We've been working for months on this massive new release... you've been waiting with great expectation... and the time has finally come. DT Register 2.6.0 is here! We have taken what was already the leading solution for Joomla event registration and added so much to it that you're going to wonder when the last time was that we took a break to eat or sleep! Are you ready to blow away your clients and your site users? Now you can. If you happen to be using another solution, that is about to change. Grab yourself a drink and get comfortable, because it's going to take you some time to read through the list of what has been added and improved. Ready? Here you go...
- Frontend User Panel: user can now login and go to a panel showing all of their registration history along with registration fee, amount due, registration date, Edit button, Cancel button, Pay Now link for additional online payments, and a record status. The admin establishes if there are any fees for cancellations or record editing and how much those fees are ($ or %). Then per event, the admin sets if that event will allow cancellation or changes (along with a last date to cancel or change), and option for enabling refunds. Any refund is calculated, but must be processed manually. Custom notification emails are sent to users for cancelling, editing or making payments.
- Joom!Fish Integration: 5 content element files can be installed giving you full ability to translate all config items, event details, Location data, custom fields and Categories.
- JomSocial 1.6 Integration: You can now choose JomSocial for the source of user profile integration with registration forms. There are also two JS plugins. One adds a tab to the profile to show registration history in the profile. The second is an Activity plugin that adds all new registrations into the JS activity feed, similar to Facebook statuses. JomSocial has a mapping area in the config where you can choose which JS profile fields are associated with which DT Reg fields.
- Prerequisite Events: you can now select any event(s) that a user must register for before being able to register for another set event. This is great for not allowing users to register for a workshop unless they’ve first registered for the overall conference… for example. You can also set the prerequisite check to not only check if the user has registered for the selected event(s), but also check if they Attended and/or Paid for the event(s).
- View Only option for auto-population: You can enable this parameter to apply to either Community Builder or JomSocial. When enabled, the data that auto-populates from the profile into registration forms will be “view only” and the user will be unable to change the info.
- Attendance Check: similar to the Paid status, you can mark if a registrant attended or not.
- Record Status: now all records can be marked as Active, Pending or Cancelled.
- Partial payments / Deposits: with each event, you now have the option of offering a partial payment option. It can be a required deposit amount, or it can be an optional partial payment with a minimum amount set.
- Archive Manager: Select events to be archived. While still having access to the events and the associated records, that data will be removed from the regular views to keep your backend clean and current.
- Overlapping Date/Time Check: you now have the option to restrict a user from registering for an event if they are already registered for another event that overlaps the date/time. They can’t be in two places at once! This is a global setting, but you have the option per event to override this limitation if there is an event where you do not want or need the overlap check to be applied.
- Duplicate Prevention Override: per event, you can set an event to ignore the duplicate registration prevention check from the main configuration.
- Pay Later Thank You Message: you can now customize an onscreen thank you message that applies only to Pay Later registrations. You can also set a custom message per event if needed.
- JEvents link: you can now set a parameter so the name of the event in the event listing links to the JEvents details and leave the registration link only to the register button below the name.
- New Menu Options: now you have 3 menu types available. One, the default listing of events. Two, event listing by category (up to 6 categories can be selected). Three, frontend user panel link for accessing registration history and new management options.
- Added two new default fields for Title and Address2. Title shows before the name fields as a dropdown selection, and you have the ability to populate the dropdown with the options you want to use such as Mr, Mrs, Rev, etc.
- Custom Fields Copy: you can now easily copy any custom field for quicker addition of new related fields.
- Custom Fields Hidden: you can now set a custom field as “hidden”, meaning it will not show up in any frontend forms. It will only be seen in the backend allowing the administrator to record any “office only” information.
- Custom Field Default Settings: each custom field now has its own default settings for enabled, required and group member use. In the event manager, you can now set each field to use the default setting, or you can still manually set the use of that field per event.
- Custom Field All Events: you can now set a custom field to automatically be applied to all current events.
- Custom Field Email Tags: Now you can insert data into confirmation emails for specific custom fields instead of just the option to include all of the fields. The CFields Manager shows the proper email tag, like [FIELD7], to use for each of your fields.
- Email to Group Members: new parameter for allowing all group members to receive the confirmation email instead of just the billing contact.
- Event Ordering: new parameter added to automatically order all events according to date in either direction, or to instead use the manual ordering as set in the Event Management area.
- New custom emails to send to users when record status or payment status is updated.
