How to Manage Online Class Registrations

Setting Up an Event to Allow Online Sign-Up

The first step is to create a new event or edit an existing event.

Once you are in the editor:

1. Scroll down until you see the heading, “Bookings/Registration.”

2. Click the heading to toggle it open unless you already see the check box under it.

3. Click the check box next to “Enable registration for this event.” Once checked, the booking form will appear under “Ticket Options.”

   

4. Usually, the following fields should be left as the default values:

   • Price – Until such time as this website collects payments, leave as 0.
   • At least – Leave this minimum as 1, always.
   • At most – Leave as 1, unless one person should be able to sign up additional people besides him- or herself in a single event registration record.
   • Available for – Leave as “Everyone.” There is no reason to change this currently, as in the general settings we have already specified that people must log into the website before they can book a class.

5. As for the other fields, here is what they are for:

   • Name – On the front end, this shows under the “Booking Summary” heading at the end of the registration form (see below). You can change the current default, “Standard Ticket,” to anything you like, and that is what people will see instead. (Let me know if you would like a different default.)

     

     

   • Description – Shows at the beginning of the form, above the “Registration Information” heading. People registering will see whatever you put in this field right under “Tickets”:

     

     You can include your own heading within the “Description” field by including HTML heading tags, like this:

     <h3>Registration Details</h3>

     You should also add something below the heading within the same field. If you only have the heading by itself, it will show on the front end with nothing under it before the next heading (which looks silly), like this:

     

     If you leave the field completely blank, the field will not display at all, so that the very first form heading that site visitors will see will be “Registration Information.”

     Here is another example of text entered in the “Description” field:

     

     Which shows on the front end like this:

     

   • Spaces – The maximum number of students that can enroll. Once that number of students are registered, the system will stop showing the registration form and instead show the message, “This event is fully booked.” Note that both pending registrations and approved registrations count toward the number booked. If you need to register anyone after the spaces are filled up, you will need to increase the number entered into this field. (Note also that we have the hypothetical option to put people on a wait list, but I would have to turn that feature on first; let me know if we need it.)

   • Available from – The earliest date on which the registration form will be available. I recommend leaving this field blank, which will allow anyone to sign up for the event as soon as registration is enabled. If you do set a date and the current date is before that, the message, “Bookings are closed for this event,” will be shown. Since that is misleading when in fact bookings will open on the future date you set, I recommend not setting this date at all.

   • Available until – The latest date on which students can register for this event. I recommend setting it to a date before the date the event will start. Otherwise, students will be able to register online up until the moment of the actual event start time.

What the User Sees Depends on Login and Booking Status

Each event for which booking is enabled will display a registration area below the event description. Within this, one of five things will be shown:

1. The event registration form, if the user has already logged in and bookings are still being accepted.

2. A login form, if the user needs to log in.

   

3. A message that bookings are closed, if such is the case.

4. If the user is logged in and already registered for the class, a message to that effect will show, along with a link to see all of his or her classes or events.

   

5. A “Booking Successful” message right after the user fills out the form and submits it.

   

If bookings were never enabled, nothing about online event registration will show at all, not even the section header, “Registration.”

At the moment when someone successfully submits a booking, the system creates a “Pending” booking record and sends an email both to the person who signed up and to whomever has been designated to manage bookings.

Once the bookings manager approves a booking, the system sends a notification email to the student that says the booking has been approved.

How to Approve Pending Bookings

1. From the admin dashboard’s side menu, click: Events -> Bookings.

   

2. On the next page, scroll down to the section under the heading, “Recent Bookings.”

   

   Note that the “Recent Bookings” heading is misleading. When you first bring up the page, only “Future events” that “Needs Attention” [sic] will be showing. These are the bookings waiting for approval, with a status of “Pending.” People will appreciate having their registrations approved right away, so this is the best place to start.

   Be aware, however, that you can also change the filter to see all bookings for all events, whether in the past or future. All you need to do is change the “Future events” drop-down to “All events” or a date range and change “Needs Attention” to “All” or another choice. Available choices include “Pending,” “Confirmed,” Canceled,” etc. Then click the “Filter” button. You can also filter the list in various other ways.

   Let us first cover how to take action on the pending registrations.

3. Approve bookings individually or select a group of them to approve all at once, as follows:

   

   • 

     Individually: In the single booking’s row, click the three vertical dots to the left of the person’s name, between the check box and the pencil icon. Then click “Approve.”

   • Multiple: Click the check box to the left of each row–or click the check box either above or below all of them, which causes all to be selected. Then click the “Bulk actions” drop-down (upper left), click “Approve,” and then click the “Apply” button.

