Strangely enough, the SVN is having connectivity issues at the moment, so there may be a delay in the update reaching the repo, we’ll check again every few hours. In the meantime, you can grab the latest copy of events manager here.

5.1.6 Changeset

• Fixed multiple admin emails not being sent
• updated timthumb to v2.8.10
• updated placeholder outputting to avoid overwriting longer variations of similarly named placeholders
• fixed #_BOOKINGTICKETNAME
• single location and event pages will now use location-single.php and event-single.php templates
• fixed thumbnail image links on multisite to work with timthumb, thanks BinaryMoon for the tut!
• Reduced sql calls during booking object instantiation. $EM_Booking->custom doesn’t exist anymore, and notes must be loaded first with $EM_Booking->get_notes().
• EM_Category->has_events() depreciated, returns false always
• More wp_rewrite tweaks to improve compatability in certain setups
• fixed 24 hour formatting setting being ignored in timepicker
• fixed bad datepickers and other JS errors in single ticket mode
• fixed locations not being auto-approved if submitted via front-end and event is auto-approved.

Pro 2.1.3 Changeset

• added gateway transaction id to booking collumns
• fixed form editor validation problems

• Use #_EVENTCATEGORIESIMAGES, which will show the images of the categories an event belongs to
• Added yearly recurrences to the recurrence manager
• Added a cut-off date for bookings, so bookings can take place past event start dates
• Added #_CONTACTMETA placeholder, this works with Free or Pro, where you can use e.g. #_CONTACTMETA{dbem_phone} or any other valid user meta key. This comes in particularly useful when coupled with the new user fields editor in our last update for Pro users.
• Admin booking notification email can now be sent to multiple emails (comma delimited in settings)
• (pro) Manual bookings now allow for new users to be added together with a new booking, add coupon payment information, as well as custom payment amounts.

Events Manager 5.1.5 Changes

• rewritten booking email function, simpler, less error-prone, overrideable and yet same effect
• fixed tax not showing on booking table totals
• fixed booking objects get_price filters, removed em_booking_get_prices from em-ticket-booking.php in place of em_ticket_booking_get_price
• changed filter name em_tickets_bookings_get_prices to em_tickets_bookings_get_price (bad name according to convention)
• added booking status message filter
• fixed ical not working in non-permalinks mode ( must have /?ical=1 at end of home url )
• removed original CSV export link in place of booking table exporter, unless users made a custom template
• BuddyPress private group or normal private event info are now not shown in site activity.
• fixed some php warnings
• fixed certain languages breaking date formats
• fixed some issues with dev mode checks
• fixed booking button and multiple bookings at once bug
• fixed ticket spaces export bug
• fixed rss pubdate format
• improved CSS for booking tables front-end
• edit event locations dropdown shown to users if they can read events (previously only if could edit)
• updated the POT file and Swedish translations
• cleaned up the RSS filters so HTML now is allowed in feed
• fixed bp group hidden events not going private
• fixed countries list not working for certain languages

Events Manager Pro 2.1.2 Changes

• allowed form labels to accept HTML
• fixed paypal resume payment button
• fixed paypal payment status text
• modified coupon calculation to add tax after discount, if tax is added separately
• made paypal bookings editable even if pending
• fixed various form editor bugs
• fixed email problems with paypal confirmations
• added more html css classes to booking form
• made update notices more user-friendly if pro-api-key isn’t valid

Here’s a list of what’s changed:

• fixed WP rewrite issue when assigned events page slug = events slug
• fixed minimum ticket price placeholder problems
• added dev version auto-updater
• improved performance in events with booking widget listings
• improved performance in date range searches (e.g. calendar)
• reverted to using .delegate() instead of jQuery 1.7+ .on() listener for compatibility
• slightly improved mail options logic and layout (plus php mail can send html emails now)
• fixed BuddyPress conflict if groups component is disabled
• fixed event spaces not overriding displayed values in booking stats pages

We’ll talk more about the features we’ve squeezed in too in the next 5.1.5 update.

