EP Events

EP Events turns a PageMotor site into a full event platform. Events with tiered ticketing, buyer registrations, attendee QR codes, an offline-capable check-in PWA, Stripe Connect payments with EU VAT compliance, automated Zoom meeting creation, Schema.org JSON-LD, ICS calendar feeds, post-event newsletter campaigns, and depth integration across the rest of the EP Suite.

Published by ElmsPark Studio.

Overview

What you get end-to-end:

1. You define events (sub-typed as conference, workshop, retreat, gala, meetup, seminar, summit, reunion, speed-dating, tournament, webinar, or neutral). Each event gets a body laid out with the matching sub-type’s editorial stack.
2. You define tickets as EP Ecommerce products attached to the event. Tiered pricing, member-only gating, and inventory caps are all available.
3. You optionally add speakers, sponsors, promo codes, payment plans, and a venue (online, hybrid, or physical).
4. Visitors browse upcoming events via the [ep-events] listing page, land on an individual event, register through [ep-event-register], and pay via Stripe Connect.
5. On payment, the buyer becomes a customer, each ticket becomes an attendee with a unique QR token, a confirmation email goes out with ICS attachment, the newsletter list segment grows, and Zoom auto-creates the meeting where applicable.
6. On the day, your organiser opens [ep-event-checkin] on a phone or tablet at the gate. The page works offline as a PWA, snapshots attendees to local storage, validates QR codes against the snapshot, and syncs check-ins back to the server when the network returns.
7. After the event, automated thank-you emails and a recap newsletter campaign go out. Post-event reports and a no-show sweep run on cron.

What EP Events is NOT: a one-off appointment scheduler (that is EP Booking), a course platform (EP Courses), or a generic calendar widget. It is for events with buyers, attendees, money, and operational depth.

Requirements

• PageMotor 0.8.3 or later
• EP Suite base class (bundled)
• EP Ecommerce and EP Ecommerce Stripe for payments
• EP Email for transactional mail (confirmations, reminders, thank-you)

Optional siblings (each unlocks specific features when present):

• EP SEO 1.5.4+: per-event Open Graph and Twitter Card metadata via the record_meta() iteration hook
• EP GDPR 1.1.28+: DSR export and erasure for buyer data via the sibling-plugin hook
• EP Assistant 1.0.4+: AI table allowlist + PII filter so the assistant can read aggregate event data without buyer PII
• EP MCP Bridge 0.18.0+: three MCP tools registered: events_list_upcoming, events_get_by_slug, events_get_stats
• EP Newsletter: auto-subscribe attendees with per-event segmentation, recap + next-year-invite campaigns
• EP Cards: render the [ep-events] listing through EP Cards’ renderer
• EP Affiliate: capture referral attribution at registration, fire conversion tracking on confirmation
• EP Membership: prefill member identity on the registration form, optionally auto-apply a member promo code
• EP Booking Zoom: auto-create Zoom meetings for online events
• EP Locations / EP Local Business: resolve Organisation identity in Schema.org

Installation

EP Events installs like any PageMotor plugin.

1. Download. Grab ep-events.zip from your ElmsPark account.
2. Sign in to your PageMotor admin at yourdomain.com/admin/.
3. Go to Plugins, then Manage Plugins.
4. Upload the zip. Use the plugin upload interface to upload ep-events.zip.
5. Activate in your Theme. Enable EP Events in your active Theme’s plugin configuration. On first activation:
   • 18 database tables are created (pm_ep_events_meta, pm_ep_events_registrations, pm_ep_events_attendees, and so on).
   • The Event template is cloned from your active theme’s Page template.
   • A sample event is seeded at /ep-events-sample/.
   • An Events listing page is auto-created at /events/ (or your configured slug).

How to verify: after activation, go to Plugins then Plugin Settings. You should see EP Events Settings with the Quick Start panel at the top showing the sample event URL and listing URL. Both should resolve when you click them.

