Appointment Hour Booking – Booking Calendar vs CitySpark Events and Embeds

Appointment Hour Booking is a WordPress plugin for creating booking forms for appointments with a start time and a defined duration over a schedule. The start time is visually selected by the end user from a set of start times calculated based in the “open” hours and service duration. The duration/schedule is defined in the “service” selected by the customer. Each calendar can have multiple services with different duration and prices. This plugin is useful for different cases like booking of medical services where services with different duration and prices may be available, for personal training sessions, for booking rooms for events, for reserving language classes or other type of classes and other type of services/resources booking where start times are selected and the availability is automatically managed using the defined service duration to avoid double-booking (the booked time is blocked once the booking is completed). Main Features: Easy visual configuration of calendar data and schedules Working dates, invalid/holiday dates and special dates can be defined Supports restriction of default, maximum and minimimum dates Open hours can be defined for each date Each calendar can have multiple services defined Each service can have its own price and duration Start-times are calculated automatically based in the open hours and service duration Available times are managed automatically to avoid double-booking Multiple services can be selected on each booking Services can have multiple capacity Automatic price calculation Customizable email notifications for administrators and users Form validation and built it anti-spam captcha protection Manual and automatic CSV reports iCal addon with iCal export link and iCal file attached into emails Calendar available in 53+ languages Multiple date formats supported Blocks for Elementor and Gutenberg Multi-page calendars Printable appointments list Features in commercial versions: Visual form builder for creating the booking form fields Booking form can be connected to payment process (Ex: PayPal Standard, PayPal Pro, Stripe, Skrill, Authorize.net, TargetPay/iDEAL, Mollie/iDEAL, SagePay, Redsys) Payments are SCA ready (Strong Customer Authentication), compatible with the new Payment services (PSD 2) – Directive (EU) Addons for integration with external services: reCaptcha, MailChimp, SalesForce, WooCommerce and others Addons with additional features: appointment cancellation addon, appointment reminders addon, clickatell and twilio SMS add-ons, signature fields, iCal synchronization, Google Calendar API, Zoom Meetings … Appointment Hour Booking can be used for: Booking services or resources: Define schedule, open hours, services, prices and durations and let the calendar plugin manage the schedule. Sample cases: Medical services, personal training, resource allocation, booking rooms, classes, etc… The services can have a maximum capacity (example: number of persons that can book/attend the service at the same time). The default capacity is 1. If the service capacity has been set to 1 the time-slot will be blocked for new bookings after getting one booking. If the service capacity has been set to a greater number (example: service with capacity 10) the time-slot will be blocked after filling the capacity (example: after getting bookings for a total of 10 persons). This feature is described in detail at https://apphourbooking.dwbooster.com/blog/2019/01/24/bookings-for-multiple-persons/ The Troubleshoot Area Use the troubleshot if you are having problems with special or non-latin characters. In most cases changing the charset to UTF-8 through the option available for that in the troubleshot area will solve the problem. You can also use this area to change the script load method if the booking calendar isn’t appearing in the public website. The Notification Emails The notification emails with the appointment data entered in the booking form can sent in “Plain Text” format (default) or in “HTML” format. If you select “HTML” format, be sure to use the BR or P tags for the line breaks into the text and to use the proper formatting. Exporting Appointments to CSV / Excel Files The appointment data can be exported to a CSV file (Excel compatible) to manage the data from other applications. That option is available from the “bookings list”, the appointments can be filtered by date and by the text into them, so you can export just the needed appointments to the CSV file. Other Versions and Features The free version published in this WordPress directory is a fully-functional version for accepting appointments as indicated in the plugin description. There are also commercial versions with additional features, for example: Ability to process forms/appointments linked to payment process (PayPal, Stripe, Skrill, …) Form builder for a visual customization of the booking form Addons with multiple additional features Payments processed through the plugin are SCA ready (Strong Customer Authentication), compatible with the new Payment services (PSD 2) – Directive (EU) that comes into full effect on 14 September, 2019. Please note that the pro features aren’t advised as part of the free plugin in the description shown in this WordPress directory. If you are interested in more information about the commercial features go to the plugin’s page: https://apphourbooking.dwbooster.com/download

CitySpark Inc. is the leading event listing and promotion platform for publishers. This plugin integrates the CitySpark platform into WordPress, allowing you to easily display your CitySpark calendar along with business listings and upcoming best of content. This plugin requires a CitySpark account. Go to CitySpark.com for more info. External services This plugin embeds scripts on the page that provide access to CitySpark, Inc’s services, including displaying community events in your area and allowing users to log into the CitySpark system to bookmark events. Usage of the plugin by a publisher requires a CitySpark subscription and the embedded scripts can be configured in the CitySpark Admin site. This service is provided by “CitySpark, Inc”: terms of use. Configuring the settings Before adding a block to the page, make sure to update the CitySpark Admin Page Settings. The settings configured here are required for the correct operation of plugin, and without them you may run into undesired 404 errors. In the CitySpark Event Calendar Settings page on the WordPress admin site, add a new “Placement URL” for each Portal and List Page block you intend to add to your site. Include the Placement URL and the Script ID just as you see on the CitySpark Admin site. Adding the block You can add a CitySpark Block to any page or post with the Gutenberg block editor. Directions for the different kind of blocks are outlined below. Portal and List Page Blocks After adding a CitySpark Portal or List Page Block to any page or post with the WordPress Gutenberg editor, insert the Script ID that matches the script that you want from the CitySpark admin page, and you should see the block show up in the preview (currently only available for CitySpark Portal blocks). Widget Blocks After adding one or more CitySpark Widget Blocks to a page or post with the WordPress Gutenberg editor, insert the Widget ID that matches the widget you want from the CitySpark admin page. Custom Hostname If ad-blockers on your visitors’ browsers are preventing the CitySpark portal script from loading, you can serve it through your own domain instead. To set this up: Log in to admin.cityspark.com and configure a Custom Domain (e.g. events.yoursite.com). Follow the DNS instructions provided there to point that hostname at CitySpark’s servers. In the CitySpark Event Calendar Settings page in your WordPress admin, find the Custom Hostname section and enter just the hostname — no https:// prefix (e.g. events.yoursite.com). Click Save Custom Hostname. The plugin will now load the portal script from your domain instead of portal.cityspark.com. Leave the field blank at any time to revert to the default CitySpark domain.