Scope of this document

In this document we’ll you in creating a Conference Site with JEvents and JEvents Addons to create a rich featured and easy to manage conference site. We’ll describe first basic configuration for JEvents and JEvents Addons and then we’ll describe required overrides and layout editing. After reading this document and following the steps described here you will be able to end up with a Conference site similar to the demo one.

Required Extensions

JEvents Core
We’ll use JEvents to manage all the sessions and also to provide an event for RSVP Pro for selling tickets
JEvents People Manager
We’ll use JEvents People Manager to relate speakers and rooms with their sessions
JEvents Locations Manager
We’ll use JEvents Locations Manager to show useful places near the venue like restaurants, hotels… or just the venue location.
JEvents RSVP Pro
With RSVP Pro addon we’ll handle ticket selling
JEvents Custom Fields
With Custom Fields addon we’ll add Planning features for our attendees and also we will be able to extend our Speakers information.

JEvents Configuration

Although your configuration for handling the sessions and how JEvents handle the events may change, we point out here the specific settings the are relevant for this demo:

Layout Flat
Use new Icon Navigation bar Hide Alltogether
First Year to Display in Calendar 2014
Last Year to Display in Calendar 2014
Event color rule Use Category Colors
Should multiday events appear on each day by default? Yes
Check for specific conflicting events before saving? No
Check for any conflicting events before saving? No
Enable multi-category events (Joomla 2.5+) No
View ‘By’ No
View Mail No
View Hits No
Show JEvents Navigation Bar? No
Show Ical Download Icon in Event Detail Yes

Session Categories

Using colors to categorize our sessions is a great way of showing our attendees what they can expect from each session, so we need to create all the categories our Conference will have through JEvents Categories button and assign a different color to each of them. In order to not mix sessions with the main event that we will use for showing the event data at the ticket selling session, you better leave the DEFAULT category as it is now.

JEvents Custom Fields Configuration

We want to extend a bit our events and use the planner feature and also extend the fields for our Speakers to include their Social Network links. For this we are going to use the Custom Fields addon so we need to upload to our site the xml templates for both:

Speakers.xml
This file have a couple of new fields to include Social network profile links for Speakers
ConfererencePanner.xml
This file have just the planner field so that users of the site can create a list of their favorite sessions to attend.

JEvents People Manager Configuration

People Manager Component Options

In the Options section of People Manager we need to choose these specific settings (only relevant settings are shown):

New entries global/common by default Yes
How many person select buttons in event edit screen? Separate button per person type
Layout in event detail view Person Type in Divs, Person detail in UL/LIs
Details of person to display in list <i class=”icon-user”></i><i class=”icon-globe”></i>
<span class=”jev-resource-title”>{TITLE}</span><span class=”jev-resource-thumb”>{THUMB}</span>
Target menu item for people detail links *** Speakers *** (1)
Show upcoming events list in person detail page Yes
Custom Format String {startDate(%A)}
Display Mode 3 Nearest Events including past days
Days Before-After 365
Display Events As Link Yes
Display link to the Calendar Component No link
Fetch custom fields in lists Yes
Show thumbnail images in list view Yes

(1) Your menu item might be called different, this setting should reflect a main page for your speakers list.

People Manager plugin Options

To be able to show the program page you need to enable the option Make fields available in lists and calendar in the People Manager plugin configuration. (through JEvents Configuration or directly through Joomla! Plugin Manager). This option is disabled by default.

If you do not enable this option, your program will be empty, although you should be able to use any other JEvents list or calendar views to show your events or sessions.

People Manager Resource types

We are using JEvents People Manager to relate speakers and rooms with their sessions so we need to create 2 different type of resources. One for Speakers and the other one for Rooms. These are the settings for each:

Parameter Speakers Rooms
Multiple per event: Multiple per event One per event
Show Address: No No
Type specific custom fields template: Speakers(1) Use component specified template

(1) Only if you want to extend fields for speakers.

RSVP Pro

To offer ticket purchase in our site we need to setup RSVP Pro Addon that will allow us to track attendance and payment for our events registration.

RSVP Pro configuration

In the Configuration section of RSVP Pro addon we need to choose these specific settings (only relevant settings are shown):

Allow recording attendance by email addresses Yes
Make list of attendees public No
Allow conditional fields Yes

Payment Methods

RSVP Pro comes out of the box with several payment plugins, and we should select in the Payment Methods section. Current options out of the box are:

  • Manual Payment Gateway Plugin
  • PayPal Payment Gateway Plugin
  • Authorize.net Payment Gateway Plugin
  • Virtuemart Payment Gateway Plugin
  • Hikashop Payment Gateway Plugin

In this demo we are using Manual Payment, Paypal Payment and Hikashop Payment plugins.