One issue particularly which I’ve made a shotgun decision for is with regards to the JavaScript errors people are coming across. This is NOT an EM bug, but most commonly a bug with your theme, here’s why:

Some themes use a CDN or a private theme file as the jQuery library instead of using the default WordPress library. The idea behind the former is to speed up page loading time by taking the file off your server.  The problem with using a CDN is that if you hard-code the link to the jQuery library, at one point in time your theme will break because WordPress already has a set of jQuery files it uses and updates from time to time. When it’s the latter, it’s just plain old bad practice.

In this case, we’ve had to depreciate the use of jQuery’s .live() function, and we opted for the new alternative, .on(). However, since loads of themes are misbehaving as described above, they are using versions of jQuery less than 1.7, yet WordPress 3.3 uses this version. This makes the minimum version requirement rather redundant, so if your theme did this, let your theme author know what they’re doing wrong! In the end, it was decided to use the interim alternative, .delegate()

New Features

Here’s a breakdown of what’s in the new updates:

New Pro Features

Let’s start with showing off the pro features, because the rest are all available in the main (free) plugin, yet what’s great is how these features will fold into these new ones further down.

• Custom User Fields -  Instead of requesting the same information from users time and time again, you can now create your own custom user fields, just like you do with booking forms, and then insert these fields in your booking form! The advantage of this is that users will be able to modify this information from within their user profiles.
• Multiple Custom Booking Forms! - You can now create more than one booking form, which means you can take event-specific information if needed! This is currently available within the form editor admin menu, but in the near future, this will also be available to users on a per-event basis!

Bookings Table facelift, phase 2

In version 5.1, a new booking form table was introduced with limited functionality. This is a phased introduction, as we’re going to be making this a very powerful widget for administering bookings in one place. 5.1.4 marks our second phase, which revolves around adding customizable column information and CSV exports.

• Sortable bookings table columns – The bookings table got another major update with more column choices and a handy sorting interface. Moreover, your settings are now saved so that you don’t have to keep adding those fields into view, time and time again! Pro users will find this particularly useful as it now also allows custom booking form and user fields to be included in the table!
• CSV export upgrade - If sortable columns weren’t enough, you can also export the results shown on your bookings tables, whether viewing one event or many events. Moreover, you can also choose to export entire bookings, or split the information up by tickets within the bookings. Pro users will also be happy to hear that any fields you can use in sortable columns can be exported.

Better Booking Management

Once a booking is made, there were limited options with regards to modifying that booking. Admins can now change any detail of a booking and resend emails.

• Resend Emails – Did someone not get the message first time round? View their individual booking in the admin area and you’ll now see an option to resend your email.
• Change booking status – You can now change a booking status from within the edit booking page to any desired status, and you now have the choice whether or not to send the corresponding notification email to that user.
• Edit booking information – You could previously edit ticket information in Events Manager, but now you can also edit your other booking form information. Users with the Pro add-on will benefit most from this, since alongside the comment field, it is possible to edit the custom booking form fields.

Other Updates

Whilst the main focus at the moment is on booking features, some other unrelated features will inevitably get done along the way!

• Draggable Google Maps marker position –  A long overdue feature for those in countries where Google just can’t correctly pinpoint your locations! When editing a location (directly, not when editing an event with a saved location), or creating a new one, you should now be able to move the marker to a different position in the map.
• BuddyPress private group events – Events Manager will now treat any private group event as a member-only event, meaning it won’t be shown on any listings. This applies to both public and hidden groups, if the event is private, it’s hidden.
• Get that ID – Since the move to version 5, the event id, category id and location id have been hard to find. No more! When viewing the lists in your admin area, click screen options and you’ll now see an option to include the ID as a column.

Events Manager 5.1.4 Updates

Here’s a snippet from the changelog in our readme.txt file. As you can see, a lot went into this update!

