Managing Events, Classes, Conferences

[Joe Rotella]

I’ve been reading as much as I can about your paid solutions but can’t quite nail how much of my desired functionality they can provide.

I run an arts/crafts company. We sell products online (i.e., supplies). We have events (sales, crops, conventions, shows, PBS TV show listings, etc. – some are online, most are real life) and classes (start/end time, online or in real life).

Events/classes are tricky. Here’s our current “calendar” (only has a list view) – http://www.createncraft.com/calendar/ All the examples below are on that page.

We also host events. Some events are free (i.e., we announce a sale period), some events are purchased through our site (i.e., an all day crafting event called a crop), some events we promote, but you purchase off-site (i.e., a military charity crop). Some events are like a conference (i.e., Indianapolis Cardologist Club) show the event and they show all the “children” items (classes or events) under that.

When you go to a parent event, you see all the children – see http://www.createncraft.com/calendar/cardologist-10-22-2016/

When you go to a child event, you can link up to the parent – see
http://www.createncraft.com/calendar/flock-of-birds-mixed-media-canvas-cardologist-10-22-2016/

When folks look at a class, we need them to see the Name, one or more pictures of the project, a description, registration details, what to bring (which may be a list and may also include products we sell that we would like them to consider purchasing when the book the event), where it’s held, link to a map, cost, a way to purchase (either on our site or a referral to another site or, worst case, a phone number to call), instructor name, bio, pic.

http://www.createncraft.com/calendar/3d-shrine-day-of-the-dead/ is a good example. Shows that you could buy the Glue necessary on our site….and to register, you have to go to another site (so there’s a link).

We’re hosting a conference in April 2017 that will have 50 classes. It’s 3 days and there are 10-20 classes a day…running in parallel. People pick classes to build a schedule.

I’m thinking some combination of your paid plug-ins might solve most of these items, but probably not all.

Calendar view – list is fine – calendar option would be nice.
Filter – by location would be great – so folks could see only events in Ohio (since we teach all over the midwest) – or online versus in real life
Parent/Child events – Everything being offered at a given conference
Purchase on line (on my site), purchase through a referral link, purchase by calling
Class info – pics, description, what to bring (for items we don’t sell)
Class “suggested products” – buy what you need to bring to class
Instructor pic/bio – when it’s a class
Types of events (workshop, class, sale, crop, convention, conference, expo, TV show, web show, demo, etc.)
Ability to share on social media

What’s the best way for me to figure out what’s do-able and with what plugins? I can’t seem to find a comprehensive list that’s helping me sort out the possibilities with your solutions.

Honestly, I wish I could have a “pre-sales” call with someone to interactively discuss the needs and determine the best solution.

Thanks in advance!
Joe

[Joe Rotella]

Forgot to mention – the site is powered by WooCommerce.
Thanks!
Joe

[Geoff]

Hi Joe,

Thanks so much for getting in touch! I know a phone call can be great but I’m confident we can nail this together here in the forums. 🙂

I look over your list of requirements. I think our products are a good fit, though there is one particular thing you mentioned that makes me a little hesitant:

Parent/Child events – Everything being offered at a given conference

Our products unfortunately do have have a parent-child relationship for events. In other words, one event is one event. We do have a feature to create relationships between recurring events, but the ability to file one event as a child of another is something non of the plugins currently support.

Everything else looks good to go though and this is the combo I would suggest:

• The Events Calendar (free) – This is our base plugin that creates a calendar and the ability for you to create, manage and display events on your site in a calendar format.
• Events Calendar PRO – This provides additional calendar views as well as other features such as custom event fields, recurring events and additional widgets to place on other pages and posts.
• Event Tickets (free) – This allows you to create free tickets for events and sets up the functionality for the next plugin.
• Event Tickets Plus – This connects Event Tickets to WooCommerce so you can create and sell paid tickets for events. It also allows you to create custom registration fields for attendees to fill out prior to making a purchase, and will email the tickets to the attendee with a QR code that can be scanned to check them in at the door.
• Filter Bar – This adds an additional set of filters to the calendar that visitors can use to narrow the list of results down to specific categories, tags, time of day, cost, and other variables.

You had also mentioned a few features that, while are not available in our products, can be found in other third party plugins:

• Suggested products – WooCommerce has an extension for cart up-sells and cross-sells.
• Ability to share on social media – We have a few recommendations for that

Does this sound like a good fit for you? I think the parent-child relationship of events could be a deal-breaker but, if it’s not, then hopefully the recommendations here will cover everything else. I’ll also add that we offer a full refund on all our products within 30 days of purchase in the event that something doesn’t work the way you had hoped.

Cheers!
Geoff

[Joe Rotella]

Hi! Thanks for the discussion!

I’m assuming I would use custom fields for an event to add the teacher name, bio, what to bring, etc.

Is there a custom field type that could be used to populate all the “Children Events” so I could then display them on the same page? Maybe that would be a work-around?

How would you suggest handling the different types of registrations?
Buy ticket on my site – no problem, WooCommerce can handle that
Buy the ticket on another site with a referral link – any ideas?
Nothing to buy – the event is just announcing a special event, sale, etc.

I appreciate the 30 day refund. Problem is, I have to hire a developer to put this all together to try it, and that investment would be lost if it didn’t work out. So I need to sort out as much beforehand as possible to avoid wasting money.

Thanks!
Joe

[Geoff]

Hey Joe, thanks for following up!

Is there a custom field type that could be used to populate all the “Children Events” so I could then display them on the same page? Maybe that would be a work-around?

You could certainly create a category called “Children” and file those events in the category. Doing so will allow you to link directly to all events that fall in the same category like this: [your-site]/events/category/children

How would you suggest handling the different types of registrations?

Event Tickets Plus allows you to create any number of ticket types per event. For example, if you have a general admission and premium rate, you can create both ticket types on the same event and price them accordingly. Similarly, if you have an early bird rate, you can create a ticket specifically for that and set the end sale date for that ticket to correlate with the start sale dates of the other tickets.

Buy the ticket on another site with a referral link – any ideas?

I’m afraid that our plugins do not handle affiliate marketing strategies. However, the Affiliates Pro extension for WooCommerce might be worth looking into, though I have not used it personally.

Nothing to buy – the event is just announcing a special event, sale, etc.

The Events Calendar is perfect for that…and free. 🙂 Or, you can create another page on your site that acts as a landing page advertising an event in addition to the event post itself.

Does this help clarify things a little more? Please let me know.

Cheers!
Geoff

[Support Droid]

Hey there! This thread has been pretty quiet for the last three weeks, so we’re going to go ahead and close it to avoid confusion with other topics. If you’re still looking for help with this, please do open a new thread, reference this one and we’d be more than happy to continue the conversation over there.

Thanks so much!
The Events Calendar Support Team

[Author]

Posts