It’s been a hectic couple of weeks! This second beta offers some massive improvements on the last beta, as well as some new features here and there. This is very close to the end result, bar a few minor bugs, and we expect to release a release candidate early next week.

Download Events Manager 5b2

Testers welcome! If you do post about it on the forums, please make sure you make it clear when describing your issue that you’re using the beta. Users testing out this new version are strongly advised to have a look at the settings page after upgrading, as some of these new settings are not set up by default.

The daunting task of listing all the improvements is quickly coming upon me… exciting but scary, given the sheer number of them! Here’s a few of the improvements since the last beta:

• Added capabilities for finer control over what users can do (updaters need to visit the settings page)
• Events, Locations and Categories now have their own designated pages rather than a one-fits-all events page (which can be disabled in favour of WP archives).
• Improved date-picking logic and time-picker
• Revamped settings page, now with tabs!
• If in MultiSite mode, network-wide settings now reside on the network admin area.
• Control how your Custom Posts work (e.g. integrate into WP searches, use WP archives or default event pages, use formats or not), giving an insane amount of options in terms of how WordPress and EM works together to display your events.
• Base slug control in settings page.
• All day events (ICS Compatible)!
• Optional locations (enable this in your settings page), soon to come… disable locations completely.
• Various new placeholders added (e.g. #_EVENTTAGS, #_EVENTDATES, #_EVENTTIMES)
• [event_search_form] shortcode added, which now works on any page
• and various other bugfixes

We’re constantly testing and re-testing and have successfully managed to migrate websites with thousands of events from version 4. We hope that more testers will come on board next week once we release the RC and provide some much needed upgrade tips and instructions. Till next week!

Known Limitations

We’ve whittled these down to a bearable two, and intend on resolving these quickly before the release candidate.

• If updating from version 4, some new post-related settings aren’t set by default, meaning you should visit the settings page and set it up yourself.
• When migrating, old event/location pictures won’t  show up in the ‘featured image’ bit, but it does work with the usual placeholders (will possibly create a migration wizard for this, to move them into the media library)
• If you’re using MultiSite and global mode, categories aren’t shared cross-site right now.