• customizable cancel booking message and confirmation
• 24 hour option for time pickers possible in admin area
• wp archive options visible now regardless of event/location page options
• further fixes to post thumbnail compatibility (hopefully fixed for good!)
• added “Add New” location and recurring events to admin bar
• blank pending status corrected in my bookings pages
• fixed event categories when event is a subsite event shown on main site
• added Swedish datepicker translations
• fixed pagination issue
• updated Danish, Dutch, Swedish language files
• small fix for duplicating plugins that keep the event id when saving dupe (WPML fix)
• added ticket name field in single ticket mode
• fixed pre 2k events showing in future events list in admin area
• changed calendar linking so it works on all/most themes without JS
• fixed bad translation of JS calendar days in Italian
• hard-coded country names for currently translated languages
• fixed some incompatibilities with Yoast Breadcrumbs
• modified date fixed in ical
• single event ical endpoint detection improved
• fixed reserved spaces miscalculation bug
• invalid taxonomy ids now stripped from searches
• improvements to wp rewrite compatibility by registering events and locations in varied order
• fixed recurrence bug for single day events ending next early morning
• depreciated attributes deleted if blank and resaved
• single-event.php now overrides EM regardless of page settings
• front-end deleted events now trashed (if available) rather than deleted
• fixed errors on recurring event creation with bad ticket data
• admin localized js variables (messages) hidden to public
• php and wp mail functions called directly instead of via em/phpmailer
• depreciated js .live() calls and used jQuery 1.7′s .on() function, hence min wp 3.3 version

Events Manager Pro 2.1 Updates

Updates to Pro mostly revolved around rewriting how custom forms are handled, which also paves the way to further custom forms like individual attendee data.

• detached booking form editor into a re-usable class for user fields and future custom forms
• booking form editor is now “form editor” in menu, containing all forms that can be edited in EM
• offline payment confirmation window can be properly cancelled (bugfix)
• membership key options now showing properly in MS mode

More on the way!

This is just a small preview of what’s to come. With 5.x being very stable now, we’re now focusing more on features than on bugfixes, which will directly translate to more features! Spring is in season, so it’s time to bloom….

Changes to 5.1.3

• added is_past and is_future conditional placeholders for events
• corrected conditional regex pattern to allow multiple duplicate conditionals and nesting
• to have nested conditionals, add a record called dbem_conditional_recursions and give it a value for the number of recursions you want EM to check.
• fixed some wp_rewrite irregularities due to slug combinations/conflicts
• fixed template folder format files not overriding default formats when correct filter is intercepted

Changes to Pro 2.0.2

• added html filtering for ticket names sent to paypal
• fixed offline manual partial payment formats bug
• entering membership key will flush updates and force a recheck
• fixed captcha includes breaking form submissions
• added classes to custom booking form html
• added cancel url to PayPal gateway
• fixed Authorize.net gateway creating new WordPress accounts when card authorization fails

We’ve simplified both sides and have made it very easy for developers to add their own custom gateways. We know, because we then proceeded to add Authorize.net AIM the exact same way! You can certainly expect a tutorial in the near future showing you how this is done.

This has taken up most of our time this past month, which lays down a great foundation and we’re excited to get on with more Gateways and features (soon to come – PayPal Pro and Google Checkout).

However, that doesn’t mean we can’t sneak in another feature at the same time! We’ve added another long-awaited feature…. Coupons! You can give time or quantity conditional discounts in percentages or fixed amounts, which you can just apply to your registered users. For more information and screenshots, check out the docs.

A lot has gone into the 5.1.x update, much of it being under the hood. However,  we’re now getting to that point where the scales are tipping in favor of adding new features rather than fixing bugs, so this is just a small sign of things to come!

Here’s a list of the new features/improvements:

• By popular demand, overall event spaces! Now you can have two tickets e.g. with 20 spaces each, yet offer a limit of 20 spaces for the whole event!
• Booking Button allows cancellations as well now.
• You can now prevent specific booking emails by leaving the subject blank.
• We’ve simplified the booking form templates, and hopefully won’t have to make changes to these anytime soon.
• Price related placeholders! e.g. #_EVENTPRICERANGE, #_EVENTPRICEMAX, #_EVENTPRICEMIN
• Location placeholder – #_LOCATIONNEXTEVENT – enabling you to make a map of upcoming events using locations_map shortcode.

