boxes (or radio buttons) for each timeslot so the customer can only only select one workshop per timeslot, and then move on to the next timeslot. However, I am unclear how to create drop boxes (or radio buttons) that use the “add to cart” shortcode. Is it possible to modify your “CSS drop down” custom file to add each workshop to the cart (vs directing the customer to the event details page)? Also, we want the cart to automatically add the customer as 1 attendee to each workshop as they select their workshops with the drop boxes. It will be confusing and cumbersome if customers need to manually add themselves again to every workshop in the shopping cart. I believe it is possible to edit the code in the cart.php file to do this based on an answer I saw to the same question in your forum. However, I no longer see the code lines in the cart.php file that your staff suggested to edit: We are excited to use EE on our site for our event registrations, but we need to get past these hurdles asap. Your guidance is greatly appreciated. |
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Hi Wendy, How have you got the events set up? For example is each time slot a separate event or a ticket option within a singular event? If it is ticket options, then there really is no way to do what you are asking as the Cart will always show the various options. If you split the workshops into separate events then it may be possible but it would be a customisation thus beyond regular support. You can request a customisation review here. Making the 0 into 1 is actually easy, Sidneys code in the previous thread is still valid, its just that it has moved down to line 934, you can do a search int he code for for ($i = 0; $i <= $qty; $i++): and you should be able to find it. As he said, change the 0 to a 1. Please note that this is a core file, updates to Event Espresso will over write any modifications made. |
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Hi Dean Thanks for the code to automatically update the attendance. I will give it a try. We will set-up each timeslot as a category, and each workshop as a seperate event. This will allow us to display each timeslot with the corresponding workshops that will take place during that hour. In terms of ticketing, we will set-up the entire conference as one event. Customers will buy a “weekend pass” for the conference that allows them to attend all the workshops they choose. The cost of the workshops will be included with the “weekend pass” – so the workshops will be set-up as free events. After the customer purchases their “weekend pass”, we need them to choose the workshop they will attend each hour. This will allow us to track their attendance, and give them an event schedule for the weekend. We want to display each category with the corresponding events in drop-down boxes. After the customer selects the event they will attend each hour, the event will be automatically be added to the cart as the customer makes their choices. Then, they will proceed to the checkout to complete their purchase for a “weekend pass”. Based upon the description on your website, we thought your multiple event plugin was perfect for this application. However, we are unclear how to make the “add to cart” shortcode work with drop-down boxes or radio buttons. We have experimented with a variety of options but so far nothing has worked. We are on a tight deadline with this conference, so any help you can provide to set-up EE is greatly appreciated. |
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Hi Dean Thanks for the code to automatically update the attendance. I will give it a try. We will set-up each timeslot as a category, and each workshop as a seperate event. This will allow us to display each timeslot with the corresponding workshops that will take place during that hour. In terms of ticketing, we will set-up the entire conference as one event. Customers will buy a “weekend pass” for the conference that allows them to attend all the workshops they choose. The cost of the workshops will be included with the “weekend pass” – so the workshops will be set-up as free events. After the customer purchases their “weekend pass”, we need them to choose the workshop they will attend each hour. This will allow us to track their attendance, and give them an event schedule for the weekend. We want to display each category with the corresponding events in drop-down boxes. After the customer selects the event they will attend each hour, the event will be automatically be added to the cart as the customer makes their choices. Then, they will proceed to the checkout to complete their purchase for a “weekend pass”. Based upon the description on your website, we thought your multiple event plugin was perfect for this application. However, we are unclear how to make the “add to cart” shortcode work with drop-down boxes or radio buttons. We have experimented with a variety of options but so far nothing has worked. We are on a tight deadline with this conference, so any help you can provide to set-up EE is greatly appreciated. |
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Hi Wendy, Firstly, apologies for the delay in responding to you. This is definitely something complicated and would require some customisation of the plugin. Right now there is no system in place to have a parent-child relation ship between events, so for example if you have the “weekend pass” as an event, and the workshops as events there is nothing to stop the attendee from simply not adding the weekend pass to the cart. There are a few ways to achieve this though. One would be to set the site itself as the weekend pass and using a membership plugin force users to register and pay that way and then have the events as member only thus requiring registration (payment) and login and then all events are free. Another way is to use jquery to hide other events before the weekend pass is added to cart, though this can be worked around if they dont have javascript turned on. Regarding the dropdown aspect, you would need a developer on this to resolve it. My thoughts is that you could customise the template to display the event title only and run it through a “for each” loop and output as drop down options. Then have a separate button that would combine the drop down selections into a mass add to cart ( you can chain them eg [ESPRESSO_CART_LINK event_id=”1-2-3″] ). Again this would require jquery most probably. This is all conjecture, I havent tested it, but thats the direction I would head in if I was developing it. So to summarise you would need a developer to customise the plugin to achieve what you are after. We do offer customisation services, but we may not be able to meet your timeline on it. You can request a review here https://eventespresso.com/contact/customization-request-form/ However, one other option would be to use the Custom Files add on, specifically the ESPRESSO_TABLES and create a table per category. Again, with jquery you could hide the other add to cart buttons once one is selected from a category. |
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Hi Dean Thanks for your suggestions. We are quickly trying to figure out a solution; however, we are not coders and we are on a tight budget and timeline. I was hoping setting up EE was going to be fast and straight forward. Unfortunately, we don’t have the extra time or money to hire your developement team to modify your software for our needs. From the description on your website, we got the impression the Multiple Events plugin was designed to handle conferences out of the box. However, we are struggling to set-up our event schedule and registration without major modifications to your coding and templates. Please understand I’m not saying EE isn’t great software. It is fantastic for what it’s designed to do; however, based upon the customization you said it will require to display and manage our event schedule, I don’t think it’s suitable for our conference. We are going to try a few more ideas to see if we can modify EE for our needs, but we may have to look for an alternative conference management program. Hopefully, we can get EE working but we can’t pay for extra support and we are running out of time. I will let you know if we find a solution with your software. Thanks again. |
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Hi Wendy, Thanks for your feedback and fully understood. Whilst we have and are still trying to improve Event Espresso we know that it can’t be everything to everyone. I believe with 3.2 the system will be more robust when it comes to the conference style events. |
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