The MEC Seat addon is a great tool for booking event seats. If you are looking to give your guests the option of picking their spot in the venue, this addon is made for you. Imagine your event is a seminar, play, or concert and it is held in a place with multiple seat rows; you can let your users choose their location in the venue by choosing the seats they like. With MEC Seat you can also create the plan of your venue in addition to the ready-made layouts that are available for everyone.
The Installation and activation of the addon
In order to install the addon, please go to your WordPress Dashboard > Plugins > Add New and upload, install, and activate the addon.
Now that your addon is activated, check to see if the MEC Booking system is activated on your website with the help of the article below:
https://www.webnus.net/dox/modern-events-calendar/add-a-booking-system/
Once you have verified that it is activated, go to your WordPress Dashboard > M.E. Calendar > Settings > Seat and check enable seat module, then save the settings and reload the page for Seat settings to become available.
Generating seat layouts for venues
Click on the Seats Area Plan button to create your first Plan. On the right side of the opened pop-up, we can create different areas by filling out a simple form, and a preview of the created plan will appear on the left side.
Let’s make a plan together that includes two areas. Assume that the first area contains 3 rows of seats with 20 seats arranged in each row, and the area title is “SPECIAL”. I will fill out the form below and then I will hit on the Add Area button.
Here is the preview of the first area:
Then I’m gonna add the next area with 5 rows where we have 20 seats in each row. This new area title is “EXECUTIVE”.
The general structure of our plan is ready, but the arrangement of seats in your venue may not be so simple. For example, you may want to remove some seats, or there are seats that have already been reserved by other participants before. It is possible to configure each seat one by one. Just click on the desired one and its settings will appear.
- Display: Either show or hide this particular seat.
- Book status: Check if this seat is booked.
- Color: Set a custom color for this particular seat
- Description: Enter the seat description, to note the users.
The same options are available for each entire Row. You just need to click on the gear icon next to each row so you can configure it.
I hide some seats in the first area(the red ones) and also, some of the seats are booked(the grey ones). Here you can see my final seat area plan:
Using the made plan for events
In order to use the plans for events go to the single event edit page and enable the seat option from the seat options section.
Now the plan will be available for the users, so they can select their desired seat in the booking process.
How to make a plan for a venue where the participants’ seats are arranged around tables?
Suppose the venue has 9 tables and each table is intended for 8 people and we want to make a plan using the MEC Seat addon.
I create an area with 14 rows with 14 seats per row, and in order to make this plan more easily and quickly, I disable all the seats using the row settings.
Now I activate the seats that I want to be displayed according to the location of the tables in the venue.
Creating individual plans for each event
If you need to use different plans for each event you can disable ” inherit from global options” from seat options and create a new plan. All the options are also available in this following section:
Assigning a part of a plan to a certain ticket
By default, the first event ticket will be bookable through the whole seat area plan. But if your event offers different tickets, and you want to have different prices for each certain part of your plan, you can assign each ticket to the individual seats or the rows
Important Note: In order to use this feature you need to create the plan for each event individually. But you can use the global plan too by importing the JSON code to this particular event. To do this you need to export the global plan from MEC Settings > Seat > Import/Export and import it to the event edit page > Seat options > Import/Export.
After importing the global plan or designing the individual plan for the event, there are three methods:
- Assigning the whole plan to a certain ticket: Click on General settings and set the ticket option for the desired ticket from the single event edit page > seat options.
- Assigning one or more rows of a plan to a certain ticket: Click on the gear icon next to the desired rows in your plan to open up the settings page. Now you can set the option for the desired ticket.
- Assigning single seats to a certain ticket: You need to click on the seats you want to assign in your plan to open its settings page. The settings page looks exactly like the previous methods, and you should set the ticket options for the desired tickets and save them.
Now your participants can only book the tickets you have picked for the seats that you have designed.
Import/Export
It is possible to export the created plans to a JSON file and import them both in MEC Settings > Seat > Import/Export and in Event add/edit page > Seat Options > Import/Export. Therefore, it is possible to transfer global plans to individual event plans and vice versa.
The seat numbers of the registered bookings
The booked seat numbers will be displayed in the registered bookings. Please take a look at an example in the screenshot below:
Notification email placeholders
In order to inform users of the booked seat numbers, this placeholder, %%seat_numbers%%, will be added to these notification emails: Booking, Booking Confirmation, Booking Rejection, Booking Verification, Booking Cancellation, Booking Reminder, Event Soldout, Admin, Event Finished. You can easily show the booked seat numbers by including this placeholder in your email.
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