WordPress Event Registration System Review: EventON
EventON is one of the most cost-effective event management plugins, featuring interactive settings and display options that are very easy to handle. It also has myriad options for event customization and Calendar displays.
EASE OF USE
To install the plugin, you need to purchase and download a licensed copy from Envato, where the .zip file and the activation keys are available. Upload the plugin on your WordPress website and activate it using the legitimate license key you receive on purchase, as some features are locked until the complete activation is done.
This opens the Welcome page where you have quick-links to the on-site documentation, support, blog, and changelog. There are two parts to creating and managing events and event settings using EventON. These include:
Events
The Events tab has helps you create new events and manage the peripherals for the same. There are four or more main categories, depending on how many Event Types you add (more on that later), but in the meantime, here is short description of each.
- All Events
This is your complete chronological list of all the events you have created, each with quick edit options displayed. The table also displays all the basic details including the event location, type, start and end dates, and the author.
- Add Event
The Add Event category is where you add the event name, details, start and end dates, repetitions, location, venue, organizer, and more. If you want to hide the end date for an event (like a concert, or a dinner, or a party) that might end late at night, you can hide the end date and timing from here too.
The interface for event creation is very similar to a regular WordPress Post or Page, so there ought to be no issues there.
- Event Location
This category lets you add and manage all the locations and venues that you need for your events. If in case you add a new location directly while creating the event, it gets added by default to the list here.
- Event Organizer
Similar to Event Location, Event Organizer is where you deal with the all these organizers associated with your events.
- Event Type
Event Type is another name for the different categories you can create for your events. These categories further have various taxonomies, based on which your event is classified. One event can be included under more than one event type, and up to five such event types can be created in the plugin.
myEventON
This is the tab for managing your site settings. There are five major categories here, namely:
- Settings
The Settings tab has 12 subcategories for adjusting the general settings, font, event appearance, icons and more. The tabs are all self-explanatory; still, here is a very quick overview of the more important ones.
- The General Settings tab lets you handle settings like hiding the Calendar at the front-end, hiding past events, automatically adding past events t the trash, enabling/disabling content filter, Google web fonts, changing the default date format, and the like. All of these are one-click, Yes/No buttons that enable quick editing.
- The Google Maps API lets you set up options like the Map Display type, color, default zoom level, and map scrolling.
- The Appearance tab is used to edit the colors of the calendar theme, background, event, event header, text, date, and the font, using an intuitive color picker.
- The EventCard (more on this later) settings allow you to rearrange the display fields for your individual Event Cards in a drag-and-drop format, enable/disable event descriptions, and set up the featured and location image sizes.
- The Custom Meta Data tab is where you add additional display fields. It is possible to add up to three extra fields, customizing the name, type (single line text, multiple line text, and button) and the additional details of the field.
- The Categories tab is to add custom, event type categories, apart from the default two. You can add at the most five categories here and include custom taxonomies for each, to classify events.
- The Event Paging section lets you handle the event page templates and customize the URL links and the slugs for the same.
- The Shortcodes tab has the information about the three default shortcodes available in the plugin. It also has the one-click shortcode generator that lets you decide the fields that will be added to the page where you will be displaying your calendar, when you insert that particular shortcode.
- The other subcategories include Sorting and Filtering, Icons, EventTop, and Third Party API’s.
- Language
The Language category lets you select your website’s language and modify the month and date names, as well as event categories, taxonomies, headers, and the general fields displayed on the calendar, to whatever you want. You can set up three different languages, to make you page localization ready.
- Styles
The Styles tab lets you add all the custom effects that you want for your fonts and text, layout, and design templates. There is also an auto-generated dynamic style sheet right below the customizable CSS where the changes you make are added at the front-end.
- Add-Ons and Licenses
This tab shows all the EventON add-ons that you have purchased, installed, and activated.
- Support
The Support tab has links to the support forums and the helpdesk on the home website.
The plugin has some really great options for event creation and customization, and using them is really easy, once you manage to find them. The interface is very user-friendly, but there are a lot of inter-dependent settings involved, which you need to take care of. Hence, we rate this plugin to be moderately easy to use.
Ease of Use: 3.75/5
INBUILT FEATURES
EventOn has a lot of features in store; some inbuilt, some through add-ons, and then some more. We shall be having a look at the add-ons later, so for now let’s discuss the inbuilt features that the plugin supports.
Multiple Calendar Formats
True to its name, EventOn – WordPress Calendar Plugin has over 6 different calendar formats for event display. Of these, the ones present in the Basic Calendar include the classic day-by-day view, a grid-type Tile view, display by Category, Calendar by featured image, the ‘Accordion’ slide-down Calendar, a View-Only Calendar, and an Additional Events Display Calendar.
