RSVPMaker now supports two payment methods, PayPal and Stripe (via integration with the WP Simple Pay Lite for Stripe plugin), but I recently got a request from someone wanting to add an additional custom payment gateway. Now you can by using the hook ‘rsvpmaker_cash_or_custom’.
I’ve always tried to keep RSVPMaker developer-friendly for those who want to extend it. If you come up with something cool that ought to be part of the standard distribution, I hope you will consider contributing it to the project.
The new Default Payment Gateway heading on the settings page now includes 3 options: PayPal, Stripe, and Cash or Custom. The Cash or Custom setting can also be used by anyone who wants to display pricing on the website even if they will tell people to pay by cash or some other means, rather than paying online.
In the case where you are implementing a custom payment gateway, you would write a routine something like this.
Function for testing the 'rsvpmaker_cash_or_custom' hook
echo'<h1>Variables Passed to My Custom Function</h1>';
echo'<h3>Charge</h3>';
echo'<p>'.$charge."</p>\n";
echo'<h3>Invoice ID #</h3>';
echo'<p>'.$invoice_id."</p>\n";
echo"<p><em>Tracking # for payments</em></p>";
echo'<h3>RSVP ID #</h3>';
echo"<p><em>Unique ID for main database record for registration</em></p>";
echo'<p>'.$rsvp_id."</p>\n";
echo'<h3>Details</h3>';
echo"<p><em>Details about the transaction</em></p>";
echo'<pre>'.var_export($details,true)."</pre>\n";
echo'<h3>Profile</h3>';
echo"<p><em>Details about the person</em></p>";
echo'<pre>'.var_export($profile,true)."</pre>\n";
echo'<h3>Post</h3>';
echo'<pre>'.var_export($post,true)."</pre>\n";
}
Normally, what you would do in this space is output the payment button or other user interface code for the payment gateway functionality you are adding. This sample function just dumps all the data you get to work with related to the pricing and the information the user submitted about themselves, such as the email address for a confirmation message.
Want to add a custom payment method?
You would then take responsibility for handling the user’s submission. Ideally, you want to capture confirmation of the completed transaction and log the payment as complete in the RSVP report. Here is the function call.
‘blockchain’ is the label for my custom payment method
$amount is the amount paid in this transaction
$rsvp_id is the ID for the event registration
$event is the post id ($post->ID)
$transaction_id is an optional transaction identifier, intended for an ID # you got back from the payment service
Here is what you get to work with (the output of the test function shown above, with an example user entry).
Charge
300
Invoice ID #
rsvp126102
Tracking # for payments
RSVP ID #
Unique ID for main database record for registration
Improvements for RSVPMaker often arrive when I see the need for them in my own projects, and recently I found myself creating a landing page for a series of workshops at Online Presenters. This is a Toastmasters club I founded, which focuses on helping members develop skills for webinars and online meetings, presentations, and trainings of all sorts.
Online Presenters Landing Page
Because the workshop series is intended as a recruiting tool, I wanted our promotions (including some paid Facebook ads) to direct visitors to a page with a clear call to action — RSVP Now! — with no distractions that might tempt them to click away to another page or blog post. That meant the regular page sidebar and the menu at the top of the page had to go. Continue reading “Creating an Events Registration Landing Page with RSVPMaker”
I’ve updated my pricing on two easy ways to get access to a WordPress website with RSVPMaker events management already integrated, lowering the price of entry to $75 from $99. Hosting your site with Carr Communications Inc., creator of RSVPMaker, makes sense if event management is one of the main purposes of your site. We can offer closer support, including PayPal setup, if you host your website with us.
Subdomain Hosting
For $75 per year, you get a website at an address like seminar.rsvpmaker.com. We handle the web hosting and technical details, but you get access to all the standard WordPress features, plus the event management capabilities of RSVPMaker. This fee includes assistance setting up the site to allow you to accept event payments via PayPal.
In addition to posting your events, you can promote them through the blog and build out other pages for details like speaker bios and your event agenda.
Sign Up Now
Independent Website Hosting
Price: $175 per year for hosting of your own independent website, plus configuration assistance and RSVPMaker support. This gives you greater freedom to configure your site however you want and make your own decisions about adding themes and plugins, without being limited to those available on RSVPMaker.com.
Sign Up Now
Note: Hosting fee does not include domain registration or copywriting, consulting, and design services. It does include setup and proper configuration of WordPress site and RSVPMaker, as well as updating of all code so you always have the most recent, most secure, and most functional versions.
