Take Charge of Your Events Manager Website with Memberships

There are two kinds of stores. One– a brand-owned store. For example an Apple Store – it sells products belonging to only one brand. And, the other– a store which sells products belonging to different brands. For example, Best Buy – you’d find products from Apple, Microsoft, Dell and so on.

You could draw a parallel between these stores and event management websites as well. There are some events websites which sell tickets for their own events. And others which allow third-party organizations to sell their event tickets.

The primary difference between the two is management.

If you sell tickets for your own events, management is simple. You’re the only one in charge. But, as you can imagine, if third-party event organizers sell tickets on your site, management can be a nightmare.

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Management Problems can be Solved using Membership

Let’s take the example of a scenario. There are two users interested in posting an event on your website- A) Mr. X- a random user- you do not know anything about, and  b) Mr. John Mellow- an event organizer and a regular event poster.

If you could allow only one user to post, which user would you choose?

John Mellow, right?!

Undoubtedly, you’d have your reservations about Mr. X.

Guest users are like Mr.X, you do not know what to expect from them. Managing such users can be a challenge. On the other hand, members of your events website are like John Mellow. You’d be happy picking John Mellow over Mr. X any day.

Members are easier to control

With membership, a user is tied to your website. You can control the user’s activities and access, and maintain the user’s history:

1. You can control the user’s access
2. You can restrict the number of events a user can post, or the number of images a user can upload
3. You can maintain a history of events posted
4. You can maintain reviews about the user
5. You can prevent the member form posting events by suspending his/her membership

Membership can help Monetize Event Submission

By associating membership levels with a price, you can monetize event management as well:

1. You can create paid membership levels
2. Membership levels can be associated with the number of events which can be posted
3. You could charge members an extra fee to feature events

If this sounds interesting, and sounds like something you’d like to implement on your event management website, I’ll explain just how to do that next!!

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How to Add Membership to Your Event Management Website

For your event management website built with Events Manager you can seamlessly integrate a membership plugin using the hooks the plugin provides.

A membership plugin I would recommend would be Paid Membership Pro. Paid Membership Pro is a solid plugin. But there’s another reason why I’d recommend using PMPro with Events Manager.

It’s because I know both plugins would work perfectly well together, since I have hands on experience integrating the two!

Note:- You’d have to be fairly knowledgeable with WordPress development to integrate the two plugins. If you’re not a WordPress developer, you’ll be better off contacting one.

If you’re up for the task, here goes!

Setting-up Paid Membership Pro

1. You have to begin by setting up membership levels
2. Each membership level has to be associated with a price
3. We also have to assign an event posting limit* with each level as meta value.

*Now, this limit will control the number of events a member can post on the site, for the purchased membership level. For example, say you have a ‘Basic’ membership level. You can add a limit of ‘5’ for this level. For members who purchase ‘Basic’ membership will have the option to post 5 events.

But how to restrict the member from posting events?

We’ll take a look at just that, next!

Modifying Events Manager Plugin

To restrict the number of events a member can submit, we’ll have to modify the ‘Add Event’ option. This is because we need to prevent the member from adding a new event, once the member has exhausted the allotted limit.

#1 Override the events template, to hide ‘Add Event’ option upon exceeding the limit

You’ll have to override the events template. Head over to events-manager->templates->tables->events.php, and copy it to your theme, in a corresponding path as explained here.

Search for $show_add_new.

Now, modify the ‘Add New’ button display as follows:

// check if member has exhausted event posting limit
$event_post_allowance = get_user_meta( $current_user->ID, 'event_allowance_limit',true);
if(empty($event_post_allowance))
{
    $event_post_allowance = 0;
}
else
{
    $event_post_allowance = intval($event_post_allowance);
}
if(!empty($show_add_new) && ($event_post_allowance > 0) && current_user_can('edit_events'))
// rest of the code

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#2 Add filter on ‘Add Event’ display, to hide the button if limit is exceeded

If the add new event button was displayed, and the user has exhausted the limit by posting several events, we need to hide the button. For this, add the below code in functions.php of your child theme.

add_filter( 'em_event_validate', 'wdm_validate_event_allowance' );
function wdm_validate_event_allowance( $result, $this ) {
   global $EM_Notices, $current_user;

   if ( empty( $_REQUEST[ 'event_id' ] ) ) {
       // add constraint on event posting
       $event_post_allowance = get_user_meta( $current_user->ID, 'event_allowance_limit', true );
       if ( empty( $event_post_allowance ) ) {
           $event_post_allowance = 0;
       } else {
           $event_post_allowance = intval( $event_post_allowance );
       }
       if ( ! ($event_post_allowance > 0) ) {
           $EM_Notices->add_error( sprintf( __( "You can't post a new event.", "wdm" ) ) );
           return false;
       }
   }
}

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Similarly, you can control the number of images or files a member can upload.

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Your Thoughts?

Adding membership levels to your event management website can simplify the management process. If you agree or do not, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below!