Configuration

EP Events settings are split into sections you can collapse and expand:

• Quick Start: sample event, listing URL, hint for creating your next event.
• Configuration: listing slug, timezone, default sub-type, currency, payment provider routing, and a Default Event Body textarea (see below).
• Stripe Connect: onboard your platform Stripe account so payments route correctly.
• VAT and tax: EU rate table (27 countries plus UK) with VIES B2B reverse-charge validation.
• Email reminders: pre-event 7-day, 24-hour, 1-hour windows; post-event thank-you. Idempotent via the email_sends log.
• Cron: three trigger paths (admin-page-load throttled to 60s, external secret endpoint, admin AJAX). The secret is autogenerated and shown here.
• Newsletter integration: per-event segmentation, recap, next-year invites.
• AI Organiser Suite: 11 bundled ep-agent skills for event-from-brief, pricing, promo copy, schedule, speaker outreach, sponsor outreach, FAQ, follow-up, attendance prediction, anomaly detection, recap.
• AI Schema: export an event as Markdown, import a full event definition (event + tickets + speakers + sponsors + promos + email sequence + theme) atomically.
• Shortcodes reference: every shortcode the plugin registers, with the key arguments. Useful while authoring event bodies.

Default Event Body

By default, a new event’s body is seeded from one of twelve built-in editorial stacks, chosen by the event’s sub-type (conference, workshop, retreat, gala, meetup, seminar, summit, reunion, speed-dating, tournament, webinar, or a neutral default). If your events are simpler than that — a single venue running the same kind of event every time, for example — fill in Default Event Body in Configuration and every new event, regardless of sub-type, starts from that HTML instead.

• Applies to: a brand-new event, the empty-body backfill pass, and the Insert default layout recovery panel (see Recovery panels) — all three share the same seeding logic, so setting this once covers all of them.
• Your HTML is wrapped in <div class="text page-content"> automatically, unless it already contains one.
• Nothing is added to it — no event-block shortcodes are injected, no headings are rewritten. It is used exactly as typed.
• AI Schema imports bypass this setting. An imported event always arrives with its own complete body, so there is nothing for the default to seed.
• Leave it blank to keep using the built-in per-sub-type stacks.

Stripe Connect

Stripe Connect is required for payments to route to the right place. EP Events itself does not collect funds. It routes payments via your Stripe platform account so each event’s organiser can be paid directly if you operate a multi-organiser site, or all funds flow to a single account if you do not.

1. In EP Events Settings, open Stripe Connect.
2. Click Onboard with Stripe.
3. Complete the Stripe Connect onboarding (business details, bank account, identity verification).
4. Return to the plugin and confirm the status reads Connected.

EU VAT

For events sold to EU customers, the plugin handles VAT automatically:

• B2C sales: the destination country’s standard VAT rate is applied at checkout.
• B2B sales: the buyer enters their VAT number. If VIES validates it, reverse-charge applies; the invoice records the buyer’s VAT number and zero-rates the line.
• Inclusive vs exclusive pricing is configurable per site.

Shortcodes

EP Events registers 18 shortcodes, grouped by purpose. Every shortcode is ep- prefixed; a bare, unprefixed alias also works for every one of them except [ep-event-add-to-calendar] (added in 1.0.44, so there is no pre-existing bare name to stay compatible with). The ep- prefixed form is canonical — it can never collide with a same-named shortcode from a sibling plugin, since PageMotor’s shortcode registry is first-wins. The bare aliases are kept only for back-compat with content authored before the suite-wide ep- namespace migration; new content should use the ep- forms below. The Shortcodes Reference panel inside Settings shows the full list with arguments.

Listings (use on any page)

Shortcode

What it does

[ep-events]

Upcoming-events listing. Args: view (list default, grid, month, week, day, agenda), columns (grid column count), category, audience, event_mode, sub_type (filter), from / to (date range), limit (default 50). view="month" (optionally with year / month args) renders a full calendar grid — there is no separate calendar shortcode. Renders through EP Cards when present for list/grid views, falls back to a native grid.