As with hosting anywhere else, the customer gets FTP access to the server and can perform their own additional customizations. Includes 5 GB disk space. Data center services provided by LiquidWeb, comparable to standard shared hosting plan.
The latest updates to RSVPMaker were inspired in part by this post on the WordPress.org support forum for the plugin.
Users within my organization tend to forget that they’ve registered for an event and wind up RSVP’ing multiple times. How can I restrict duplicate entries with an error message that says that they’ve already RSVP’d to an event?
One of the new ways I am trying to address this is with a JavaScript / AJAX powered lookup of any prior RSVPs associated with the user’s email address. As they start to type their email address into the form, they will see prompts to update any matching record, and as they type more of their email address the list of possible matches should narrow until there is only one (or none if they had not previously RSVP’ed using that email address).
Looking up matching RSVPs by email address.
A user can follow the link in that prompt to update their previous registration, if necessary. Or they may just need to be reminded that a registration for them is already on file.
This mechanism is actually a fallback. The standard email confirmation message includes an Update RSVP link users can follow to update their record. However, that only works if they go back and find the confirmation message.
Similarly, when you invite people using the MailChimp integration, their email address is embedded in the RSVP Now button. The idea there was always to save them some typing by looking up profile data from any previous RSVPs so they would not have to type it in again. (In the process of updating this code, I fixed a few bugs that were preventing this process from working properly).
If someone responds to the invitation, forgetting that they previously registered, RSVPMaker will ask them if they want to update their previous response. Similarly, if RSVPMaker detects a cookie associated with a previous response to the same event, it asks if they want to update that response rather than entering a new one.
Update RSVP? prompt
What is the scenario where the user would NOT want to update the previous RSVP? There are scenarios where the user wants to enter multiple independent RSVPs under the same email address. Maybe an administrative assistant is registering several executives but wants all the confirmations to come to his or her email address. Another example is a couple that shares an email address, where the husband’s RSVP should not overwrite the wife’s or vice versa. My preference would be that one person enter an RSVP with one or more other people indicated as guests, but it doesn’t always work that way in practice.
Security Considerations
There are a few potential security concerns with this scenario. The high security option would be to require users to login with a password before completing the RSVP form, and their identity would be tied to that login. RSVPMaker supports making logins required, but in many cases the more important goal is to make it as easy as possible for people to register without having a pre-assigned password.
If any information gathered on the form is sensitive, I recommend tagging it as private. You can see that with the tagging of the phone # and related fields in the default form:
The form builder utility (the popup you get when you click the “Generate form” button) also allows you to mark fields as private. If data has been recorded for that field, the message “Private data on file” is displayed instead of the private content. In other words, this prevents people from using your email address to look up your phone number or other information designated as private.
However, a mischievous or malicious user could use the lookup by email function to alter someone else’s RSVP response. I haven’t seen this be a problem, but it’s not impossible.
Design Considerations
In the AJAX-powered email lookup example shown above, the data entry field for email appears before those for first and last name. The idea is to get them to enter their email address first. If we match it to a record, we want to do that before they have reentered a lot of the same information.
I’ve made this the new default form layout for new users, but established users of RSVPMaker may need to tweak their RSVP form code. The form builder now includes an option to specify that the email field should come first.
These are the slides from a WordPress meetup presentation that covered the code behind RSVPMaker, the RSVPMaker for Toastmasters extension, and a WordPress multisite instance where I offer free club websites as subdomains of toastmost.org.
The audience was at a mix of experience levels in terms of technical knowledge, with some people being more designers or business users of WordPress as opposed to programmers. I tried to frame it so those with more WordPress programming experience would have a chance of learning something new, and the others would at least get a glimpse of what is possible when WordPress is used as the basis for a community website.
To make this more useful, in addition to the slides and the video I’m sharing some of the relevant code snippets and pointers to some tutorials with more info on specific aspects.
Description: Checks the health of your WordPress install
Version: 0.1.0
Author: The Health Check Team
Author URI: http://health-check-team.example.com
Text Domain: health-check
Domain Path: /languages
*/
Actually, for a one-off hack for your own site that you don’t intend to publish, it could be as simple as
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/*
Plugin Name: My Site Hack
*/
Once this is uploaded, you should see the name of your plugin on the Plugins screen of the WordPress administration dashboard inviting you to activate it.
