Support

January 24, 2014 at 10:23 am

Hi Tam,

I can follow up with each of your questions below:

1. There’s an error showing up on my event page on my test site: http://littlefield.tandandesign.com/2014/01/23/the-brooklyn-sets-hetrick-martin-institute-fundraiser/
that reads:
Warning: Creating default object from empty value in /home3/rebel/public_html/littlefield/wp-content/plugins/event-espresso/templates/event_post.php on line 60
Not sure what that’s about. Could you please let me know how to fix this?

One way is to turn error display off before you go to production. The following can be added to your wp-config.php file:

@ini_set( 'display_errors', 0 );

After you make that change, you will need to re-save that event.

2. How can I modify (which file) the output of the list view on the home page? http://littlefield.tandandesign.com/
Is the file I have modify event_list_display.php & event_list.php ?
I don’t want the full description to be listed there. Or how many tickets are left. Is there a field for this or a way to do this easily that I’m overlooking? A “more” code perhaps? I turned of display description on event post page but that just turns off the description on the actual event page. That’s no good. Could you give me a tip on this?

You can remove the entire description from the event list page by going into the Event Espresso>Template settings and set “Display short descriptions in the event listings?” to No. If you want a partial description there, and maybe a more info link that takes you to a separate “More Info” page (per your question #3) you can use the more tag. Everything in the event’s description before the more tag will display there, everything after will not.

The available spaces text can be removed from the event_list_display.php template, or you can avoid hacking the template by adding this line of CSS to Pageline’s custom stylesheet:

<code>.spaces-available {
display:none;
}</code>

3. I want to have a BUY NOW button on the home page events list view so that people can go directly from there to buy a ticket. Right now it gives me a Register or Add to Cart Option. Is there an easy way to change Add to Cart to Buy Tickets? And skip the Registration process completely? a) it seems that you have to “register” later anyway before you check out so a bit redundant for my needs and b) It seems it creates a strange URL: http://littlefield.tandandesign.com/?ee=1
that i’m assuming is a dynamically generated page? That’s a problem because I’m using pagelines (one of your suggested themes) and the template it defaults to has a slider on it and I’m not sure how to remove this. But that’s almost besides the point because really, who “registers” for a concert? No one that I know of and I think that’s very confusing for site visitors. I imagine this is something that a lot of venue owners will want to have easily changed so is there a way to do that easily?
Do you have a suggestion or solution that others have used to streamline the purchasing process?
Ideally from home page I’d like the process to have two choices:
a. BUY TICKET button that let’s you go to take their name and email address (for will call purposes) and perhaps a question to see if they want to sign up for a particular newsletter for a genre. i guess this would be a “registration” of sorts.
b. MORE INFO that goes to event page with full description. From there they could go to BUY TICKET option which goes to above “registration” page.

No one registers to go for a concert, and there’s a simple solution for this: You can change any of the text strings to change their wording by following this guide:

http://staging.eventespresso.com/wiki/how-to-change-wording-with-poedit/

I think part of the issue that you’re seeing with the slider is you have the [ESPRESSO_EVENTS] (or main registration page) set to be the home page. If you can move that page to a non-home page that will be best. Then, you can still display a list of events by placing [EVENT_LIST] on the home page. You’ll need to be sure to update the main registration page setting in Event Espresso>General Settings.

4. How can I change the thumbnail size on the home page? What file is that connected to? I want the other images on the event page to be larger of course but the list view on the homepage to be smaller so that people don’t have to scroll so much.

This is something you can set in your theme’s custom stylesheet:

<code>#event_container_pagination .ee-featured-image {
width: 100px;
}</code>

You’ll likely adjust the width value to your preference.

5. What is “create a post” do exactly for the event? It’s at the bottom of the event page in the dashboard and I’m not sure what the logic/functionality behind that is.

It automatically creates a blog post for that event. It’s optional. It comes in handy if you want to auto publish posts about the event to your blog.

6. Do we have to create an end time for an event? Often we don’t know as it’s a live show. What do you suggest in this case?

Yes, end times are required for the event to work as expected (esp. if you use the calendar or the JSON API). I would suggest setting it to 2AM the following day. That’s when the bars typically close.

7. I created a themeroller theme but want to make further css modifications that would affect styles on the list view, etc. Do you suggest that I make them in my pagelines CSS or on the themeroller CSS? What is best practice?

Either is fine.

7.I bought a VIP membership–what does that mean exactly? It seems I still have to post through forum. Does this get me anything more? Is it faster response time?

The VIP membership’s benefit is faster than average response times in the forums.

January 24, 2014 at 10:42 am

Hi Tan,

Technically they are warnings, not errors. They’ll show up in cases where an option isn’t set yet, or you’re running PHP 5.4 which ee3 hasn’t been optimized for yet. Like I said earlier, you’ll want to make sure you turn off PHP error display before you go live. A further technique is to set it up so the errors are logged but not displayed. The WP codex has a go to code snippet that can be added to the wp-config.php file so you can quickly toggle error logging on and off, but not display the errors on the website:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php#Configure_Error_Logging

/**
 * This will log all errors notices and warnings to a file called debug.log in
 * wp-content only when WP_DEBUG is true. if Apache does not have write permission,
 * you may need to create the file first and set the appropriate permissions (i.e. use 666).
 */

define( 'WP_DEBUG', true ); // Or false
if ( WP_DEBUG ) {
    define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true );
    define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false );
    @ini_set( 'display_errors', 0 );
}

January 24, 2014 at 1:13 pm

Hi Tan,

You can limit the description on the event list view without making any changes to the template code. Here’s how:

In the event’s description you’ll add a more tag at the place where you want the short description to end. Like this:

short description here 

<!--more-->

continue with long description

2) If you copy your language files to /wp-content/uploads/espresso/languages, they don’t get overwritten. Alternatively, if you use the custom function way instead, you’ll place that function in /wp-content/uploads/espresso/custom_functions.php and it will not be overwritten there either.