So, how would the RSVP Pro plugin solve it? The answer is through a combination of the global attendee list, select attendees, and importing. I will break down each thing below in how you could achieve this.

First thing you will want to do is create some of the events you want people to RSVP for and make sure to turn on “select.” For a good starter check out this guide.

Once you have some of the events created, let’s turn on the global attendee list. Turning on this feature will allow us to “share” the attendee’s across the events. Even though we have enabled the global attendee list functionality, we don’t have anyone in the list so we should now import some people. If we know who should have access to the list, we can do that now via the import process.

Below is a simple example I have set up. Where we have two “select” events that we want different attendees to get access. Also, with the global attendee list, you can specify how many additional people a global attendee can invite to a specific event.  With this file setup, let’s import it now.

If you click on the “import attendees” link in the global attendees’ area.

Then we upload the file and click “next.” This next screen is where we map the different fields. The ones I want to call out that are different for global attendees are the ones below.

Once we have all of the fields mapped, we can import it. Then we can go to an individual event to confirm the import by looking at who has access to a specific event.

What happens if you need to reimport and revise the information? This is possible if a global attendee is found with the same first and last name AND email address it will update that record instead of adding a new person to the list.

One more thing that we can setup is a shortcode that will allow someone to enter in their email address or something similar to see all of the events they can RSVP for. This is where the attendee event list shortcode comes in to play which you can read about here.

Have any questions? Please get in contact with us; I love to hear from everyone.

The post Managing Attendees Across Multiple Events appeared first on RSVP Pro Plugin.

The second release was our first extension for the RSVP Pro plugin the RSVP Pro Frontend Management extension. This extension allows you to surface the ability for other people to manage the attendee list for a specific event. More information can is at the extensions information page.

Are there other features or extensions you want to see added to the plugin? Please let us know!

The post Custom Question File Type & RSVP Pro Frontend Management appeared first on RSVP Pro Plugin.

With the release of version 3.8.7 the import process is much easier to use. Here is a video showing the new workflow when importing attendees.

With the new process as long as you have your attendee information in a CSV or Excel file, you can import it into your event. The only required field is either a first OR last name. You can read more details in the updated documentation.

I hope it improves your the workflow. If you have any feedback, please contact me. I love to hear from my users.

The post New RSVP Pro Attendee Import Workflow appeared first on RSVP Pro Plugin.

The post 2018 Year-End Features appeared first on RSVP Pro Plugin.

The First Attempt

Inline Attachments to the Rescue

function example_send_mail( $email, $subject, $body, $headers = '', $attachments = array() ) {
    wp_mail( $email, $subject, $body, $headers, $attachments );
}

• Email body generation
• Attaching the files to the email right before it sends

Generating Content

• uid: A unique identifier that is used for inline attachments this needs to be referenced to inline attach the image
• name: The name of the attachment that the user will see
• file: The path to the file that needs to be attached

$uid                     = uniqid();
$name                 = 'Inline Image.png';
$file_path            = generate_and_save_image();
$inline_attachments[] = array(
    'uid'  => $uid,
    'name' => $name,
    'file' => $file_path,
);

$body .= '<img src="proxy.php?url=cid:' . $uid . '" />'

Attaching the Images to the Email

add_action( 'phpmailer_init', function( &$phpmailer ) use( $inline_attachments ) {
    $phpmailer->SMTPKeepAlive=true;
    foreach ( $inline_attachments as $a ) {
        $phpmailer->AddEmbeddedImage( $a['file'], $a['uid'], $a['name'] );
    }
});

foreach ( $inline_attachments as $a ) {
    if ( file_exists( $a['name'] ) ) {
        unlink( $a['name'] );
    }
}

/**
 * Example wrapper for sending email. This is used to allow for
 * inline attachments, etc...
 *
 * @param string $email The email address we want to send the email to.
 * @param string $subject The subject for the email.
 * @param string $body The body of the email.
 * @param array  $headers The headers for the email.
 * @param array  $attachments The attachments for the email.
 */
function example_send_mail( $email, $subject, $body, $headers = '', $attachments = array() ) {
    global $inline_attachments;

    add_action( 'phpmailer_init', function( &$phpmailer ) use( $inline_attachments ) {
        $phpmailer->SMTPKeepAlive=true;
        foreach ( $inline_attachments as $a ) {
            $phpmailer->AddEmbeddedImage( $a['file'], $a['uid'], $a['name'] );
        }
    });
    wp_mail( $email, $subject, $body, $headers, $attachments );

    foreach ( $inline_attachments as $a ) {
        if ( file_exists( $a['name'] ) ) {
            unlink( $a['name'] );
        }
    }
    $inline_attachments = array();
}

The post Sending Inline Images via WordPress’ WP_Mail appeared first on RSVP Pro Plugin.

• 82 releases since this year
• ~130 customers

I am pretty happy with both of these since there have been zero marketing efforts except for a link or two from the free version of the plugin. Thanks to many of my customers in giving me feedback and reporting issues. It always amazes me at the different ways people can use a product.

The Good

So many more new features have been released this year than I thought would happen. As more and more people used the plugin and gave me feedback it was important for me to deliver the functionality to let people have a successful event. Some of the larger features that were added after the initial release are:

• An optional wizard like front-end user experience
• Ability to easily email all or selected attendees
• Sub-events including open and private events

The Bad

There wasn’t anything specifically bad that happened. The only thing that was “bad” was I hoped for more sales and sales to pick-up “magically” that is my own fault. It still sucks though :).

What is ahead?