Making your plugin do something
The point of a plugin is to add to or modify the default behavior of WordPress. You do this by connecting with the plugin and filter hooks WordPress makes available. You can modify almost everything about how WordPress functions, which means you as a developer can do either wonderful or horrible things to a website. You can change the display of content, modify the database queries used to retrieve content, or alter security parameters for who should be able to access what.
The two major families of hooks are:
Actions triggered as WordPress loads a page like
‘init’ – means the system has been initialized, but the process of running the page lookup query and outputting content has not yet begun)
‘admin_init’ – same thing on the administration back end of WordPress
‘wp_footer’ – fired by the wp_footer() function call that occurs in the footer of a properly coded theme. Often used to output a snippet of JavaScript or other code at the bottom of every public page or post.
Filters that allow you to modify some content or data
‘the_content’ – change the content of a post
‘the_title’ – change the title of the post
‘query_where’ – change the WHERE clause in the SQL query used by the WordPress loop for retrieving a list of posts
Here’s an example of an action on ‘init’ used to set up the rsvpmaker post type. Without that, the system would not recognize urls pointing to rsvpmaker content.
$sql="SELECT meta_value FROM ".$wpdb->postmeta." WHERE meta_key='_rsvp_dates' AND post_id = $post->ID ORDER BY meta_value";
$dt=$wpdb->get_var($sql);
$title.=date('F jS',strtotime($dt));
if($seplocation=="right")
$title.=" $sep ";
else
$title=" $sep $title ";
}
return$title;
}
I’ve abbreviated the code of some of these plugins for simplicity, but the point is that the filter on the_content
Checks whether the content is associated with the post type rsvpmaker, and if not returns the content unchanged
Looks up the date or dates (stored as post metadata) and adds it to the top of the content.
Checks whether RSVPs (registrations) should be collected and if so displays the RSVP form at the bottom of the post.
The filter on wp_title changes what should be output in the HTML title tag in the page header. Again, it checks if the content is rsvpmaker content and if so adds the date.
Adding AJAX
In the Toastmasters application, when a meeting organizer is assigning other people to roles, the user ID of the chosen member is sent to the server via a JavaScript AJAX method so that it’s saved even if the meeting organizer doesn’t make it down to the bottom of the form and click Save.
This is accomplished with some JQuery Javascript
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jQuery(document).ready(function($){
$('.editor_assign').on('change',function(){
varuser_id=this.value;
varid=this.id;
varrole=id.replace('editor_assign','');
varsecurity=$('#toastcode').val();
$('#_manual_'+role).html(manuals_list);
$('#_project_'+role).html('Pick Manual for Project List');
$('#title_text'+role).val('');
$('#_intro_'+role).val('');
varpost_id=$('#post_id').val();
vareditor_id=$('#editor_id').val();
if(security&&(post_id>0))
{
vardata={
'action':'editor_assign',
'role':role,
'user_id':user_id,
'editor_id':editor_id,
'security':security,
'post_id':post_id
};
jQuery.post(ajaxurl,data,function(response){
$('#status'+role).html(response);
$('#status'+role).fadeIn(200);
});
}
});
});
and the PHP code that will accept this input and process it
//my utility function to get member name based on ID
$name=get_member_name($user_id);
echo$name.' assigned to '.$role;
//tweak other settings, log change
wp_die();
}
The JavaScript detects when a select form field with the class .editor_assign has changed, gets the current value of that field and submits it to the server. The data is posted to a global variable ajaxurl (set automatically by WordPress) that points to a PHP file used specifically to process ajax requests. The submission must also include an ‘action’ attribute, in this case ‘editor_assign’ that WordPress will use to figure out what function to call.
The PHP code starts with an add_action call including that action string prefixed by wp_ajax_. This is the version that works for a logged in user — for an unauthenticated website visitor, it would be wp_ajax_nopriv_ or in this case wp_ajax_nopriv_editor_assign.
The add_action command identifies the function that will process the input, record it as post metadata, and send back a confirmation message to be displayed by the JavaScript routine.
Metadata for posts and users
My plugins make extensive use of custom metadata associated with posts and with users. The date of an event is stored as post metadata, and so is the 1 or 0 indicating whether the registration form should be displayed. The Toastmasters application modifies user profiles so they can contain data like home_phone and mobile_phone and Toastmasters ID # in addition to default fields like name and email address.
