Category: Product Updates

We now have API integration – write once, publish to your Event APP!

API: a set of functions and procedures that allow the creation of applications which access the features or data of an operating system, application, or other service.

What does this mean to you?

In short: Your Event App can pull the content from your website.

We’ll for sometime now, we have been selling third-party apps and more often being asked to integrate with event apps. It seemed crazy (and time-consuming) to you (and therefore us), that you would have to enter content into the website and an APP.

So we have been working with Double Dutch to create the API.

What content can you send to the APP?

Seminars, Speakers, Sponsors.

What is the price?

£350 for the year. Please get in-touch if you are interested in using, buying or integrating.

Example APP

We have successfully linked into the DoubleDutch APP For National League of Cities conference in Austin.

To view a demo of the app…

The API data is refreshed every 4 hours.

Thursday, October 16, 2014
Developer Diary: September
Most of the development time in September has been dedicated to our new theme ‘Prism’ to be launched in October. There are a number of functionality improvements which come along with this and are bundled into the theme.

Conference Websites Major updates
- Upgraded to WordPress 4.0
- New media library experience with the grid layout.
- Updated text editor to expand as you type, also ensures the toolbar follows you down the page
New: Prism theme
- Beta Testing: Just launched the open beta!!!
New: Exhibitors
- Alpha Testing: currently in alpha testing, hoping to be available for release in October!!!
Sphere theme (formerly the 2014 CW Theme)
- NEW anchor shortcode added. Use [anchor id=”example”] to create an anchor point
- Added opengraph declaration to header file, should fix sharing issue with linkedin
- Renamed theme to ‘Sphere’ in line with new product line updates
- Fixed issue with the fixed links on ipad and other tablets
- tweaked the text widget css
Wedge theme (formerly the 2012 CW theme)
- Updated: WordPress 4 support
- Renamed theme to ‘Wedge’ in line with new product line names.
- Added screenshot to match
Site Admin
- Removed the shortcode helper plugin from the admin for administrators
- Updated Images now compressed to a maximum of 2000 pixels rather than the originally restrictive 1000
- Fixed issue in certain cases where the ‘discourage search engines’ setting was not being honored
- Updated admin menu reconfig so that it’s filterable
October is aimed at bug fixes and tweaks as well as polishing and improving the new functionality tied in with the Prism theme such as exhibitor lists.
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
EventBrite vs CWTickets Processing fees
The following calculations compares the processing and credit card fees of EventBrite vs our internal online payment registration system – CWTickets.

To use the form just enter figures for the Number of expected delegates and price per ticket. The form will then calculate the comparible prices of using EventBrite or CWTickets.
Number of delegates:
Price per ticket (est.)
Total revenue
Processing Fees:
EventBrite
Click here for more information
CWTickets using Stripe
Click here for more information.
Processing Fee Per Ticket:
2.5% + 65p, capped at £6.50
Processing Fee Per Ticket:
One off setup fee of £350.
Credit Card Processing Fee
3.5%
Credit Card Processing Fee
2.4% + 20p
Total Fees per Ticket
Total Fees per Ticket
TOTAL EventBrite costs
Based on estimates of tickets sold.
Total CWTickets Fees
Contact Details
If you would like to take this further, please add your enquiry to this box and click on submit.
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
New Functionality : Call to Action (CTA) Buttons

The new CTA Call to Action button system inserts fancy looking buttons into the page content of your site.

What do they look like:

They Look Like this

And then can also look like this:

An example with an icon

How to Use:

Click on the “Insert Button” button within the page editor:

Then complete the form – selecting from the many different options defining style and colour:

Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Developer Diary July / August
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The developer diary let's you in on the behind the scenes of the conference websites product. As a monthly section we'll aim to keep you up to date on the full list of amends that take place across the platform so you can keep up with what's fixed and what we've been working on.
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July and August have merged into a long run of developments. With new secretive functionality just over the horizon (to be announced soon) we’ve been busy behind the scenes. Whilst we’ve been working on a lot of structural changes in the foundations of the code we’ve also been able to dish out a new round of functional and aesthetic features for this new version.

Conference Websites Major updates
- Upgraded to WordPress 3.9
- Better inline image editing, resizing images in the editor
- Drag and Drop images in the editor
- New ‘Call to Action’ button creation tool (Only available on the 2014 theme
- New Image thumbnail editor, allows better refinement specifically for speaker images.
2014 Theme
- NEW anchor shortcode added. Use [anchor id=”example”] to create an anchor point
- NEW supporting CSS for the new CTA button tool
- NEW new option to adjust text color of the footer disclaimer
- NEW options set for the editable thumbnails. Hides all image sizes by default, then adds required ones.
- NEW new search engine optimisation fields for pages, can now edit page description/title
- NEW support css for gravity forms Poll’s extension plugin
- NEW support for exhibitor single pages ( not relevent right now 😉 )
- NEW Support for the Post Thumbnail Editor plugin including default option values
- NEW noIndex setting to pages. This also hooks into the sitemap to remove the page from the sitemap
- Fixed bug with the taxonomy templates not pulling in the correct data
- Fixed shortcode edit links broken in wp 3.9
- Tweaks to sidebar nav styling, allows the word conference to fit into a single half width button
- Tweaks to mobile navigation to allow longer sublinks.
- Tweaks made to the rounded corner settings on sidebar widgets (now keeps a square corner top left if there is a title)
- Updated: mobile version spacing and padding
- Updated: Re-Enabled the iframe shortcode admin as this had been blocked
- Updated: Sponsor logo size increased in sidebar widget
- Updated: reworking of the media upload script to allow gallery selection in preparation
- Updated CSS for footer content to ensure disclaimer and nav can sit side by side.
- Updated styling and layouts of taxonomy pages to allow more content to be added without breaking aesthetic
- Updated seminar time picker to allow full 24 hours
- Removed hardcoded meta data from <head>. It’s now added using wp_head hook from plugin
- Removed code flipping the holding theme back on in odd circumstances
- Removed redundent admin columns from media and pages view in preparation for the media library plugin
Seminars
- Fixed issue with wp 3.9 with shortcode edit buttons breaking the text editor
- Fixed issue with the speaker role reordering (this issue is a TB fix from several months ago – code has been tested and works fine but worth watching for any future issues incase this wasn’t finished code)
- Tweaked the default speaker avatar on the seminar list
- Removed seminar quick edit functionality as it no longer worked and looked awful anyway. No usability loss.
Speakers
- New Editable speaker thumbnails for more precise control over the images
- Updated added specific editable image size for featured speaker thumbnail to the featured speaker layout
- Fixed issue with shortcode edit buttons on wp 3.9
Sponsors
- New sponsor logos sizings. Width increased to 200px
- Fixed issue with shortcode edit buttons not working in wp 3.9
Conference Websites 2012 Theme