Many things! To summarize though I want to finish up my ideas on how to make the RSVP Pro plugin easier to use and I am going to focus a little bit on marketing to help build an audience. My goals is to make this the easiest to use and full-featured event management or RSVP plugin for WordPress.

The post RSVP Pro’s 1st Birthday appeared first on RSVP Pro Plugin.

Now when you install the pro version of the plugin and network activate it you can specify the license in the network admin section. As long as you have a multi-site license everything will validate correctly and no more invalid license messages will appear.

What happens if you install the pro plugin on just one blog in a network with a single-site license? It will operate just like you would have if you had installed it on a standalone WordPress instance as it should.

The other use case for a multi-site license is if you are a consulting shop that is going to end up using it on more than nine sites and so instead of doing multiple purchases you can just purchase it once and use the same license key for all of the sites.

The post Multi-site license vs. Single license appeared first on RSVP Pro Plugin.

The option, “Max guest limit for event,” is used to specify a guest limit it can be left blank and it is assumed there is no limit. Any positive non-zero number can be used for the guest limit. When a guest tries to be added and the limit is hit either a message will appear or they will show as having RSVP’d as “No.”

The option, “Allow for a wait list,” is used to enable the wait list. If a user tries to RSVP and the event is already at maximum capacity they can choose to say no or to be added to the wait list.

Besides these two main options there are also related text formatting options under the “text customizations” tab.

How did these features help you in your event? We would love to hear about it.

Does the RSVP Pro plugin not exactly fit what you need? Please get in touch and we will see what we can do for you.

The post Max Attendees and Waitlist Functionality appeared first on RSVP Pro Plugin.

Multi-Step Registration

Probably the biggest feature was the addition of an option to change the front-end form from one long form to a wizard-like interface. Where the first step is filling out a person’s information (name, email, etc..) and the next step(s) is answering information about events. This makes the UI cleaner and user-friendly as people are not given a huge wall of options that they have to deal with. To turn on the option go to the main event’s settings then click “form customizations” then finally select the option “Change the frontend to have multiple steps” 

Once that option is turned on the front-end will now be in wizard mode which look different once a user finds their name and/or creates a new user.

Mail Message Variables

The ability to send messages to attendees is useful but there are still many ways we want to see it improved. One of the items on our list was the creation of placeholders in the subject and message. Now that is possible, you can put in placeholders for an attendees: first and last name, email address, passcode and the URL for the event.

If you are looking for additional features in the message sending functionality drop us a line we would love to hear from you.

Additional Custom Question Types

The last feature I want to mention is two new custom question types: read only and admin only. These new custom question types come from user feedback. Often people wanted to be able to display a notice mixed in with the custom questions or let attendees see a value that they couldn’t change but should be able to see, such as table assignment. The read only type allows for those scenarios.

The admin-only scenario is a different but along the same vein as read only. In some cases there might be a value that needs to be associated with the attendee but that they should never see. This is where the admin only custom question is used.

Hopefully these new features will be helpful in managing your event and attendees. If there is anything missing in the RSVP Pro plugin that you would like to see added we welcome any and all constructive feedback.

The post Wizards, Variables and Custom Questions Oh My! appeared first on RSVP Pro Plugin.

The post assumes some familiarity with stylesheets and how you can use your theme’s stylesheet to modify the look and feel of the site as a whole.

Available styles

• rsvpPlugin – ID of the main RSVP Container. Each RSVP step will be wrapped in this container
• rsvpParagraph – Class name that is used for all paragraph tags on the front end portion of the RSVP
• rsvpFormField – Class for divs that surround a given form input, which is a combination of a label and at least one form input (could be multiple form inputs)
• rsvpAdditionalAttendee – Class for the div container that holds each additional RSVP attendee you are associated with
• additionalRsvpContainer – The container that holds the plus sign that allows for people to add additional attendees
• rsvpCustomGreeting – ID for the custom greeting div that shows up if that option is enabled
• rsvpBorderTop – Class for setting a top border on certain divs in the main input form
• rsvpCheckboxCustomQ – Class for the div that surrounds each custom question checkbox
• rsvpClear – A class for div elements that we want to use to set clear both. Currently used only next to rsvpCheckboxCustomQs as they are floated
• rsvpRsvpQuestionArea (Pro Only) – A class for the RSVP attending question

An example…

Now what would we do if we want to change the radio buttons to be more like buttons side by side in the pro plugin? Well… we would leverage the rsvpRsvpQuestionArea class to modify the styles and use the fact that the labels act as buttons for the radio buttons.  Before styling them this is what the “yes”/”no” question looks like in the plugin.

Now let’s open up the theme’s style.css and add in the following styles

.rsvpRsvpQuestionArea input[type="radio"] {
display: none!important;
}
.rsvpRsvpQuestionArea label {
background-color: green;
color: white;
padding: 10px;
}
.rsvpRsvpQuestionArea {
display: inline-block;
height: 30px;
}


What we did here was hide the radio button, we had to use the !important keyword because the RSVP stylesheet gets loaded first and we try and prevent the radio buttons being hidden.

We then make the labels green with white text and display them side by side. The end results looks like

This works well but we can’t tell which item is selected. So, let’s change that!


.rsvpRsvpQuestionArea input[type="radio"]:checked + label {
background-color: blue;
}


With this added style we set the label that is next to the radio that is checked to have a background-color of blue. Which now makes the buttons look like Now our “radio” buttons look like styled buttons.

This is just an example of how the RSVP plugin can be styled. If you are ever stuck and need some help feel free to reach out to us we are here to help.

Happy styling!

The post Styling the RSVP Plugin appeared first on RSVP Pro Plugin.