//add a log message rather than overwriting the previous value
add_post_meta($post_id,'log_messages');
In both cases, when getting metadata you must specify the third parameters as true if you are trying to retrieve a single value. By default, you will get back an array, which what be what you want if your application stores multiple items such as the log messages in this example under a single lookup key.
Here is what the corresponding database structure looks like for the wp_postmeta table, with metadata for an RSVPMaker post.
Post metadata
Modifying the Editor
When we create an RSVPMaker post, we need to add form fields to the standard WordPress editor and also functions for saving the data entered into that form as post metadata.
Here’s the WordPress editor, with the additional RSVPMaker fields showing under the editor.
RSVPMaker editor
Code to add the additional “metabox” on the form (simplified).
//display extra options on the WordPress editor form when viewing an RSVPMaker post
//get metadata for existing posts and display in the editor
GetRSVPAdminForm($post->ID);
}
The action ‘admin_menu’ triggers a function that registers our meta box, gives it a name, associates it with the function draw_eventdates, and says what kind of content it is associated with, in this case rsvpmaker posts.
The draw_eventdates pulls in all the metadata associated with the event so far and displays the form for setting event dates and other attributes.
Because there is a long list of options associated with setting up a registration form, those are hidden by default until the Collect RSVPs checkbox is checked. The code for displaying that section of the form looks like this.
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jQuery(document).ready(function($){
$("#rsvpdetails").hide();
$("#setrsvpon").change(function(){
$("#rsvpdetails").show();
});
});
When an RSVPMaker post is saved, the post title and content are saved just the way that they normally are. In the process, WordPress triggers the action post_save, which RSVPMaker uses to detect and save the additional data submitted from its additions to the editor form.
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add_action('save_post','save_calendar_data');
functionsave_calendar_data($postID){
global$wpdb;
if($parent_id=wp_is_post_revision($postID))
{
$postID=$parent_id;
}
// code to save dates as metadata goes here
if(isset($_POST["setrsvp"]["on"]))
save_rsvp_meta($postID);
else
delete_post_meta($postID,'_rsvp_on','1');
}
functionsave_rsvp_meta($postID)
{
$setrsvp=$_POST["setrsvp"];
foreach($setrsvp as$name=>$value)
{
$field='_rsvp_'.$name;
$single=true;
update_post_meta($postID,$field,$value);
}
}
Shortcodes and Visual Representations of Shortcodes
WordPress shortcodes are placeholders for content to be inserted into the body of a post based on the output of a function.
Shortcodes are how this in the editor …
rsvpmaker_upcoming shortcode in the editor (Text view)
… turns into this on the website.
RSVPMaker event listing with calendar
A shortcode begins and ends with square brackets. The name of the shortcode is the first string of text after the opening bracket, and the shortcode can also include attributes like calendar="1" — which will be passed to the function to indicate the calendar should be displayed at the top of the event listings.
Here’s a simplified version of the rsvpmaker_upcoming shortcode
The excerpt shown here covers how RSVPMaker changes the standard WordPress query to look up a series of posts ordered by the date of the event rather than displaying them in blog post order of publication date. The $atts parameter is an array containing any shortcode attributes such as calendar="1" or past="1" (to display past instead of future dates).
If the shortcode uses a close tag like this
[my_shortcode]content here[/my_shortcode]
In that case, the shortcode function will also be passed a $content variable you can work with. Something like this:
To make shortcodes easier to use by non-techies, you can instead display an placeholder image in the body of the post, with a popup dialog box as a user interface for setting the shortcode attributes. You also want to add a new button in the visual editor for adding a new instance of your shortcode. What I present below is based on an excellent tutorial, Take your shortcodes to the ultimate level.
Popup editor for rsvpmaker_upcoming shortcode
Here’s an excerpt from the JavaScript code loaded as a plugin to the TinyMCE editor used by WordPress.
// full script includes code for extracting data from shortcode, displaying popup, rewriting shortcode with data from popup form
});
This script identifies shortcodes using the same regular expression (pattern matching) formula WordPress uses in PHP on the server side when rendering a post. It parses out the attributes and creates an HTML image tag that embeds those same parameters, so the data is logically associated with the image in the JavaScript object model. The src attribute of the img tag points to a url that has some of that data encoded in it, such as
$tip='('.__('double-click for popup editor','rsvpmaker').')';
//pull in data from query parameters
foreach($_GET as$name=>$value)
{
if($name=='rsvpmaker_placeholder')
continue;
$text.=$name.'='.$value.' ';
}
// Write the string at the top left
imagestring($im,5,10,10,$text,$textcolor);
imagestring($im,5,10,25,$tip,$textcolor);
// Output the image, then exit
header('Content-type: image/png');
imagepng($im);
imagedestroy($im);
exit();
}
Registered to execute on the admin action, before any content has been queried or output, this function first checks for the presence of a query string like ?rsvpmaker_placeholder=1 and returns if it is not found.
