SeminarDesk for WordPress

Contributors: SeminarDesk
Requires at least: 5.2
Tested up to: 6.8.2
Requires PHP: 7.3
License: GPLv2 or later
License URI: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html
Stable tag: master

Connects SeminarDesk to WordPress.

Description

This plugin allows you to connect SeminarDesk to your WordPress site in order to automatically create posts for events, dates and facilitators when those items are created or updated via SeminarDesk.

[!NOTE] The SeminarDesk WordPress plugin provides the technical foundation for integrating SeminarDesk content into a WordPress website. Typically, programming adjustments are necessary to tailor the provided example templates to specific requirements and preferences.

Installation

The plugin requires at least WordPress 5.2 and PHP 7.3 and can be installed via ZIP file. The most recent version is provided here.

If you have direct access to your hosting environment, you can also clone the plugin's Git repository and checkout the master branch.

Setup

The plugin works by handling the Webhooks that are triggered by SeminarDesk.

You need to complete the following steps in order to create the connection:

At first, create a new WordPress user with "Author" role, you could name it SeminarDesk, for example.

Then add the following URL in SeminarDesk under "Administration > Webhooks", alongside the username and password of the user you created in step 1.

https://**your-wordpress-site.com**/wp-json/seminardesk/v1/webhooks

When adding the webhook URL, you should choose "Select individual events" and then enable all "Event", "Event Date", "Facilitator" and "Label Group" checkboxes. That way, all item types supported by the plugin will be published to your WordPress site. If you are not using label groups and labels or facilitators at all, you can of course omit these events.

[!NOTE] Make sure that you do not unintentionally select other event types like "Profile Created", otherwise additional data might be sent to your WordPress site.

From now on, SeminarDesk will publish events to the WordPress plugin whenever a new item like event or facilitator is created, updated or deleted. To initially publish all items, you can select "Send all items" from the webhook's action menu.

[!NOTE] Don't create/edit SeminarDesk CPTs and TXNs manually via admin panel, if debug mode of the plugin is active. This might break things.

Customization

Slugs

In WordPress the events and facilitators can be accessed through URL addresses, which are defined by slugs. You can deactivate or customize the slugs in the WordPress Dashboard "SeminarDesk > Settings" depending on your use case. Remember that the slugs need to be unique in WordPress.

List of available slugs and their default URL address with permalink structure set to post-name in the WordPress settings:

• events: ./**your-wordpress-root**/events
• dates: ./**your-wordpress-root**/schedule
  • upcoming dates: ./**your-wordpress-root**/schedule/upcoming
  • past dates: ./**your-wordpress-root**/schedule/past
  • year: ./**your-wordpress-root**/schedule/year (not customizable)
  • year-month: ./**your-wordpress-root**/schedule/year-month (not customizable)
• facilitators: ./**your-wordpress-root**/facilitators

Templates

The Templates in general determine how the page looks and behaves, when accessing the slugs on the front-end of WordPress. The SeminarDesk Plugin comes with a number of template files as an example. You can create your own templates matching the individual needs of your website. A good starting point for this is to place copies of the default templates in a separate folder and customize their code. It’s important that you don’t edit the template files directly in the plugin. This ensures that any changes to the template files will not be lost, when the plugin is updated to a new version.

Here are the steps you can follow to create your custom templates (e.g. via ftp):

1. Locate the default template files: ./**your-wordpress-root**/wp-content/plugin/seminardesk-wordpress/templates
2. Create the separate template folder Option 1: in the wordpress plugin folder: ./**your-wordpress-root**/wp-content/plugin/seminardesk-custom/templates Option 2: in your theme folder ./**your-wordpress-root**/wp-content/theme/**your-theme**/seminardesk-custom/templates
3. Copy the default template files in the created folder
4. Customize the copied template files to your needs...
5. Optional: Create asset files with the same name as the template (e.g. sd_cpt_event.{CSS, JS}) in the subfolder 'assets' of your custom template folder

Disables custom template system

If you want to use a page builder to design templates for SeminarDesk content instead of PHP templates, you can disable the plugin's template system. This allows the page builder to handle template rendering using WordPress's default template hierarchy.

1. Go to your WordPress admin panel
2. Navigate to SeminarDesk > Templates section
3. Check the "Disable Templates" option
4. Save the settings

Hooks

The SeminarDesk Plugin implements action hooks, which can be used to add custom functionality (e.g. aggregator) via child theme or your own plugin. Four kinds of hooks exist for SeminarDesk's CPTs "events", "event dates", "facilitators" and "labels":

1. put -> hooks into the creation/update of a CPT
2. create -> hooks into the creation of a CPT
3. update -> hooks into the update of a CPT
4. delete -> hooks into the deletion of a CPT

Find out more about action hooks in WordPress.

Event hooks

The action hooks wpsd_webhook_put_event, wpsd_webhook_create_event, wpsd_webhook_update_event and wpsd_webhook_delete_event for events are supported by the plugin.

Event date hooks

The action hooks wpsd_webhook_put_date, wpsd_webhook_create_date, wpsd_webhook_update_date and wpsd_webhook_delete_date for event dates are supported by the plugin.

Facilitator hooks

The actions hooks wpsd_webhook_put_facilitator, wpsd_webhook_create_facilitator, wpsd_webhook_update_facilitator and wpsd_webhook_delete_facilitator for facilitators are supported by the plugin.

