Support

August 24, 2016 at 3:58 am

Hi Ben,

How are you today?

I’ll break out each of your below.

1. Given that I am not the business owner is there a way other than forums to talk about real world requirements, scalability, response times, stability, recommended hosting platforms, configuration etc or is the only public information on the published requirements page?

Yes, our only requirements are shown on the requirements page:

https://eventespresso.com/requirements/

If I understand your question correct then most of what you have listed above is outside the scope of EE (e.g scalability, stability & response times will all heavily rely on your hosting platform) for configuration do you mean server side or EE?

2. My client runs 50+ events at any one time, with event capacity ranging from 100s through to several 1000 attendees. They currently use bar code scanners but like the idea of an iPhone or Android app check-in solution and many other features that Event Espresso has to offer.

Just to note EE has both barcode scanners and the iOS/Android app.

https://eventespresso.com/wiki/barcode-scanner-add-on/
https://eventespresso.com/wiki/ee4-event-apps/

3. My client also really likes the clean layout of the EventBuilder theme for the presentation layer (http://wpeventbuilder.com). I have tried to understand if this theme will work with EE4 or if there are any known conflicts that would make this theme a deal breaker. But I can not find anything solid? Are you able to tell me if EE knows of any multi event sites running EE4 successfully with the EventBuilder theme?

I don’t know of any sites running that theme but will check in with the rest of the team to see if anyone knows of any.

What assumed/minimum integration is required between EE4 and a WordPress theme to be sure that EE4 runs as expected without breaking?

EE events are custom post types and EE hooks into the_content() to output the event details so basically as long at the theme call the_content() in a standard, expected way EE should output the event details. Where it can get a little messy is when the theme starts doing odd things with the_content() filters or specifically checking for specific post types when outputting details/adding features.

Something important to note here is the theme you mentioned has its own ‘Events’ section, which likely means it has it’s own Events post type, EE events will NOT integrate with those so the ‘Event’ features provided by theme will likely not apply to EE events out of the box. It may be possible to easily enable the features on EE event posts but it really depends on the theme.

Can EE assist at all here?

We try to help as much as when can when there’s a conflict however it really depends on the problem, if the theme is doing something we can’t easily work around you will need to contact the theme’s support team to see what fix they can provide.

We provide support for EE but not the weird and wonderful things some themes do 🙂 (again that doesn’t mean we won’t try to help, but note that sometimes we simply can not provide a fix or will require a you purchase a support token(s) to work through an issue that is not caused by EE)

Would it be possible, if we owned this theme, to install it in a demo area/sandbox for testing purposes prior to grabbing the entire EE4 suite?

Event Espresso core is available on github here:

https://github.com/eventespresso/event-espresso-core/

You can install that and view how it will work with your theme/plugins however not we do not provide support without an active support license which you can purchase HERE.

If we set up a hosting account, WordPress and the EventBuilder theme and then installed Decaf and testing revealed little or no serious issues would it be safe to assume that EE4 would have the same level of compatibility? If so is there a migration path from Decaf to EE4 or is that a fresh install?

Decaf is basically Regular with less features, if it works with Decaf it ‘should’ work with Regular however that doesn’t mean all of the additional feature in core will work. There is a migration path from Decaf to Regular, however there are some differences in the messages system that we do NOT change when you go to Regular (to do so we would lose any custom message templates if you had any, so we don’t alter them)

I would recommend using core from above so this is then un-needed 🙂

3. Other than EventBuilder are there any other clean, responsive, EE4 compatible multi event themes that EE are aware of and can recommend? I am aware of Showthemes Januas theme and understand that it is EE4 compatible but it’s visual style has initially been knocked back by my client as being unsuitable.

We don’t really offer theme recommendations as, especially for EE4, most well coded themes will work fine.

Any themes that have inbuilt Events custom post types as mentioned above can cause problems (they can be used but you will need to modify the EE events slug).

Other than that any well coded theme should be fine. We also recommend caution with Themeforest themes, as from experience we have noticed more support queries coming from themes on that marketplace than any other theme foundry.

4. My client has specifically asked if EE4 can support the ability for third party organisers to setup an account and manage their events via my client’s site and third parties to only have access to their own events, their event data and their event reporting etc when logged in…..

Yes, it is possible.

Event Espresso has a ton of capability checks through the plugin which means you create your own custom roles that only have access to specific areas of EE. You can setup the role to only have access to Events/Registrations/Reports for that users events and not have access to ‘others’ events within EE if preferred.

We have some details on the EE capability system here:

https://eventespresso.com/wiki/event-espresso-4-roles-permissions/

With an example plugin that has 2 example roles here: https://monosnap.com/file/qUKeT73ASIAzTRUNX6Hlb1J59vMWgz

‘Event Organizer’ should only see ‘their’ events and details, ‘Events Manager’ can view all events the same as Admin.

So you could create your own front end form the user can user to register, assign that user to one of your custom roles during registration and they can create events.

If you have any further questions please let me know.