Excluding these, the plugin has add-ons for Daily, Weekly, Full Calendar, Single Event, Extended Events List, and Event Map calendar views.
Variable Events Display
EventOn lets you control how users at the front end can view your event. There are three different settings available
- A drop-down infographic that displays all the event details
- A linked page view that opens a different page for the event, on your website or an external one (this is useful when you have separate event pages for all your events)
- An on-screen pop-up that displays all the necessary information
Colored Calendars
The plugin has an intuitive color picker which can be used to customize everything, from the event, event background, and event type category to the event heading, dates and times, fonts, and the text displayed.
Event Subtitles
Apart from the detailed description you provide, EventOn lets you add a short, subtitle text for your event. This can be a tagline or a summary of the event in a few words, and is displayed in an italicized font right underneath the event Title. Subtitles can be especially useful for event views that need users to go to separate pages for further information, as they can get a general idea of the event at the first glance. A good subtitle can also help pique the readers’ interest!
Shortcode Generation
The plugin has a unique Shortcode Generator that lets you create handle how exactly the Calendar will be displayed on your site, at literally the click of a button. How this works is, once you have created your events and are adding them to the Events Display page, you click the ‘Add EventON’ button (it is in orange, above your text editor), and select either the Main Calendar or the Events List for customizing the shortcode variables.
Here you set up a calendar ID and decide all the settings regarding the display of event image, featured events, enabling/disabling event hiding, the maximum number of events to be displayed, the default language, and so on. Once that is done, click on the shortcode generation button ‘[]’ at the bottom, right-hand corner to insert the same in your page.
Recurring and Featured Events
EventON helps you add recurring events that occur daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. You can add the number of time the event is supposed to repeat; all the relevant information is added automatically for each of the events.
There is an additional, custom recurring event option that lets you add different date-times for the same event, in case the event is supposed to repeat erratically. Say it is to occur this weekend, then the next Monday, and then after two months; you can add as many respective dates and times as necessary, right during the event creation phase.
Featured events can be set up too. Additionally, a separate Calendar view displaying only the featured events can be set up at the front end.
Restricted Event Views
The plugin provides an option for you to control who can see the events on your website. You can enable public access or keep it restricted to logged-in users.
Event Card
An Event Card is your complete event details card. It includes all the information about the event date and time, organizer, location, featured image, and location image. The sequence of these fields can be altered as required.
Show/Hide Selective Events
The plugin lets you hide past events according to their start date or end date. Also, during event creation, if these dates are not set up, the event is hidden by default, i.e. it won’t show up on your calendar at all.
Variable Date and Time Format
EventON uses the default WordPress date and time format during event display. You can set up the WordPress format from the Settings-> General Settings->Â Timezone/Date Format/Time Format
Sidebar Widget
The plugin supports a sidebar widget, in addition to the primary display, which shows the current and upcoming events in a concise format.
Styling Customization Support
EventON lets you add custom CSS, to satisfy any minor changes you need to make, specifically for your own site. There is a default ‘Dynamic Stylesheet’ available too, but you can tweak it as necessary, to your own ends.
Limit Number of Events
The plugin provides an option to limit the number of events that you want displayed on your website; a ‘See More Events’ tab is automatically added at the end of this list for interested users. This is especially useful when your website hosts multiple events on a regular basis.
Multiple Options for Location Specification
In addition to adding locations from a prescribed list, EventON lets you optionally add the latitude and longitude of the venue, which is then displayed on Google Maps. The latitude and longitude settings can be used to add locations that do not have a specific street address and override any previous settings added.
Google Maps Integration
Like most of the top end event management plugins, EventON integrates with Google Maps to display the event location geographically.
Attendee Distance from Event Location
Apart from the conventional display, EventON additionally leverages the Google Maps’ functionality to provide information about the attendees’ distance from the event venue. For example, if the event is in Mumbai and the person will be traveling from Pune, all he has to do is input his location while viewing the event and Google Maps comes up with the approximate distance and the viable means of conveyance.
Instant Language Customization
The plugin lets you add three languages for event display. As a rule, the first is the default display language, but you can add two supplementary languages that can be alternatively used while adding the calendar to the Display Page.
Right-to-Left Text Support
The plugin has inbuilt support for right-to-left text addition, for the Arabic, Hebrew, and other scripts.
Payment Gateways
EventON has two distinct modes of payment for bookings and tickets. The first is by installing the Tickets add-on (which we will see soon) and the second is by adding a link to a payment gateway like PayPal, by providing a link on the event page.
For this, you need to create a custom field as:
Settings-> General Settings-> Custom Meta data-> Add Additional Field-> Insert text-> Select Content Type ‘Button’-> Add the text and the URL for the button field.
