What's new in Elevent

After seeing some users get themselves into hot water--by customizing each Elevent Event in WordPress independent of customizing the whole event template--it was possible to temporarily create a situation where you might choose to stop keeping Elevent and your WordPress website synced up. That semi-defeats the purpose of having it fully integrated.

To guard against this, we decoupled an Event's description from the standard post content area of Elevent Events. In this way, you will be freed up to add/customize whatever text, block, or media content you want on each Elevent Event's post content area and keep syncing to your heart's content.

Changes in v0.4.6:

• Introduced a new, separate Description field. The Description from Elevent will now update the Description field instead of the default post content for Elevent Events. This makes it easy to highly customize the Elevent Event post content without it being overwritten on re-sync.
• Removed some unintentional debug info displaying on the new calendar views.
• Added custom color selection to taxonomies for color-coding events on the new calendar views.

For the web techies:

Important: For event descriptions to display the way you want, this update requires updates to Custom Fields and changes to any custom single-event-page templates the site currently uses. Back up your site before completing this update.

1. To update Custom Fields, re-import Custom Fields into ACF from the updated file found in the Docs. If you have made any customizations to Custom Fields on Elevent Events or Elevent Showtimes (You shouldn't), this re-import will wipe out those customizations. You have the option to re-apply your customizations or contact us via support--we'll tell you which manual changes to make to custom fields.
2. To update single-event custom templates, add the Description field/shortcode to your Elementor or WordPress template(s) in your child theme so it will display.

Please note that after updating, Description will no longer update Elevent Event post content. Future syncs will not show a description unless you take steps #1 and #2 above.

If, after update, you see a Description twice on event landing pages, delete the description in the Elevent Event post content. Future events will not have a description in 2 places.

Here's a fun ticketing wonk phrase to add to your arsenal: "Late-night disambiguation". Late-night disambiguation is the art of making it clear to end-users exactly what day you're talking about.

Whether you have your own custom website integration (through the External Web API) or use the Elevent for WordPress plugin, instead of displaying 12:00 AM on the following day (technically correct but who has time to think about what that means), we'll display any midnight times as 11:59 PM--the last minute of that day.

While less technically correct, it's worth it to be a minute off to communicate clearly to end-users.

We've released some bug fixes to the WordPress plugin and a lot of new code for some new calendar views that is still work-in-progress:

• Released a preview version of Monthly, Weekly, and Daily Schedule calendar views. These are not yet ready for full production use.
• Fixed a bug where virtual showtimes would not always remain visible in all views until the End Date
• Fixed a bug where External Ticketing Links wouldn't work on Elementor templates.

We've released some small improvements to the WordPress Plugin:

• Fixed disappearing showtimes/events when server time was a high number of hours ahead of organization's local time
• Event Time Zone, used for displaying base time zones for virtual events, will no longer get overwritten on sync
• Events set to "Private" in WordPress will now remain Private after sync (or will remain in whatever status they were in beforehand)

Elevent for WordPress now has a slick new ability to combine sub-events into shorts blocks, line-ups, or in-event schedules. Introducing multi-part events in the Elevent for WordPress plugin.

On each Elevent Event in WordPress, you will see a new field--Multi-Part Event.

By adding some sub-events to a multi-part event, you create a relationship between a ticketable event that contains several sub-events, and each individual sub-event, no matter what it is or how you display it. This allows each sub-event, whether it's a short film, short performance, piece, conference session, performer, or act to have its own findable landing page. That's more surface area for each ticketable event--more ways for customers to gain interest.

Multi-part events come with a handy new WordPress shortcode you'll want to add to your single event page templates: multi_part_event

On the event page for the multi-part event, in addition to selling tickets, it'll automatically build a little breakdown showing off what's in store.

Meanwhile, on the landing page for each individual sub-event, they'll see what it's presented alongside and be directed to buy tickets to the whole program.

You'll need the Elevent for WordPress plugin to take advantage of this feature.

We've introduced a new Event List view for the WordPress plugin, using the new Elevent ticket button widgets.

The List View is ideal for schedules with extremely dense schedules, particularly for a single event with many showtimes in a day, week, or month. You'll lead with the List View when date/time and location are the driving factors in a customer's shopping experience (as opposed to choosing what event(s) they want to attend). This is particularly effective for cinema or live performances doing a run of a show.

Each showtime button offers users the ability to add tickets to their cart right then and there.

Or, if they want to explore the event in more depth, they can click More Details and become ensconced in all that there is about that event.

The List View uses the new ticket button widgets, so it's easy for users to pick out tickets from a schedule or list of showtimes without going anywhere else.

For Elevent for WordPress users, there are now two options for how to display ticketing on the landing page for an event--inline and the new list mode.

The original version only had this single option--inline--ideal for a limited number of showtimes, especially if the run is less than a week and you don't exceed 3 showtimes per day.

The List variation shows a denser listing of showtimes, grouped by type of showtime and then by venue, shown in chronological order.

Filtering (e.g, by venue) is still possible here on the event landing page. There's also a legend explaining what the colors on each button mean, to highlight sold out, almost sold out, and other special showtime statuses.

As with all Wordpress shortcodes, these can be used on any page builder, any theme, or any WordPress hosting environment--you just need the Elevent for WordPress plugin.

You'll find this documented on the Elevent plugin settings page in WordPress.