- Ability to enter an ItemID for the Event Details link if you want to override the automatically assigned ItemID.
- Swedish frontend language file is included in the package (must manually load). Other language files are currently in process for 2.6.
- Categories now support two levels, parent category and sub-category
- Added Category, Location and Date Range to CSV export tool
- Group members now display in the same columns as individual registrations in the CSV export making a cleaner and easier to use set of exported data.
- Backend manual registrations now have a checkbox so you can choose whether or not to send the registration emails after submitting the new record.
- WYSIWYG editor has been added throughout the entire backend of the component allowing easy customization of all emails and onscreen messages.
- Apply button added to the toolbar for creating and editing events.
- CB / JomSocial integration now also applies to the Waiting List form.
- Attendees list now can link to the JomSocial profile and pull the avatar from there.
- Any remaining hard-coded text items in the administrator side of the component were added to the language file.
- Event Manager area: added new columns to show the time and EventID, removed the late fee column. Reordered the event filter dropdown by date, added an Archive filter.
- Records Manager: added search feature, reordered events filter, added Attended filter, Status filter, and Archive filter. Added new columns for Attended, Amount Due, and Status (Active, Pending, Cancelled). Removed the Organization column.
- Added custom thank you message per event as an option to use instead of the main config thanks message.
- New parameters for Show/Hide the Search and View By Category filter on the main listing of events.
- Event search has been enhanced to include the location, description and category in the searched data.
- Moved the Search and View By Category items on the event listing into separate tables so they no longer affect the width of certain columns in the event listing data.
- Added class names to the custom fields so they match form field styling throughout the site.
- If you only use Pay Later for payment and you only have one pay later option in use, the payment type selection step is now skipped.
- Date Field check so nothing but a date can be entered in custom date fields.
- Discount codes can now automatically be enabled for all current events instead of enabling the code in each event one at a time.
- Country now properly populates into registration forms from user profiles.
- EventLink plugin updated and now includes an alignment setting to set left, center or right alignment for the text/image links.
- New email tags: [TITLE], [LOCATION], [AMOUNT_PAID], [AMOUNT_DUE], [STATUS], [PAID_STATUS]. Also the [CONTACT_CUSTOM_FIELDS] was corrected to show fields in the proper ordering.
- Email Registrants feature now supports all email tags.
- Total % Discount: both Member Discount and Early Bird Discount now have the option of applying the % discount to either the base registration fee or to the total cost, meaning after any other fees are added by custom fields.
- Group Name completely removed from the group registration process.
- The price display of "Free" now loads from the language file along with everything else.
- Location added to the attendees list with the lightbox link for viewing location data as it is shown from the event list.
- Removed a few old database fields that are no longer used.
- Renamed the waiting list database table to match the rest of the tables in prep for some new waiting list enhancements that are coming soon.
- All fields now use the class name “fieldlabel” instead of “contentdescription” to avoid the occasional template styling conflict.
- Some simple styling improvements in the backend.
- Added code to keep records being created for "0" members due to session issues, which would then cause issues with the displayed # of registrants and the capacity check.
- Date/Time for settings like early bird discount and late fees now follow the Joomla time zone configuration instead of the server time.
New Video Tutorials!
As there are so many changes in the new 2.6, we've had to redo almost all of the video tutorials, as well as add a few new ones. Be sure to check them out and get some assistance walking through the new features!
Where can I download these updates??
Glad you asked... Login to our site, go to My Orders. Next to your order details you will see a Download link. This link always pulls the latest package that is available. You have access to this link for one year from purchase. If your order is no longer active, you would need to make a new purchase to get any further updates.
DT Reg 2.6 Training Sessions
Click Here for a list of training sessions for the new 2.6 release. Sign up today - they are free!
Observations...
As you and I both look around and observe the Joomla extension development landscape, we see that there are other options out there for Joomla event registration. Some are free and simple... fine if your needs are very small and basic. Then there are other commercial solutions that often compare themselves to DT Register. You'll see statements about how they have the "largest feature list" and such, but we realize that it is one thing to SAY something like that, but a completely different thing for that statement to actually be true. DT Register has always been the leader and continues to move further ahead month by month with continual new releases... adding features that you can't get anywhere else.
As always, there is much more to come! Besides more features coming still to DT Register, we're finally working on a 1.5 version of DT Billing and hope to have that available in 1-2 months. We're continuing to provide the best solutions for your website and we thank you for your ongoing support!
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