The text can be added as ‘Buy Tickets’, ‘Book Reservations’ and the like and the URL you insert should link to your payment gateway page, wherefrom the transaction will be completed.
This is an overview of the features of the EventON plugin. As you might have noticed, there is a glaring lack of some features such as:
- No inbuilt ticketing functionality
- No variable pricing options for tickets
- No system for attendee management at the back end
- No social network integration
- No event marketplace creation
Most of these functionalities are, however, provided by other add-ons so the drawbacks are mitigated to an extent. EventON is a great plugin for event creation and display though, and helps you create beautiful event displays easily.
Features: 4/5
VALUE FOR MONEY
EventON is a Premium plugin. There is no Demo or Lite version available on WordPress. The base plugin costs $29, has to be purchased from the Envato marketplace, and includes all the basic features discussed here.
To incorporate additional features like ticketing, event RSVPs, barcode scanning, event reviews, extended event lists and more, you need to purchase the respective add-ons. These are varyingly priced from $14 to $65 and are available for purchase on the EventON home website.
The plugin is a good option for event managers who have a lot of their own and others’ events to host on their site. Even including the major add-ons you might need to purchase, the plugin is a steal at this price, when its features are taken into account.
Value for Money: 5/5
SUPPORT & UPDATES
EventON has decent documentation on their main website. There are additional support forums and also a 10-episode video tutorial series that guides you step-by-step through the inner workings of the plugin. The support forums are pretty active and queries get answered quickly enough.
There is no detailed information at the back end, though they do provide a succinct summary of what the functionality does, as you work with it. Everything considered, you don’t need to refer a lot to the documentation, which is not very extensive in any case, once you get your head around where what is.
Support and Updates: 3.5/5
INTEGRATIONS & EXTENSIONS
EventON has some pretty neat (and necessary) add-ons that extend the area of impact of the base plugin. Let us have a look at these:
Events Display
- Events List Ext.: Apart from the conventional day/week/month views, this add-on lets you display a custom event list including past, current, and future events.
- Events Map: The Events Map add-on enables you to display all your events on one, single Google Map. It also provides the number of events that will be taking place at a given location, for quick comprehension of the front end visitor.
- Event Slider: Event Slider Add-On is the means of adding a sleek slider to your events display page, where you can highlight the featured events that you want to promote.
- Event Photos: This add-on incorporates a responsive image gallery into your EventCard which equips you to display multiple images for a single event.
- Full Cal: The Full Cal add-on can be used to add a complete, grid-calendar view to your website.
- Single Events: This is the add-on required to display a single event template on your website. You can also share the event for promotion on social media.
- Daily View: The Daily View add-on is great for users who have many events on a single day and also helps the front end viewers to navigate easily to any specific date, day, or month.
- Weekly View: This add-on provides a comprehensive week-by-week list of your events.
- Event Countdown: The Event Countdown add-on is used to display a countdown timer to each of your events or for a featured one.
Tickets and Bookings
- Event Tickets: The Event Tickets add-on is a complete booking and ticket selling system that integrates with WooCommerce to help you sell tickets. It includes several features like variable product support, unique ticket ID’s, enquiry forms, and back-end registrations management.
- RSVP Events: The add-on does what it says; it allows your attendees to RSVP before the event starts.
- QR Code: This add-on incorporates a QR code into your event tickets so that checking-in attendees can be done easily using a QR code scanner.
Management Plugins
- Event Lists and Items: This is a useful little add-on to create and display category lists according to event type, location, organizers, and more.
- Action User: The Action User add-on lets you control the organizer user roles on your website.
- Subscriber: This add-on helps your end viewers to subscribe to your website and calendars to stay updated about your events.
- Sync Events: The Sync Events add-on lets you add events from your Facebook and Google accounts to your website.
Miscellaneous
- Event Reviewer: The add-on incorporates a review-and-rating system for your attendees to use.
- Event API: This add-on is what enables you to display your calendars on other, external websites.
- RSS Feed: The RSS Feed add-on generates RSS feeds for your regular members who subscribe to your Calendar events.
- Event Search: The add-on adds a search bar to your website where users can search events by name, type, or category.
- CSV Event Importer: This imports data from all your other calendars in a CSV format.
The plugin does not have integrations with popular newsletter systems like MailChimp or AWeber as of now. Also, there are no developer licenses available for these add-ons; one has to specifically ask for permission before they can be incorporated into your customized themes.
Integrations and Extensions: 4/5
THE FINAL TAKE
On the whole, EventON – WordPress Event Calendar Plugin does a great job of creating and selling events. It has plenty of features, an array add-ons, and flexible options for customization.
The plugin is fairly easy to use and especially helpful for institutes and organizations having multiple, simultaneous events. The various Calendar displays are one of the best features of EventON and add a clean, polished look and feel to the website.