Label hooks

The actions hooks wpsd_webhook_put_label, wpsd_webhook_create_label, wpsd_webhook_update_label and wpsd_webhook_delete_label for labels are supported by the plugin

Example

Code snipped for action hook wpsd_webhook_put_date:

// Includes ... make utility functions from SeminarDesk's plugin available in your child theme or custom plugin
use Inc\Utils\TemplateUtils;
use Inc\Utils\WebhookUtils;
/**
 * Creates or updates the events calendar's "event" via webhook from SeminarDesk's "event date"
 * 
 * @param mixed $wpsd_webhook Notification part of the Webhook request
 * @return void 
 */
function wpsd_tec_events( $wpsd_webhook ){
  $date_payload = $wpsd_webhook['payload']; // payload of the request in JSON
  /**
   * Put your custom code here
   */
}
add_action( 'wpsd_webhook_put_date', 'wpsd_tec_events' );

Posts per page

The number of posts per page can be change directly via WordPress settings for all post types globally. The setting is called "Blog pages show at most" and can be found in "Dashboard > Settings > Reading". By defaul, the value is set to "10". This means that a page is not showing more than 10 post. If the query has more than 10 posts, the result is split into multiple pages via pagination. If the value is set to "-1" all post are shown on one page regardless their number.

If necessary, the number of posts per page can be also changed for a specific post type using the WP action hook pre_get_posts and override the query var posts_per_page. The necessary code can be placed in the function.php of the child theme. This is a code snipped for the archive 'facilitator' to show all posts on one page:

function modify_query( $query ) {
  if ( $query->is_archive() && $query->is_main_query() && get_query_var('post_type') === 'sd_cpt_facilitator'){
    $query->set( 'posts_per_page', -1); // all posts
  }
}
add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'modify_query' );

Exclude from Search

In case you want to exclude a certain type from the search, you can achieve this by modifying the search query. This is a code snipped to exclude all event dates (CPT 'sd_txn_dates') from the search by removing 'sd_cpt_date' from the query_var 'post_type':

function modify_query( $query ) {
  if ( is_search() ){
    $post_types = get_post_types();
    unset($post_types['sd_cpt_date']); 
    $query->set( 'post_type', $post_types );
  }
}
add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'modify_query' );

Further notes

Example child theme

An advanced example of a WordPress child theme with a schedule overview (page template), event detail pages (page template), and an appointment widget (shortcode), which uses the SeminarDesk plugin for WordPress, is available here.

Using REST API

The SeminarDesk REST API of the SeminarDesk plugin is built on top of the WordPress REST API. It's using the namespace seminardesk and provides various endpoints.

The POST endpoint POST https://**your-wordpress-site.com**/wpsd01/wp-json/seminardesk/v1/webhooks is used to receive webhooks and their payloads.

There are various GET endpoints to access the Custom Post Types events, dates, facilitators and labels as a list of items or a single item in JSON format (e.g. GET https://**your-wordpress-site.com**/wpsd01/wp-json/seminardesk/v1/cpt_events). When the option "Debug" under "Developer" on the admin page is activated, the items includes the entry sd_data with a complete dump of all fields of this item. For privacy concerts you might want to keep this disabled or even disable the GET endpoints all together on the admin page under "REST API".

The full list of endpoints in JSON format can be found here: https://**your-wordpress-site.com**/wpsd01/wp-json/seminardesk/v1/.

Using Webhooks & HTTP client

Webhooks and their payloads can be sent manually using CURL or other HTTP clients (e.g. CURL, Postman).

For CURL, you can follow this example:

curl \
  --user '**user**:**password**' \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --request POST \
  --data @/**your_directory**/**json_notification** \
  https://**your-wordpress-site.com**/sdv01/wp-json/seminardesk/v1/webhooks

This is an example of a Webhook payload with empty notification:

{
  "id": "3b27fe327ae240bf838a3fb6693e9feb",
  "attempt": 1,
  "properties": {
    "timestamp": "1583509807000"
  },
  "notifications": [
    // put your custom notifications here
  ]
}

Reset entries

To reset events, dates, and facilitators of SeminarDesk in WordPress, we recommend the following methods:

1. Using the built-in Webhook 'delete.all': This method is suitable for a quick and comprehensive reset of all plugin data, including events, dates, facilitators, their taxonomies and terms.
2. Using a WordPress Plugin for Bulk Deletion: For more granular control over the deletion process directly in the WordPress dashboard, we suggest utilizing a tool like "WP Bulk Delete".

Both methods are particularly useful for:

• Removing test data: Before transitioning your site from a staging to a live environment, it's crucial to clear any placeholder or test data.
• Resolving erroneous entries: Incorrect data can hinder plugin functionality. A reset helps ensure your plugin runs smoothly.
• Addressing synchronization issues: If data between the plugin and external systems becomes out of sync, a reset may help re-establish proper data alignment.

Reset via Webhook 'delete.all'

The entries of the SeminarDesk plugin can be completely reset on the database level via the Webhook action 'all.delete'. This action deletes all SeminarDesk entries from the WordPress database. On the admin page of the SeminarDesk plugin 'Debug' and 'Deleted All' need to be enabled to allow this action.

Example of the notification of the Webhook action 'all.delete':

"notifications": [
  {
    "action": "all.delete",
    "payload": {
    }
  }
]

How to use curl to send the notification to WordPress with an active SeminarDesk plugin.

Plugin Updates & Compatibility

In some case after updating the SeminarDesk plugin it might be necessary to also update the WordPress database or other resources for compatibility reason. SeminarDesk provides the Webhook action 'plugin.update' for this task. If necessary SeminarDesk will advise you to run this Webhook action with a special string, which will be provided.

Example of the notification with Webhook action 'plugin.update':

"notifications": [
  {
    "action": "plugin.update",
    "payload": {
      "update": "special_string"
    }
  }
]

Changelog

1.6.3 - 24.06.2026

• set facilitator post status from visibility setting isPublic (non-public facilitators are now saved as draft instead of published)
• exclude internal sd_data meta key from wp_meta REST API responses