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rcfc
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October 30, 2014 at 2:27 pm
I’ve been beating my head against this too long, and me and my client need to settle on a strategy. So I thought I’d just ask you guys.
We are selling class registrations. Most of our classes are monthly, the same every month. There are several variables (namely age, experience level, and class subject), but for a given class (eg, Adult Advanced Yoga), it pretty much repeats every month**. It’s usually two timeslots a week, so “Mondays & Wednesdays 5pm – 6pm, for all of November“.
In total, there are many different class variations, each recurring monthly. This means a lot of tedious duplication (and, yes, duplicating classes is tedious because of the weird stuff that is/isnt carried over when you make a duplicate). So I’m really yearning for ways to simplify all this. Getting rid of datetimes entirely (in favor of just Months) would be great. The text description of the event can still say “Mondays & Wednesdays 5pm – 6pm, all month.”
Anyway, I’m just wondering what you guys’ approach would be.
** couple exceptions: We take some time off in the summer, during which we do special two-day classes with specific datetimes; and there are a couple short months, where the schedule is the same but discounted for missing weetings (ie, it’s still “Mondays & Wednesdays 5pm – 6pm, for all of December”, but due to holidays there are fewer class meetings).
Thanks
PS –
just signed up for VIP membership, but the post-paypal redirect back to EE.com failed with a bad url. Not sure if there was something I was supposed to see there; forums look the same; just thought I’d mention it.
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Josh
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October 30, 2014 at 3:12 pm
Hi there,
A lot of it depends on whether or not you need the dates to be displayed on the calendar. But I’m with you on the create one event for each instance where someone needs to register. If they sign up/register/buy access for a monthly thing, then setting up one event registration per class group makes sense.
A few tips on automating the workflow:
1) Comment/Discussion settings can be set globally in the WP > Discussion settings. What you change there will be set for new events.
2) There are filters you can use to programmatically change the defaults in the event editor for new events. There’s some example code that shows how to do this in the developer documentation here:
http://developer.eventespresso.com/docs/modifying-the-defaults-on-creating-a-new-event/
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rcfc
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October 30, 2014 at 5:30 pm
I don’t need dates displayed on the calendar. I have another set of non-monthly special classes with specific dates, and I’d like to dump these all in a single category and get a calendar that is filtered to display only these events. However, since you can’t colorize-by-event, this is a little clumsy.
For monthly classes, I’d like to get rid of specific datetimes entirely. I’m guessing the way you’d have me set up my classes is to set up an event with a single datetime & one ticket per month (12 tickets total). This would allow you to buy access to “the class” one month at a time for as many months as you want. The main problem is that you’re abusing the idea of datetimes. The only way I can think of doing this is to set up The Class to have datetime of “all year”.
Question about this:
If The Class is set up with a datetime of all of 2015, will registration be allowed after January 1, 2015? Looks like it works, but still seems awkward.
As to setting default discussion settings in WordPress, I see that they come across into new events, but they don’t copy into duplicate events. That new event template filters code you sent over looks cool, but it seems like duplicating events from one year to the next would ideally be an easier way of going, no?
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Josh
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October 31, 2014 at 7:25 am
Sure.
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rcfc
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November 6, 2014 at 2:17 pm
um, well, okay….. So I have it set up like this:
http://bit.ly/1GuvZ0C
For a year of classes, I have a single event (whose single datetime jan 1 – dec 31), with tickets for each month.
Problem with this is that it looks like you can buy lots of tickets at the same time — BUT it doesn’t actually work. Why not? Because, suppose you want to register both of your kids for the same classes for September thru December. When you click register, you’ll have to fill out 8 sections entitled “student info”! Because EE doesn’t know that you’re registering the same kid every month.
Can you think of any way to make this work? All I can think of is to only allow registration for one ticket at a time….but that still means that next month they have to enter all that same data. Perhaps this is something you’ve seen someone with a gym or yoga studio solve before?
Thanks.
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Josh
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November 6, 2014 at 2:55 pm
They typically capture all of the information initially using Gravity Forms or Ninja Forms and optionally tie that information to a user account. Then, they restrict the monthly class registration to only users. This way the registrants don’t have to fill out the forms each time they come back, because their information is already on file.
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rcfc
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November 6, 2014 at 11:24 pm
Hey Josh,
It sounds like what you’re saying is that I can basically replace the registration administrivia with those third-party form plugins. I’m aware of those plugins, and even looked at them as alternatives to (the rather labyrinthine) Event Espresso. But I didn’t know that I could use them this way. Is there anywhere that explains how this could be done?