This theme is currently on a ‘support only’ status, as you can tell we’re not giving it the full backing of the 2014 theme, the reason is that the frame of the system is too dated, so we built a new theme (2014) which users can upgrade to for free by contacting us.
- Fixed issue with wp 3.9 with shortcode edit buttons breaking editor
- Removed quick edit functionality as it no longer worked and looked awful anyway. No usability loss.
- Fixed issue with the speaker role reordering
- Tweaked the default speaker avatar on the seminar list
June Developer Diary
Monday, August 11, 2014
Polls: You asked and we delivered
Polls are an important tool to get quick feedback from your users. We have launched an easy to use, feature rich Polls system.

Here is a demo:

http://demo.conference-websites.co.uk/

And here’s how to do it:

Support article.

Features:
- Seamless Integration.
- Public or Private Poll Results: Poll results are only displayed to the user when using the Poll Widget or Shortcodes. This makes it easy to poll users on any type of form, including order forms!
- Gravity Forms Powered: Conditional logic, limiting after a certain date or number of votes… it’s no different than creating any form in Gravity Forms!
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Developer Diary: June
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The developer diary let's you in on the behind the scenes of the conference websites product. As a monthly section (starting today) we'll aim to keep you up to date on the full list of amends that take place across the platform so you can keep up with what's fixed and what we've been working on.
```
Mike joined the team as a specialist in PHP development and an immense knowledge of server setup and optimisations.

Throughout June Mike and Dom have been paying a lot of attention to the server setup. Readjusting some of the foundations of Conference Websites. This should give a tighter hold on our development environment as we’ve switched our version control hosts but also some optimisations on the server. Whilst there isn’t any immediate reward on this switch it will mean bugs and new features can blast through development much quicker in future.

Due to the nature of the server work it’s blocked the product development in June but we’ve still managed to get some vital fixes and tweaks through.

Changelog

New Features
- NEW Product highlighter added as a standard feature across 2014 theme sites.
- NEW anchor shortcode added. Use [anchor id=”example”] to create an anchor point
Updates / Changes / Fixes
- Updated: seminar time picker to allow full 24 hours
- Updated: Fixed issue with the initial splash theme creating a site with the new template
- Fixed: issue with the speaker role reordering
- Fixed: Missing image for the the default speaker avatar on the seminar list
- Removed: quick edit functionality to adjust session times as it no longer worked. Due to the new taxonomies added this feature has become bloated so decision was made to remove as it’s no longer quicker to use the quick-edit.
- Updated: Clean up in seminar coding to avoid clash with main events plugin.
Friday, July 4, 2014
Conference Websites now have a payment system for Ticket registration

We have partnered with Credit Card processing company Stripe.com and Gravity Forms – the leading WordPress Form builder (packaged with Conference-Websites).

The price for this is £350 setup with the following Stripe processing fees – 20p + 2.4%. For further information on pricing, please visit:

https://stripe.com/pricing

Please contact us for more information – [email protected].

Thursday, June 5, 2014
New Functionality :: Pop-out Adverts
The Advert / Teaser pop-outs is now available to use on the Conference-Website.co.uk Platform.

Here is a demo on https://demo.conference-websites.co.uk/

Example: pop up advert

Features:
1. Displays / edits:
  – Images – 100px x 100px
  – Title
  – Teaser text
  – Link text & link
2. Only displays to new visitors not returning
3. Mobile optimised for phone or tablet
Administration / how to use it

Administration > Settings > Popout Settings

Pop-out administration screens.
Thursday, June 5, 2014
Conference Website for Mobile users

A significant chunk of web traffic to our Live Event websites come from mobile. Considering how your users view your website content on a mobile device should be an essential part of any web strategy for your live event.

In this article I outline 3 options open to you.

OPTION 1: FREE : Web app / mobile version of the site

i.e. Do nothing and use the online website version of the conference website.

Your Conference Website is already optimised for iPhone and Android. Click here to see the an article on how to promote your website as a web app.

Advantages: Free and quick, no need to do anything other than build the website.
Disadvantages: Online Only, not offline

OPTION 2: FREE : Add your site to Eventbase

A live event portal. You can load your conference website content to Eventbase. Users download the eventbase app to view your conference content.

Give attendees a complete guide to your event in a feature-rich native app for iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry and mobile website.

Advantages: Free and provides an offline version of the website content.
Disadvantages: Users have to view the app via the eventbase app, so no direct download of the app content. Also, content needs to be replicated to the app.

OPTION 3: £500 : Full Native App

We have teamed up with app development company attendify to offer a web app version of your conference website.

Advantages: Full and “proper” native app.
Disadvantages: Content needs to be replicated to the app.

Friday, November 1, 2013