If that query string is present, the function loads a blank background image for the placeholder from the plugins directory, adds text based on the query parameters, and outputs the modified image. Finally, it exits before WordPress can output any other content.
Custom Administration Screens
Because RSVPMaker collects event registrations, we also need to add a screen on the administrative back end where those registrations can be viewed.
RSVP Report screen
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add_action('admin_menu','my_rsvp_menu');
//register an additional option on the menu, as a submenu in the RSVP Events section.
//output the report or listing of events for which rsvps have been collected
functionrsvp_report(){
global$wpdb;//grab the global object for the WordPress database
if(isset($_GET["event_id"]))
{
$sql=$wpdb->prepare('SELECT * FROM '.$wpdb->prefix.'rsvpmaker WHERE id=%d ORDER BY timestamp DESC',$_GET["event_id"]);
$results=$wpdb->get_results($sql);
if($results)
foreach($results as$row)
{
// display rsvp results for each person registered such as $row->email
}
}
else
{
// display listing of events to choose from
}
}
Custom Dashboard
The default WordPress dashboard shows updates on plugins and upcoming WordPress meetups. My Toastmasters community is more concerned about managing the agenda for upcoming events, so we present them with a custom dashboard.
Toastmasters dashboard
For a more detailed tutorial, see this from WP Explorer. Here’s a quick summary.
// manipulate the $wp_meta_boxes to put my widgets on top
}
//render the dashboard widget
functionawesome_dashboard_widget_function(){
//generate Toastmasters-specific content for dashboard widget
}
Custom user registration and metadata
User records can also be customized to include metadata for your purposes. For Toastmasters club members, I want to record information such as phone numbers and Toastmasters ID #. Club officers are presented with an Add Member screen that asks for that additional information and records it as part of their user account, along with the required fields like user_login and user_pass (password).
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//custom registration
$user["user_login"]=$_POST["user_login"];
$user["user_pass"]=$_POST["user_pass"];
$user["user_email"]=$_POST["user_email"];
$user["first_name"]=$_POST["first_name"];
$user["last_name"]=$_POST["last_name"];
$user["home_phone"]=$_POST["home_phone"];
wp_insert_user($user);
//add existing user to blog within multisite install
We can test for whether a user is logged in, a member of a specific blog (site within a multisite install), or possesses a specific capability under the WordPress security scheme.
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if(is_user_logged_in($user_id))
{
//do something for users only
}
if(is_user_member_of_blog($user_id))
{
//do something for members only
}
if(current_user_can('manage_options'))
{
//show an administrator only option
}
if(user_can($user_id,'edit_rsvpmakers'))
{
//only a user with the rights to edit events
}
Add Roles and Capabilities
WordPress security revolves around user roles and capabilities. Each of the predefined roles (subscriber, contributor, author, editor, administrator) has a set of default capabilities. That list of capabilities can also be manipulated by plugins. I like the plugin User Roles Editor as a general purpose utility or this purpose. I wrote my own routines to define plugin-specific capabilities and roles.
In this example, I add a Manager role (one level up from editor, not quite an administrator) and add a capability to the default administrator role.
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//initialize the function
add_action('admin_init','add_awesome_roles');
//add role if it has not previously been registered
See Create a Network in the WordPress Codex documentation for detailed instructions on configuring a single installation of the software to host a network of sites.
You start the process by modifying your wp-config.php file to include this statement:
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define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE',true);
When you return to the admin screens, you essentially get a wizard that guides you through the process of determining what settings to change wp-config.php as well as your .htaccess file.
For the subdomain configuration I used, where sites have URLs like op.toastmost.org and demo.toastmost.org, I also had to change the DNS settings to recognize “wildcard” subdomains. Just as the path to a blog post represents a logical naming convention for content in the database, WordPress can then treat subdomains as aliases for sites within the database table.