Single event (use inside an Event content row)

Shortcode	What it does
[ep-event-hero]	Hero section: title (hidden by default; opt in with show_title="1"), dates, location, hero image, live attendance counter, Register CTA, and an Add to calendar control (folded into the facts list). Args: poster="true" (the image IS designed artwork — shown uncropped, facts/counter/CTA hidden by default), show_facts, show_counter, show_cta, show_title (each overrides the poster default individually), cta_label (default “Register”), cta_dual="true" (promotes Add to calendar to a second full CTA button beside Register, instead of folding it into the facts list).
[ep-event-add-to-calendar]	Add to calendar menu: Google Calendar, iCalendar (.ics download), Outlook 365, Outlook Live — matching the option set on The Events Calendar’s own dropdown. Rendered automatically inside every [ep-event-hero]; use this shortcode directly when your event body has no hero block at all.
[ep-event-schedule]	Start/end date-time block for the event. (Per-session agenda rows are a planned future addition, not yet built.)
[ep-event-speakers]	Speaker grid for this event: photo, name, role, title, bio, social links. Optional heading="false" suppresses the built-in “Speakers” heading.
[ep-event-sponsors]	Sponsor logos grouped by tier (platinum, gold, silver, bronze, standard, supporter). Optional heading="false" and show_tier_labels="false".
[ep-event-location]	Map (OpenStreetMap embed) and address for physical events, an online/hybrid join-link notice for virtual events. Optional heading="false". Renders nothing for an in-person event with no venue on record.
[ep-event-register]	Registration form with ticket selection, quantity, buyer details (prefilled when a member is signed in), promo code, GDPR/marketing consents, and order summary. Optional heading="false" suppresses the built-in “Register” heading — useful when your own body already has one above the shortcode.
[ep-event-countdown]	Live countdown to event start (or to a ticket’s sales-end with target="sales_end" product_id="…").

Buyer and organiser tools

Shortcode	What it does
[ep-event-tickets-mine]	”My tickets” view, resolved by an order_token (arg or ?order= query param) rather than login: registration status, one QR code per attendee, Add to calendar link, and Cancel registration.
[ep-event-checkin]	Admin-only organiser check-in screen: QR scanner, manual name/email search, live checked-in/registered counter. With no event resolvable, shows an event picker instead.
[ep-event-feed]	A link to subscribe to calendar feeds: the single event’s .ics when an event resolves, otherwise a link to the all-upcoming-events .ics feed (format arg reserved for future formats; only ics is implemented).
[ep-event-speaker-portal]	Token-gated self-serve portal (token arg or ?portal= query param) for a speaker to update their own bio and headshot.
[ep-event-submit]	Community event submission form (goes to moderation if the “Require approval” setting is enabled).
[ep-event-recording]	Embeds a past event’s recording. Requires a url arg (YouTube link, or any URL as a plain “Watch the recording” fallback). Renders nothing without one.
[ep-event-gallery]	Delegates to the sibling EP Gallery plugin’s [gallery] shortcode for this event’s photo album (album arg, defaults to event-{id}-photos). No-op without EP Gallery active.
[ep-event-credits]	Shows a signed-in (or emailed-in via email arg / ?email= query param) customer’s account credit balance, applied automatically at their next checkout.

Two names that sound like shortcodes are something else: FAQ and recap are two of the eleven bundled AI Organiser Suite prompt skills (see Configuration) — event-faq and event-recap generate content for you to paste into the event body, but EP Events does not register [event-faq] or [event-recap] shortcodes itself. A per-event FAQ block is authored using the sibling EP FAQ plugin’s own [ep-faq] (or bare [faq]) shortcode inside the event body, the same way the seeded editorial stacks do it.

Duplicating an event

Open any event in Admin > Content > Events, and its edit screen has a Duplicate this event button below the event details editor. It creates a new draft event with the same title (suffixed ” (copy)”), body, tickets configuration, dates, venue, and organiser settings — no registrations carry over. Useful for a recurring one-off booking or “run the same event again next year” without rebuilding it from scratch.