Thanks,
josh
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Josh
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November 7, 2014 at 7:26 am
Hi Josh,
The contact form plugins (or other means of capturing student info) can be used as directed from their documentation. I’ll include a few links below.
A few tips on how this can be done:
1) Only include the minimum questions needed for the EE registration form, name, email, maybe phone number.
2) Gravity forms and Ninja forms both have a way to make it so when someone fills out a form, they get a user account. They can now use the account to log in to the site and register for classes.
http://www.gravityforms.com/add-ons/user-registration/
http://ninjaforms.com/documentation/extension-docs/front-end-editor/registration/
3. You can password protect/restrict the event pages, or hide only the ticket selector so only registered students can sign up for classes.
You restrict the event page by using the built in WordPress Content Visibility feature:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Content_Visibility
You hide/show the ticket selector by doing a check for whether the user is logged in or not. If they are logged in, show the ticket selector. If you’re not using any custom templates for event pages, you can use the example code in this gist:
https://gist.github.com/joshfeck/df3455d379bbdaf371ae
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rcfc
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November 12, 2014 at 4:32 pm
Okay, to recap:
My problem is that I have two people registering for two classes, and EE wants me to fill out four sets of Student Info.
You’ve suggested how I can hide class registration from non-logged-in users.
Don’t see how that solves my problem.
??
josh
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rcfc
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November 12, 2014 at 4:36 pm
(I do see how that solves the bit about saved address data, however. But that’s a minor convenience compared to the big UI gap….)
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Josh
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November 12, 2014 at 5:47 pm
Hi rcfc,
Event Espresso doesn’t require the second student’s info to be filled out. That’s an option that can be disabled.
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rcfc
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November 12, 2014 at 8:37 pm
I want information for each student, I’m just trying to capture it once rather than multiple times.
If you read above where I explain how my event is set up, you will see that I have a single class with tickets for each month. Each ticket has a dropdown. So if I have two kids registering for five months, EE thinks I am selling ten tickets. It will now ask me for Student Info for each ticket, which means that for each of my two kids I’ll have to fill out the Student Info fields five times.
I’d like to eliminate the redundancy while still gathering the primary data.
Any thoughts?
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Tony
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November 13, 2014 at 8:16 am
So do you currently have your question groups setup to require at lease the Personal information group for Additional Registratants? Like so – http://take.ms/cgh24
EE considers each ticket to be an additional registrant so if you require info for additional registrants it will require that info for each ticket. There’s currently no way to require information for the Primary Registrant, plus X additional, then none for the remaining tickets.
To do this you would need to register each registrant separately, selecting the tickets required for each individual and requesting only Primary Registrant information, that way regardless of the amount of tickets purchased only a single set of data will be requested.
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rcfc
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November 21, 2014 at 8:45 pm
Thanks Tony. I got that. Josh suggested that I might be able to do something fancy to solve this problem with Gravity forms or something. Just want to confirm that he was misunderstanding my need when he said that? And that I’m outta luck (at least without a lot of custom hacking)…?
Thanks for your consideration.
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Josh
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November 24, 2014 at 10:14 am
Hi there,
If your client requires a set of information from those who sign up for classes, but only the first time they sign up a class, then a contact form or a membership sign up might be a better solution.
Then when they go to sign up for more classes in the future, they will not need to re-fill out all of their information each time they sign up for another class.
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rcfc
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November 25, 2014 at 6:37 pm
Thanks Josh. Yes, that would be fine. The information is always the same each time they sign up for an event — except that parents often sign up their kids, and over time they might swap kids out…. But as long as the form allows for adding and removing kids, and editing details, this would work.
Is there any documentation on how a third-party membership signup form (or an extensible form framerwork like Gravity, etc) can be integrated with EE to push info?
I would like EE notification emails to have access to form input.
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rcfc
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November 25, 2014 at 6:49 pm
Or would this work for me?
https://eventespresso.com/features/intelligent-single-page-checkout/
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Josh
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November 26, 2014 at 8:52 am
Hi there,
I’m not aware of any integrations between EE4 and third party contact form or membership plugins where the data can from a membership can be pushed into EE’s attendee records.
What I’m suggesting is a membership type system where members can fill out all their details once, then you have it all on file within the membership system. Then they don’t need to re-fill everything out every time they register for a class because all of that info is already on file.
The link that you posted shows a feature that is built in to EE4. It does help reduce the amount of time it takes to register. How it works is if you check any of the boxes in the “Questions for Additional Registrants” metabox, SPCO will allow the information to be copied from the Primary registrant to the Additional Registrant fields.
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