When you make these changes, WordPress modifies the database for your site to include separate tables for each site. For example, instead of single wp_posts table, you get a whole series of posts tables named according to the subdomain site ID.
Multisite tables for posts
Similarly, your uploads directory gets divided up by site ID to keep those files separate.
Multisite directories.
Finally, I use a custom site registration process that gathers information specific to my application, such as the name of the Toastmasters club and the timezone (important for calendar functions) and adds default content and settings.
The process is:
Club website owner first must register for an account. Custom user account registration flow requires that they first register for a MailChimp mailing list. I use the MailChimp API to verify their email address is on the list before accepting their registration.
User fills out the form with the requested subdomain and other data.
update_option('blogdescription','Where Leaders Are Made');
update_option('comment_registration',1);
//get rid of default page
$pages=get_pages();
wp_delete_post($pages[0]->ID);
//create first post
$post=array(
'ID'=>1,
'post_content'=>"We're trying ".'<a href="https://wp4toastmasters.com">WordPress for Toastmasters</a>, a free service for Toastmasters clubs based on the <a href="http://wordpress.org">WordPress</a> blogging system.
Over the past several years, I have used WordPress and my RSVPMaker plugin to create a series of membership-based websites that revolve around signing up to attend events or in some cases fill specific volunteer roles at events (range safety officer at a rifle range, speakers and evaluators for Toastmasters clubs).
This is a progress report on my most ambitious project to date in this category, shared partly so anyone trying to create something similar will consider hiring me as a consultant. But I’ll also share some tips I hope will be useful to other developers.
As part of my WordPress for Toastmasters project, I took advantage of the multisite support in the WordPress software to allow officers in these public speaking sites to create a free website as a subdomain of toastmost.org (mysite.toastmost.org, yoursite.toastmost.org, etc.). Although the software for managing meeting agendas is available as open source, many leaders in Toastmasters would like to take advantage of the software without being responsible for setting up an independent website and installing WordPress plugins.
Although WordPress was originally created for bloggers, it can be extended with plugins to add functionality such as event management. It also includes a fairly sophisticated user security system (occasionally hacked but quickly patched) including necessary functions like a process for users to reset their passwords when they forget them. I use this as the basis for a membership website in which you must be logged in to view members-only content and certain functions are reserved for site editors or administrators. Most of these functions are well documented on the WordPress developer reference site. For example, the function is_user_logged_in() tells me if a website visitor has authenticated as a user. For WordPress multisite, I need is_user_member_of_blog() to determine if the user is not only logged in but a member of the blog currently being displayed.
If the documentation doesn’t answer all your questions about how a function works, you can download the source code from wordpress.org and go spelunking through functions until you get a better idea of what exactly is going on. I’ve had to do that occasionally for functions in both WordPress and popular add-ons like BuddyPress (for example, to figure out why BuddyPress seemed to behave differently in a multisite environment). Meanwhile, I’m working on fleshing out RSVPMaker’s own developer documentation (see: Developer Functions for Extending RSVPMaker).
WordPress provides a default user interface for allowing members to register for an account and create a site on a multisite network. In my case, this was something else I needed to customize, so each new site would be initialized with a theme reflecting the branding and trademark disclaimers required by Toastmasters International, along with some starter text for a home page and starter templates for meeting events.
A network of WordPress multisite events websites.
In addition, before they can register as users and create a site, I require them to sign up for the MailChimp mailing list for the project. RSVPMaker includes an API integration with MailChimp, including the ability to verify that an email address is subscribed to a mailing list. So I have them sign up for the list used for project announcements and include instructions for creating a site as part of the confirmation message. The link they follow to the signup form includes their email address as a query parameter. Before displaying the signup form for creating an account, I use the API to verify their subscription.
Requiring that they sign up for the MailChimp mailing list also serves to filter out hackers and spammers, who typically won’t go to the trouble of signing up for the email list and verifying their subscription with MailChimp. Why bother, when there are so many easier targets on the web?
There are other, more general purpose membership management plugins available, but the great glory of creating something custom is it can be exactly what you want and need.
If you would like help creating custom events websites, I am available as a consultant. Drop me a note at david@rsvpmaker.com.
If you are creating a custom events website for which RSVPMaker is the foundation but you want to add your own flourishes, you should be aware of several utilities functions.
I created these for my own selfish purposes. As someone who customizes events for specific purposes, I have gradually gotten to the point where I don’t want to deal with the internal complexities of my own plugin. And from studying the APIs of other software I’ve had occasion to modify or extend, I’ve started to figure out what that ought to look like for RSVPMaker.
