We have just reached 5,000 downloads of Advanced Events Registration, the premiere event registration and management plugin for WordPress.

To celebrate, we offering $10 off the purchase price of premium version of the plugin, to the first 50 people! Use the discount code AER5000 to claim your discount at the time of purchase. Order now and you will also get a first look at version 3* of the new Event Espresso plugin.

*Everyone who has purchased the Advanced Events Registration plugin will also get a free upgrade to the new version shortly after release.

Many of you have been using the WordPress forums to ask your questions about the Advanced Events Registration plugin. The only problem with that is that I don’t know anyone has posted anything there. I try to login and check every once in a while, but that is very inefficient and some questions go unanswered. I am hoping to change this with our new forums.

So please head on over and say hello, leave us some feedback in the “Suggestion Box” or show off your site in the new “Website Showcase.”

WP-Junkie Shoping Cart Example

Tired of adding lots of HTML button code to WordPress posts and pages?

Introducing WP E-Junkie, a quick and easy to use solution for selling product downloads using the WP E-Junkie Shopping Cart system and WordPress. All you need is an E-Junkie account, your E-junkie client id and a self hosted WordPress website.

Buttons are easily added to a post/page by pasting a small shortcode containing the product id any of your products hosted on E-Junkie.com.

The plugin is totally free and custom buttons can even be added via the plugin settings page!

Check out the new WP E-Junkie Shopping Cart, view screen shots, or see the plugin in action.

I have just finished uploading the very first screen shots of version 3 of the Advanced Events Registration (now “Event Espresso“) plugin for WordPress.

With Facebook Events, you can organize gatherings and parties with your friends, as well as let people in your community know about upcoming events. The Events applications page displays your upcoming events, any invitations you have pending, and links to your own events.

This week I started exploring the possibility of auto-posting new events to Facebook. Imagine having a newly created event automatically appear in your Facebook profile. Lets take it one step further, invite everyone in your friends list to the event when the event is created. Is this possible? We will soon find out.

Using the premiere event management system for WordPress, the possibilities are endless.

I would love to hear from you, so please feel free to drop me a line and offer your suggestions. Your continued support and suggestions are what keeps me motivated to bring you the best event management system on WordPress.

Authorize.net is not the only thing that is new. I have released several other new addons recently as well. I added a “Member Integration Module” and a “Custom Files Addon” to the list of available features for the pro version of the plugin. Be sure to visit the pro version page to see more!

Free Analytics Tool For PayPal: AnalyzePal

If you are using the free or Pro version of the Advanced Events Registration plugin for WordPress. Then you gotta check out this app for analyzing your PayPal earnings. AnalyzePal is a cross-platform (PC or Mac) analytics tool specially built for analyzing your PayPal sales data.

Here are few of the features:

• Interactive analysis to visualize your growth by event registrations, sales, customers and country for any period of time you choose.
• The ability to generate monthly, yearly or even a cumulative balance sheet in PDF file format at the click of a button.
• Gauge your performance of your event registrations for this month and year using the two progress bars found in the dashboard.
• There is No API involved so it can handle data from multiple accounts.

If you are holding multiple events a year or even in a month. Now you can visually gauge the popularity of each and every event. Download  AnalyzePayPal for free at http://analyzepal.com/ or visit the AnalyzePayPal Blog for the most update date info!

The FREE analytics & reporting package for PayPal business data

Come to find out I was missing a space between a ‘“‘ and a ‘(‘ as seen below.

$sql_create_table = "CREATE TABLE " . $wp_table_name . "( " . $sql . " );";

Here is how it should have looked:

$sql_create_table = "CREATE TABLE " . $wp_table_name . "  (  " . $sql . "  )  ;";

Notice the spaces highlighted in green? That was the killer. So for a while, every time I added a new field to a table in database install file. For a while I was using a function (seen below) to alter the table and add the new fields.

function add_column_if_not_exist($db, $column, $column_attr = "VARCHAR( 255 ) NULL" ){
global $wpdb;
$exists = false;
$columns = $wpdb->query("show columns from $db");
while($c = $wpdb->get_row($columns)){
if($c['Field'] == $column){
$exists = true;
break;
}
}
if(!$exists){
if (!$wpdb->query("ALTER TABLE `$db` ADD `$column`  $column_attr")){
$error = 'There was a problem adding columns to the database.';
}
}
return $error;
}

So, if you are having trouble with the dbDelta function when writing a Wrodpress plugin. Be aware of extra spaces

Here is more information about the dbDelta function and creating tables with plugins:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Creating_Tables_with_Plugins

http://wordpress.org/tags/dbdelta-1

http://hungred.com/how-to/wordpress-dbdelta-function/

http://designoplasty.com/2009/05/15/not-using-dbdelta-with-wordpress/

In your main plugin file (ex. my_plugin.php) I define my plugin version:

define("MY_PLUGIN_VERSION", "2.16" ); //Declare the plugin version. This way we know the tables are always up to date. I usually declare this in my main plugin file.
require_once("includes/functions.php");
require_once("includes/database_install.php");
register_activation_hook(__FILE__,'my_plugin_data_tables_install');

Then in my functions.php file:

function my_plugin_run_install ($table_name, $table_version, $sql) {
		   global $wpdb;
		   $wp_table_name = $wpdb->prefix . $table_name;
		   if($wpdb->get_var("SHOW TABLES LIKE '".$table_name."'") != $table_name) {
				$sql_create_table = "CREATE TABLE " . $wp_table_name . " ( " . $sql . " ) ;";
				require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/upgrade.php');
				dbDelta($sql_create_table);
 
