Note that there are a couple of English language phrases showing through where no translation has yet been supplied. I actually just got received an updated version, which will be included with the next RSVPMaker release.

I’ve been getting interest in translation and occasional offers to help since RSVPMaker was first released, but Mr. Żeliński helped me work through a series of issues ranging from proper encoding of international characters to bugs in the code that was supposed to load the translation files. Now that we’ve got this first one, it would be good to see translations to some other languages.

I’m still new to this whole process, but here’s essentially how it works:

• Obtain a copy of POEdit the utility used to generate translation files in a standard format.
• Use POEdit to open the rsvpmaker.pot file, which is a template for the catalog of translated phrases you will create from English to the target language.
• Save your file as rsvpmaker-locale.po where locale is a standard country code. Example: rsvpmaker-pl_PL.po for Polish. See http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_in_Your_Language 
• Use POEdit to suggest translated phrases to be used in place of my English language ones. For content to be available for translation, it needs to be marked correctly in the plugin source code, so let me know if you see important omissions. I’ve tried to flag most of the labels and instructions for translation.
• When you save your work, POEdit will also generate a .mo file such as rsvpmaker-pl_PL.mo. You can upload this to your own server to test that it works, with the language code set in the WordPress wp-config.php file. If you believe you have created a translation others would find useful, send me the .mo file to include in future distributions of RSVPMaker.
• When I put out a new release, you should be able to use the Update from Sources function in POEdit to detect if there are new words or phrases available for translation. Send me the updated .mo files as appropriate.

For a general tutorial on translating plugins, see http://urbangiraffe.com/articles/translating-wordpress-themes-and-plugins/

If the instructions I’ve supplied aren’t clear, let me know how I can improve them. Thanks.

• Several people have asked for an automated way of sending a reminder to people who have RSVP’ed for an event, so they don’t forget to show up.
• Several sections of my code had trouble dealing with international characters, either recording them in the database or including them in email notification / confirmation messages. I’ve been getting an education in proper UTF-8 encoding, and I think I’ve rooted out the worst of these errors now.

The functional new feature is an option on the event editor screen where you can specify a reminder date, which you might typically make a day or two before the date of your event. This is in the same block of parameters as the RSVP deadline and RSVP start date.

The reminder message looks something like this:

RSVPMaker now creates a pseudo cron job, which by default runs at noon local time and checks to see if any events have set reminders to run that day. If so, it generates an email to be sent to the people on the RSVP list including the details of their RSVP response and a recap of the event. The idea is that you’re reminding them of the details, while also giving them an opportunity to update their RSVP if their plans have changed.

Regarding the scheduling of these reminder messages, note that the plugin can only calculate local time if you’ve set your timezone on the General Settings screen. Also, because the built-in WP cron routine only runs when WordPress is active, it typically runs a little later than the specified time — whenever the next visitor or search engine spider or spambot probe accesses your domain.

If you prefer to set a different time for the  WP cron routine to run and send reminders, you can change it on the RSVPMaker Settings screen.

ChimpBlast was designed to be used with RSVPMaker, and to make it easy to generate a simple newsletter based on recent blog posts. Based on some feedback from people who have tried it, I’ve further improved the facilities for importing blog content.

Another improvement is that you can now change the mailing list you’re targeting (if you run several) on a per post basis rather than from just the settings screen.

I have also included a sample cron script for sending a weekly email newsletter based on the previous week’s worth of blog posts and any upcoming RSVPMaker events. I use something like this for my son’s cub scout pack and for a political organizing website, where the newsletter serves to keep list members up to date on the latest material from the website. You can use the cron script as-is, or copy it into another directory and modify it to meet your needs (if, for example, you need a daily or monthly newsletter rather than a weekly one).

From the ChimpBlast settings screen, you can now designate the day of the week for your newsletter broadcasts, as well as the template, list, and subject line that will be used. The newsletter will go out using the default Email From address and Email Name display name.

It you run the cron script on any day other than the designated day of the week, it sends a preview version of the broadcast to the Email From address. The way I use this is to configure cron to run on Saturday and Sunday, where Sunday is the actual publication day. By sending myself a preview, I get a reminder to make any updates or corrections prior to publication day.

Cron is the Unix scheduling utility, and many web hosts provide a simplified utility for configuring it through Cpanel (shown below) or an another admin system.