Here are a few basic functions that are useful if you are trying to get events data out of the system and display it in some custom manner, for example in a widget or a shortcode different from the ones RSVPMaker includes.
To get a listing of future events use get_future_events:
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$events=get_future_events();
The variable $events will be an array of objects, each of which represents an event post. The event post objects include all the usual blog post fields such as post_title, post_author, post_content, with the additional fields datetime (the SQL timestamp for the date and time of the event) and date (date formatted as Month Day, Year as in July 6, 2017). You can add where and limit parameters to the query. You then loop through the results like in this example using a shortcode.
Changing the $output parameter from OBJECT, the default, to ARRAY_A, would give you an associative array for each event. The fourth parameter, $offset_hours is used to prevent events from expiring off the list the moment their start time is past. I’ve come across a number of situations where it’s preferable to have an event displayed several hours past the start time, for example so people who are arriving late or are in the middle of the meeting can still look up details such as the agenda or location.
There is also get_past_events function, which works almost the same way (no $offset_hours parameter) but lists past events starting with the most recent and counting backwards.
Here’s an example that would pull in all the past events since the start of 2017.
You can retrieve a single event using get_rsvp_event. It accepts 2 parameters, $where and $output (defaults to OBJECT)
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$event=get_rsvp_event('datetime > CURDATE');
or
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$event=get_rsvp_event('ID=3');
Here are a few others that might come in handy.
Use get_events_by_template to retrieve all the events associated with a specific template, in ascending date order by default and as row objects by default.
Get the date associated with an event, based on ID, with get_rsvp_date. SQL date will be returned. To format, you might use strtotime as in this example.
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global$post;
$timestamp=get_rsvp_date($post->ID);
$t=strtotime($timestamp);
echo date('F jS, Y',$t);
Because a single event can span multiple dates, there is also a get_rsvp_dates function that returns an array of timestamps. This is also the version you would have to use if you also want to retrieve the event duration. Look at the rsvp_date_block function in rsvpmaker-pluggable.php for an example of how RSVPMaker uses this internally to display the date or dates at the top of an event post.
Can I Help?
If you would like help creating custom events websites, I am available as a consultant. Drop me a note at david@rsvpmaker.com. Some of the customizations I’ve worked on over the past couple of years include:
Signups for volunteer roles at a rifle range, with a reporting back end to show which roles are filled versus open for each shift.
A network of membership-based event websites for a nonprofit organization (Toastmasters), set up as subdomains using WordPress multisite. Chapter officers can sign up to get a free site, using a custom user and site registration process. They can then manage their own events and create accounts for their own members. They can collect event registrations via RSVPMaker but also sign members up to fill specific roles using the WordPress for Toastmasters extensions.
In a couple of cases, I’ve made signing up for MailChimp a prerequisite for creating a user account. The MailChimp confirmation message directs people back to a website page with a coded url that includes their email address. Before the signup form will display, their subscription must be verified via the MailChimp API.
Toward a Proper API
Going back to 2010, RSVPMaker has included a mechanism for developers to override pluggable functions with their own versions. The functions documented above represent the beginnings of a cleaner API.
This small feature update came in response to a request from a user who was planning an event for which parents will register their themselves and their children. The event organizers need some additional information about the children, such as grade level.
RSVPMaker already allowed you to set up a registration form where some fields included on the main form will not necessarily be displayed on the guest form. Now you can specify that a field should be displayed only on the main form, on both the main form and guest form, or only on the guest form (not the main form).
Here’s what that looks like with the RSVPMaker form builder:
Guest-only setup
If you edit the shortcode directly, you would make it:
After years of working to improve RSVPMaker, answering questions about it, and troubleshooting problems, I want to hear from those of you who have made it work for you in your business or nonprofit.
Can I get you to share your story in a guest post on the RSVPMaker blog? I would also be interested in connecting with you in an online video meeting to interview you about your story. This can be your opportunity to ask questions or tell me about improvements you would like to see at the same time.
While I have received occasional code contributions over the years, I hope this will make it easier to collaborate with others who have great ideas or who have stronger skills in some areas than I do. Even if you don’t have code to contribute, there is an Issues section where you can record wish list items.
I’m relatively new to using GitHub, so I welcome advice on how to use the platform effectively.