			//create option for table version
				$option_name = $table_name.'_tbl_version';
				$newvalue = $table_version;
				  if ( get_option($option_name) ) {
					    update_option($option_name, $newvalue);
					  } else {
					    $deprecated=' ';
					    $autoload='no';
					    add_option($option_name, $newvalue, $deprecated, $autoload);
				  }
			//create option for table name
				$option_name = $table_name.'_tbl';
				$newvalue = $wp_table_name;
				  if ( get_option($option_name) ) {
					    update_option($option_name, $newvalue);
					  } else {
					    $deprecated=' ';
					    $autoload='no';
					    add_option($option_name, $newvalue, $deprecated, $autoload);
				  }
		}
 
	// Code here with new database upgrade info/table Must change version number to work.
	$installed_ver = get_option( $table_name.'_tbl_version' );
	     if( $installed_ver != $table_version ) {
		  $sql_create_table = "CREATE TABLE " . $wp_table_name . " ( " . $sql . " ) ;";
	      require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/upgrade.php');
	      dbDelta($sql_create_table);
	      update_option( $table_name.'_tbl_version', $table_version );
	      }
	    }

Using the function is quite simple and can save a few lines of code. especially if you need to install several new tables.

Here is an example of database_install.php:

function my_plugin_data_tables_install () {
$table_version = MY_PLUGIN_VERSION; //Call the plugin version.
//Install the first table
$table_name = "my_first_plugin_tbl";
$sql = "id mediumint(9) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
	  time bigint(11) DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL,
	  name tinytext NOT NULL,
	  text text NOT NULL,
	  url VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL,
	  UNIQUE KEY id (id)";
my_plugin_run_install  ($table_name, $table_version, $sql);
 
//Install the second table
$table_name = "my_second_plugin_tbl";
$sql = "id mediumint(9) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
	   category_name VARCHAR(100) DEFAULT NULL,
	   category_identifier VARCHAR(45) DEFAULT NULL,
	   category_desc TEXT,
	   display_desc VARCHAR (4) DEFAULT NULL,
	  UNIQUE KEY id (id)";
my_plugin_run_install  ($table_name, $table_version, $sql);
}

I hope this helps some of the WordPress plugin authors out there.

Event Listings and Registration Pages

This WordPress plugin provides a way to take online registrations for events such as conference and seminars that are held live. Events are managed quickly and easily from within the WordPress dashboard.

The plugin also uses the PayPal IPN to record payments to the built in WordPress database. It allows you to capture the registering persons contact information to the WordPress database as well as provides the ability to send the registrar to your PayPal payment site for online collection of event fees. PayPal payments are captured to the database using the PayPal Standard IPN.

Reporting features provide a list of events, list of attendees, and excel export.

Download Plugin | View Example (free version) | Upgrade to Pro Version | Support Forum | Comment

If you like this plugin, please consider making a small donation or clicking on a few of the ads displayed on the site.

Installation:

1. After unzipping, upload everything in the ‘paypal-events-registration’ folder to your ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory (preserving directory structure).
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
3. Go to the Event Registration Menu and Configure Organization and enter your company info – note you will need a PayPal id if you plan on accepting PayPal payments
4. Go to the Event Setup and create a new event, make sure you select ‘make active’.
5. Create a new page (not post) on your site. Put {EVENTREGIS} in it on a line by itself.

Note: if you are upgradings from a previous version please backup your data prior to upgrade.

If you have watched the video below and are having trouble installing the plugin or just need additional support. Please visit our “Premium Support” page or view the FAQ below.

Setting up the Plugin

Frequently Asked Questions:
To use, create a new page with only  {EVENTREGIS}

To display list of attendees of an active event use {EVENTATTENDEES} on a page or post.

*For URL link back to the payment/thank you page use  {EVENTREGPAY} on a new page.

*For PayPal to notify about payment confirmation use  {EVENTPAYPALTXN} on a new page.

*This page should be hidden from from your navigation menu. Exclude pages by using the ‘Exclude Pages‘ plugin from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/exclude-pages/ or using the ‘exclude’ parameter in your ‘wp_list_pages’ template tag. Please refer to http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/wp_list_pages for more information about excluding pages.

Email Confirmations:
For customized confirmation emails, the following tags can be placed in the email form and they will pull data from the database to include in the email.

[fname], [lname], [phone], [event],[description], [cost], [company], [co_add1], [co_add2], [co_city],[co_state], [co_zip],[contact], [payment_url], [start_date], [start_time], [end_date], [end_time]

Sample Mail Send:

***This is an automated response – Do Not Reply***

Thank you [fname] [lname] for registering for [event].  We hope that you will find this event both informative and enjoyable.  Should have any questions, please contact [contact].

If you have not done so already, please submit your payment in the amount of [cost].

Click here to review your payment information [payment_url].

Thank You.

Attendees and Payments

Screenshot of Events Registration with IPN Pro using the Calendar (Pro Version)

Screenshot of some Event Setup Options (Pro Version)

Events and Payments

Attention:
If you haven’t noticed, the WordPress plugin “Events Registration with PayPal IPN” is no longer available for download on WordPress.org. We found some serious security issues within the plugin (mostly deprecated WordPress database functions) so we decided it best to go ahead and remove the plugin until security was improved.

After a major overhaul of the back-end code we have re-released the plugin under a new name (Advanced Events Registration) and have also released a pro version of the plugin with many additional features.

It is highly recommended that you upgrade to the latest version of the Advanced Events Registration plugin ASAP.