The check-in PWA

When you place [ep-event-checkin] on a page and pin that page to a phone or tablet at your venue, it becomes a Progressive Web App. The first time the page loads online, it pulls a snapshot of confirmed attendees into local storage. From then on:

• Scans are validated against the local snapshot, not against the server. The server is contacted only to record the check-in.
• If the network drops mid-event, scans queue locally. A status row at the top shows online/offline state and the pending-queue count.
• When the network returns (or the organiser hits Sync now), the queue drains and the server records each check-in with the original scan timestamp.
• The check-in audit trail records what time the scan actually happened, not what time the device caught up.

Privacy and GDPR

When EP GDPR is active, EP Events contributes to data-subject requests via the sibling-plugin hook:

• Export surfaces the data subject’s registrations, attendances, payment history, credits, consent log, lawful basis map, and retention policy.
• Erasure anonymises buyer PII (name, email, IP, user-agent) while retaining financial records (Stripe IDs, amounts) under HMRC’s seven-year retention rule.
• Retention: IP, user-agent, and referrer data are purged at 90 days by a cron sweep.
• Consent: registration captures marketing-consent and GDPR-consent with UTC timestamps and a lawful basis map per PII field.

Recovery panels

EP Events watches for two specific failure modes that can leave events rendering blank and surfaces a fix for each.

Stripped Event template

If an admin removes blocks from the Event template via Admin > Theme > Editor and reduces it to just the body wrapper, every event renders blank. EP Events detects this state on admin page loads, snapshots the broken state, and re-clones the template from the Page template. A transparent banner in Settings explains what happened and offers a one-click revert.

If you land on a broken event page before any admin page (the auto-heal hasn’t fired yet), an admin-only floating panel appears on the public event page offering Restore template now. Conservative threshold protects deliberately minimal custom templates from being touched.

Empty event body

If an admin creates an event via Admin > Content > New Event (skipping the seeded body) or empties the body via the editor, the event will render blank. An admin-only floating panel surfaces on the public event page offering Insert default layout, which seeds the matching sub-type’s editorial stack.

Non-admins never see either panel.

Troubleshooting

The Quick Start “Create your next event” link goes to a content type picker, not directly to the new-event form.

That is intentional. PageMotor’s admin content navigation uses POST forms for content-type selection, not GET URLs. From the picker, choose Event and click Add New.

My event page is blank.

If you’re signed in as an admin, look for a yellow or rose-tinted floating panel at the bottom of the page. It will tell you which failure mode you’ve hit (empty body or stripped template) and offer a one-click fix. If you see no panel, confirm:

• The body has visible blocks. Open the event in Admin > Content > Events and check the body field is not empty.
• The Event template has chrome blocks. Open Admin > Theme > Editor and check the Event template’s Body block has children (Header, Navigation, Content_Page, Footer at minimum).

Reminder emails are not arriving.

Check the cron status in Settings. Three triggers are configured:

• Admin page load: throttled to once per 60 seconds. If no admin has visited the site in over an hour, reminders may be delayed.
• External endpoint: https://yoursite/?ep_events_cron=<your-secret>. Wire this to a real cron service for reliable triggering.
• Admin AJAX: Run cron now button in Settings for manual ad-hoc runs.

The pm_ep_events_email_sends table records every send and dedupes future attempts, so triggering cron repeatedly is safe.

Open Graph type on event pages is article, not event.

A PageMotor core limitation. The Open_Graph plugin overrides per-record contributions for non-home pages. Event-specific titles, descriptions, hero images, and event:start_time flow correctly. A PM core patch will close this gap.

Apple Wallet and Google Wallet passes are not generated.

Deferred to a later release pending Apple cert provisioning. The plugin currently emits ICS attachments on every confirmation email, which covers iOS Calendar, Google Calendar, Outlook, and every other modern calendar app.

Feedback

EP Events is in active development. Bug reports, feature requests, and notes on rough edges are welcome via the Send feedback link at the bottom of the plugin’s settings page, or by emailing ElmsPark.

If your site uses a sibling plugin EP Events does not yet integrate with, let us know. The sibling-plugin valet pattern means most integrations are a single method on each side.