     

As already mentioned (previous section), when you approve pending bookings, emails will automatically be sent to each student to confirm that they are fully registered.

Booking Spam

Strategies We Have to Reduce Spam

There are two reasons why booking spam is likely to be rare. First, potential students must create a login account first, and that process includes clicking a link in an email to create their password. However, some spamming software uses throw-away email addresses to set passwords and create user records. Once they have done so, they will explore the website further to see what other fields they can fill in.

Most spam will be prevented another way: The website is using a service, “CleanTalk,” which compares attempted user registration against a fairly comprehensive spam database. Any emails listed in the spam database will not be allowed to create a user account in the first place. Since our event registration settings require that a person be logged in before booking an event, a large amount of spam will be prevented at the first step.

Unfortunately, in a world full of automated spam, some booking spam is likely to get through.

How to Recognize Booking Spam

Spam ‘bots typically try to check all the boxes and fill in all the text fields. Often they will attempt an attack by putting script code inside a text field, but WordPress strips out tags that could contain such such malicious code. What you see in the field will be what is left after the tags are removed.

One clue, then, is that there are no blank fields. Fortunately for us, it is unlikely that anyone other than a spam ‘bot would put a check mark by all of the “Geographical Area(s) (where you would help in emergencies).” Another clue is any nonsense entered into free-form text fields.

To see what was entered into all the booking fields, you have two choices: Download the records into a CSV file (see next section) and view them in your spreadsheet program, or click on the person’s name that is shown under the “Name” column of the “Recent Bookings” section (see second image in “How to Approve Pending Bookings,” above).

Below is an example of a booking that is likely to be spam. Note the geographical area and country, among other oddities. If in doubt, you could try contacting the person. If you send an email, that may give a spammer another email to spam, however.

How to Download Booking Records

1. Go to Event->Bookings and scroll down to the “Recent Bookings” section like before.

2. Filter the list to just the records you wish to download by clicking the drop-down boxes to the left of the “Filter” button. Initially they will say “Future events” and “Needs Attention” until you change them.

3. Click the top left “download” icon , just under the “Recent Bookings” heading. A pop-up will appear.

4. Under “Exportable columns” on the right half of the screen, click the check boxes next to the fields you wish to include in the downloaded file. Each checked field will show up as a light blue box on the left side.

   

5. Optional:

   • To change the order of the fields, click and drag the blue boxes on the left side up and down.

   • To remove a field, either uncheck it on the right side or click the “x” in the blue box to the left of the field name.

6. When you are ready to download the information, click the “Export” button at the bottom. A dialog box should open showing the default name of the file, which you can change, and the default folder to save it to, which you can also change. (Depending upon your browser’s settings, the default location may be your downloads folder or else the last folder where you saved a downloaded file.)

   The file will be downloaded in CSV format, which you can open with your spreadsheet program.

Troubleshooting

Ticket Spaces Show on Front End

If there is only one type of ticket, yet there is a drop-down “spaces” box on the event page, the problem is what was entered on the back end when creating or modifying the event. In this case, there will actually be two or more lines showing ticket type and spaces, and the system will require that the user change at least one of them from “0” to “1”.

The Way It Works

For most events, we only have one type of ticket, and that ticket will default to 1. Since the user has no options to choose from, that one ticket type will not be shown on the event page. However, for some events we may want to have more than one ticket type. A good example would be an event with several different prices, where the user needs to choose which ticket he wants to pay for.

To reiterate: A drop-down field for spaces will show under tickets only if there is more than one ticket type, because the system cannot automatically determine which type of ticket the user wants. If we only intended to have a single type of ticket, now we have a problem.

How the Problem Might Happen and The Fix

If bookings are enabled and subsequently disabled, then enabled a second time (via the check box by “Enable registration for this event”), there is a possibility that a second ticket type will be created at the same time. If so, both ticket types will show on the front end. (The two ticket types could even have the same name, such as “Standard Ticket.”) If you can delete the second ticket type, the problem will be solved.

However, you may not see any option to delete either ticket type. In that case, you must search for any existing Bookings records. If you find any legitimate bookings, export them. Then delete them. Now go back to edit the event page, where you should be able to delete the second ticket type.

Finally, if you need to re-enter legitimate registrations, go back to the Bookings page and scroll down to “Events With Bookings Enabled.” Click the title of the event you just fixed. This will take you to the page, “Manage ‘[the event title goes here]’ Bookings.” Click the “Add Booking” button at the top to add each booking again under the single ticket type remaining.