Session Template

RSVP Pro offers great flexibility for creating registration forms allowing us using different registration forms for different events. This is handled with the RSVP Pro templates system. So we need to create a template for our event registration. We’ll use these values for our template:

Has Fees? Yes
Has Tickets? Yes
Payments Config

Once you install and enable RSVP Pro payment plugins, you will see in the Payment Config section a tab with each one of them. You can configure specific options for this template here. In our demo we use following payment plugins:

Manual

Options of this plugin allow you to show specific instructions for payment: Address to send the check to, Bank details for a bank transfer or any other indication you want to give your attendees

Paypal IPN

As you can have different events that need to be charged in different Paypal accounts, you have to add here the paypal details and messages to show to the user on payment.

Hikashop

We recently developed a hikashop integration and you can specify here the category for your Events tickets sells.

Ticket Layout

When you offer printed tickets, you can specify here the layout for them. In our case we use this code for our printed tickets layout: Download printed tickets layout which results in the following ticket layout.

Template Fields

With RSVP Pro we can ask information to our attendees using custom fields that we can define in the session template. We also use these fields to define early bird price, coupon discounts and the price of the event. In this demo we use some of the relevant fields for a conference site:

Text Fields and Text Area Fields

We use these to get Full name, email, Billing Name and Billing Address of our attendees. It’s good to remark that both, Billing Name and Billing Address are configured to be shown only when the conditional field “Need an Invoice” is set to “Yes”.

Checkboxes

We use a checkbox to set if the attendee is a companion or a main attendee. This field is configured to be shown only on aditional guests that you can define when getting tickets for a main attendee and it’s also configured to reduce the ticket for this companion ticket on 25€

Coupon/Early Bird discount

We use this field to provide early bird discount to our users.

Payment Options List

This field is used to offer our different payment options to our attendees. As we saw above, we also need to install different RSVP Pro plugins (included in same subscription level as the Component) and configure them.

JEvents Custom Layouts

We use in this site the powerful JEvents Custom Layouts feature as it is a really easy way of customizing our views. So we need to go to in the backend to JEvents -> Custom Layouts and there we will see the JEvents layout manager.

In the layout manager we can set up layouts for several JEvents and JEvents Addons views and we can even have different layouts for different languages and/or for different event categories. You just need to play around with the top filters to make a layout be applied to specific conditions.

If you are a Gold or Silver member of JEvents Club, you can download the code we use on this layouts and easily replicate this site.

Conference Sessions Custom layouts

For our Conference Session detail view we’ll edit the main Event Detail Page layout and we’ll add the code for conference sessions there. Download Event Detail Page layout code for Conference Sessions.

For our Conference Session list view we’ll edit the main List Row Detail layout and we’ll add the code for conference sessions entries there. Download Conference Sessions list entries layout code for Conference Sessions.

Speakers Custom layouts

At JEvents Custom layouts feature we can also edit layouts for other JEvents Addons. We just need to Choose the addon in the Filter and we’ll see the available layouts.

For our Speakers Detail view we’ll edit the main Managed People/Resources Details for Speaker Layout and we’ll use following code. Download Speaker Detail Page layout code for Conference Sessions.

For our Speakers List view we’ll edit the main Managed People/Resources Bloglist - Person/resource entry for Speaker Layout and we’ll use following code. Download Speaker list entry layout code for Conference Sessions.

Template overrides

In this demo we have focused in offering a solution that uses JEvents interface out of the box with minimum template overrides. Nevertheless to accomplish the session program layout we need to put in place a template overrides for the day list view of JEvents as it’s a really complex structure that cannot be recreated using JEvents Custom layouts feature.

The program layout we offer on this demo automatically adjust the number of columns to the number of rooms and will automatically place your events in the layout.

Installation

We have developed this override for the Flat JEvents Theme, but the code will work in other JEvents themes with minor changes. To install this override in your system you need to upload the files in the following package Download Conference Template Overrides to their respective paths, all listed below:

File Path
listevents.php

/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/html/com_jevents/flat/day/
listevents_responsive.php

/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/html/com_jevents/flat/day/
defaultvieweventrownew.php /templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/html/com_jevents/helpers/

For the template override to work properly you have to edit line 4 for the listevents_responsive.php and replace the number with the id of your rooms type and also you need to edit line 4 of file defaultvieweventrownew.php and replace the number with the id of your speakers type. Both IDs can be easily found in People Manager -> Types as per the following image:

Custom CSS

To get the final styling of this site we have used some Custom CSS for JEvents parts and this have allowed us to match template styling easily. In JEvents you can add your Custom CSS styles in the Custom CSS area we offer in the Control Panel. You can Download here the JEvents Custom CSS we created and just cut and paste it directly into your JEVents Custom CSS area.

Our Custom CSS file is not loaded When showing the printed version of tickets, so in this demo we use the customization features of RT Paradigm template. You can Download here the our template Custom CSS with our changes for printing tickets and other template changes we made.