A ChimpBlast Email Newsletter Set to Run Saturday and Sunday

The most significant change is that I’ve fixed the function for downloading reports to Excel. Again. Yes, I previously announced this improvement, but it turned out to be premature because bundling in the required PEAR library turned out to be more complicated than I anticipated. This update instead uses the PHPExcel library.

My apologies to everyone who tried this on the last go-round and got an ugly error message. But you should now see a link on the RSVP Report that allows you to download a summary of the latest replies as an Excel file.

There’s still plenty of room for improvement in the reporting functions, if any PHP code slingers out there would like to jump in and help.

Update: Version 2.1

Just to make this a little more interesting, I added a couple of things that have been on my todo list.

On the RSVPMaker Settings page, you will now see a Profile Table setting where you can edit the HTML markup for the section section of the RSVP form that asks for additional details, beyond name and email. You can add additional fields in HTML and they will be recorded as long as you follow the name=”profile[fieldname]” convention. The standard text field length is size=”60″

Previously, it was necessary to do some PHP coding to override the function that displays the RSVP form – and that still might be appropriate for those who want to do something particularly fancy. But I didn’t think it made sense for just adding or changing a data entry field.

Also, I had gotten a request a few weeks ago for a shortcode for listing past events.

You can now do this -

[event_listing past="1" format="headline" date_format="F jS, Y"]

- for a listing of events like the one below. The date_format field is optional but the idea here was to include the year, which you can imagine might be needed for a site that had events stretching back several years. That’s the standard PHP date code format.

• Planning Meeting January 23rd, 2012
• Event With Maximum Number of Participants December 21st, 2011
• Cub Scout Popcorn Sale December 11th, 2011
• Cub Scout Camping Trip October 30th, 2011, October 29th, 2011, October 28th, 2011
• Pot Luck Dinner October 25th, 2011
• Interview with a Vampire September 30th, 2011
• Election of Officers January 1st, 2011
• All Day Event with 4-Hour Timeslots January 1st, 2011

Update: Version 2.2

I also added the option to add a CAPTCHA challenge image if you’re having problems with spam bots.

Thursday April, 14 2011 at 7 pm ET, details: http://www.anymeeting.com/davidfcarr

I will present a tutorial and answer questions.

I also want to hear from those of you who have done interesting things with Facebook Tab Manager.

Background: Facebook Tab Manager is a WordPress plugin that lets you incorporate blog and website content into a Facebook page for a business or organization. You can create posts specifically for Facebook and designate content that will only be shown to people who Like your page

ChimpBlast lets you compose broadcast email messages for use with the MailChimp service from within WordPress. You can compose messages in the WordPress rich text editor, import the content of posts, preview the results on your website, and then submit the resulting message to MailChimp using the API.

ChimpBlast was designed for use in combination with RSVPMaker. You can import your RSVPMaker events into ChimpBlast, add introductory text, and send out your event invitations. The RSVP Now link in the invitation will automatically be coded to include a reference to the recipient’s email address, allowing RSVPMaker to retrieve that person’s profile details so they don’t have to be reentered manually.

You can import a your MailChimp template and add CSS to help your WordPress content display better, such as the markup for WordPress photos and captions, or your own stylings. The MailChimp service automatically inlines the CSS code to work better with email clients, which don’t always respect CSS in the header.

This is what I use for most of my email marketing work. I’m a big fan of the flexibility of the MailChimp service, as well as the high standards it enforces for list quality (even though they sometimes make me jump through hoops to get a list cleaned up). I actually don’t like the visual editor they provide with the service that much and often would rather use the one within WordPress – particularly since the content I send out is often derived from a blog post or RSVPMaker event.

If you downloaded the preliminary version I published on RSVPMaker.com, please download the official release. Note that you may have to redo the email template. This version allows you to have several alternate templates available for use.

One significant change I made, upon request, is that you no longer need to install the PEAR Spreadsheet Writer library separately if you want to download RSVP Reports to Excel. I’m using the same code, but it’s now bundled with the plugin.

http://www.rsvpmaker.com/chimpblast-plugin-for-mailchimp/

Version 1.2 will automatically retrieve profile details for a logged in user, and you can customize this function (see Changing the RSVP Form, Other Customizations).

If you try this approach, let me know how it works for you and what still needs to work better.