Here’s a breakdown of changes/fixes:

5.1.2

• fixed critical auto-delete auto-draft recurrences bug
• this bug happens if you ever clicked ‘add new recurring event’ and just left the page, 7 days on, this draft will be deleted automatically, and may delete your other events by mistake.
• recurrence pattern fix
• calendar nav links now will play nice with search engines, and if you click on them without JS enabled, they’ll show the following month
• RSS link fixed for non-permalink blogs
• added sorting options for the my bookings page
• fixed a

• fixed JS Search bug

• improved booking tables for easier customizations via hooks
• added reamde files and comments to template folders
• calendars can now link directly to events on single event days
• post_id now can be used in single event shortcode
• fixed italian datepicker translation
• fixed GBP corrupted symbol encoding
• fixed some search issues admin and front-side
• fixed some notes placeholders not formatting text properly (e.g. the category notes placeholder)
• BP now reports cancellations correctly
• fixed empty TR in calendars
• region now prefilled for current locations in add event forms.
• fixed some MS permissions issues
• moved anonymous event submissions back into single per-blog settings
• added “email exists” customizable message

Version 5.0.5 Changes

• bookings table now within a unified ajax table
• added location attributes, works just like even attributes
• added currency formatting
• added “all day” format setting for #_EVENTTIMES
• added calendar ordering an limits (full-sized calendar)
• moved ‘add new’ button next to event lists outside wp-admin
• fixed some redirection issues for some themes
• small date formatting fixes for international english
• ticket bookings now deleted with overall booking
• categories now copied correctly when duplicating events
• tickets can now just be shown to logged out users
• added is_long, not_long, logged_in, not_logged_in, fully_booked and has_spaces conditionals
• fixed a preg issue with date formatting
• booking modifications possible again (ticket numbers)
• pending space counting in emails corrected

Pro 1.5 Changes

• paypal now pre-registers user before redirecting if applicable (more stable, more possibilities)
• added #_BOOKINGTXNID to booking placeholders for paypal transaction ID
• fixed placeholders for custom form fields
• html now accepted in booking form feedback in gateways
• small usability improvements to manual booking form
• transactions tabled now unified to reduce clutter
• paypal return url modified to use a static file (wp-admin/admin-ajax.php) and the previous url as a fallback

Alongside this, there’s been a few solutions upgrade woes due to errors in certain themes and in some cases, WordPress itself!

• Fixing a theme-caused catchable error warning
• Updating with capitalized database table names

5.0.3

• Searching from/to without one or another date works as intended
• Fixed various object property names using old conventions causing some undesired booking errors.
• Fixed front-end edit links from appearing within the admin area.
• Fixed #_EDITEVENTURL
• Fixed location placeholder output/filter function problems, which also affects booking templates.
• Fixed missing php in opening tag of search template

1.44

• Booking form regex rules will accept blank values if required isn’t checked
• PayPal payments won’t proceed if user email is already registered.
• PayPal bookings-in-progress aren’t considered as pending anymore unless there’s a booking timeout set. More options will be available for booking management shortly.

Next update will hopefully contain more features than fixes!

Catchable fatal error: Object of class WP_Error could not be converted to string in…..

There’s a good chance this applies to you.

A few users have had this issue and in all instances this was a theme related issue with regards to not being ready for WordPress Custom Post Types that don’t have regular post categories (and at least on category).

You can verify this by adding this:

function my_em_posttype_fix(){
	register_taxonomy_for_object_type('category',EM_POST_TYPE_EVENT);
	register_taxonomy_for_object_type('category',EM_POST_TYPE_LOCATION);
}
add_action('init','my_em_posttype_fix',100);

to your theme’s functions.php file, visit the event, verify it still doesn’t work, edit the event and give it any normal wp cateogry, then view the event again. It hopefully works now.

A few alternatives to fix this for all events

You can either add regular post categories to events and locations, or fix your theme. Here’s two ways to assign post categories to get this working:

• Do the above and bulk edit your events and locations, giving them the relevant category. Future events and locations should have a default category assigned.
• Use the below snippet below the above snippet, and on visiting an event or location, it will assign ‘uncategorized’ if no categories exist. If you don’t have ‘uncategorized’, rename it to a category slug that does exist. You may need to reload the event page once, but from then on it’ll be ok for all visitors.

function my_em_posttype_cat_default($EM_Object){
	global $post;
	if( $post->post_type == EM_POST_TYPE_EVENT || $post->post_type == EM_POST_TYPE_LOCATION ){
		$categories = get_the_category();
		if( count($categories) == 0 ){
			//assign a category to this
			wp_set_object_terms($post->ID, 'uncategorized','category');
		}
	}
}
add_action('template_redirect','my_em_posttype_cat_default', 1,1);