I’ve recently posted a flurry of releases aimed at addressing a couple of user requests / complaints:
- 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.
Thank you so much for doing the reminders. I think that will be very helpful especially for volunteering for events. I did have a small issue. I’m not sure how to go about correcting it with out making different events, but you might be able to help. In a popcorn selling example if we have several shifts. 12PM 2PM 4PM but only want say 2 people signed up per shift. I tried using the max 2, but that closes the event once 2 people have sign up for any of the time slots. Is there way to make this time slot driven with out having to make multiple events? I might just be doing it wrong.
The way I’ve handled that is to add something to the “Instructions for User” field that says I am looking for two volunteers for each shift. This will be displayed just above the RSVP form, which allows the user to see how many people are currently signed up per shift. Doesn’t make the limit mandatory, but does give them the info they need to do the right thing. Example:
http://www.rsvpmaker.com/rsvpmaker/testing-timeslots/