Everything you need to get Beacon Events Pro selling tickets, in the order you’ll do it. It takes about ten minutes. Stuck anywhere? Email jeff.helpsupport@gmail.com and you’ll get an answer from the person who built it.
1. Install both plugins
- Install the free Beacon Events plugin: Plugins → Add New, search “Beacon Events”, Install, Activate.
- Upload Beacon Events Pro: Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, choose the
beacon-events-pro.zipyou downloaded, Install, Activate. - When Pro asks for your licence key, paste it in. (AppSumo buyers: it’s on the page where you redeemed your code.)
No events yet? Go to Events: the getting-started box can add five sample events and make a Calendar page for you. Coming from another calendar plugin? Use Events → Import / Export (see step 6).
2. Choose how you get paid
Go to Events → Tickets. Under “Paid tickets go through”, pick one:
- Stripe Checkout. Paste your Stripe secret key (Stripe Dashboard → Developers → API keys → Secret key, it starts with
sk_live_, orsk_test_while you try it out). Money goes straight to your own Stripe account. We never take a cut. - WooCommerce checkout. Shown when WooCommerce is active. Beacon creates one hidden ticket product per event, and orders appear under WooCommerce → Orders, using whatever payment methods your shop already has.
Set your Currency (three-letter code: USD, EUR, GBP, CAD…). Free RSVPs work without either.
3. Turn on tickets for an event
Open the event. In the editor sidebar, open Tickets / RSVP and switch on Take RSVPs / sell tickets. Then:
- Capacity per date: seats for each date of the event (0 = unlimited). A weekly class gets this many seats every week.
- Price per ticket: 0 for a free RSVP.
- Max per reservation: how many tickets one person can take at once.
- Ticket types (optional): early bird, member, VIP… each with its own price and capacity. With types, the single price is not used; the capacity per date still caps the total.
Publish, and the booking form appears on the event page with a date picker for repeating events.
4. Waitlist and reminders
Both live under Events → Tickets. With the waitlist on, a full date offers “join the waitlist”. When someone cancels, the first person waiting gets the spot (free events) or an email that a spot opened up (paid events). Reminders email everyone confirmed a set number of hours before the event. Pick 2, 6, 24, 48 or 72 hours.
5. Check people in at the door
- Every confirmation email has a ticket link with a QR code. Scan it with your phone’s camera while logged in to WordPress as an editor or admin: green means checked in, amber means already checked in (with the time), red means cancelled, unpaid or not valid.
- No phones? Events → Attendees has a Check in link on each row and a Print door list button, grouped by date.
- Export CSV gives you the full list for anything else.
6. Bring your old events, tickets and attendees across
Events → Import / Export finds what your old plugin left in the database, even if it’s already deactivated, and copies it without changing anything there. With Pro active it also brings ticket prices, capacity and attendees from The Events Calendar (RSVPs, Tickets Commerce and Event Tickets Plus orders) and bookings from WP Events Manager by ThimPress. Run it again any time: it updates rather than duplicating. Moving several sites? wp beacon import tec does the same from WP-CLI.
7. Let visitors submit events
Put the shortcode on any page. Submissions arrive as pending events for you to approve, and you get an email for each one.
Questions
Email jeff.helpsupport@gmail.com. You can also see all of this working on the demo site, where the booking form is live (bookings there are wiped every night).