Achieve Success hosting a Virtual Summit using WordPress

Using WordPress as Virtual Summit Software Lets You “Own Your Platform”

When I work with clients around the world, I always stick with my advice and concept around “owning your platform”. And when it comes to running online virtual summits, this is a common question and topic:

Should you pay for some pre-built and maybe limited software for virtual summits? Or have full control by running your virtual summit using WordPress, with all its flexibility. I have worked on several summit website events. And my recent project, launching for the second time this year, is the AIWritingSummit.com—which has become a pretty big event with an initial reach of 1.5 million people during pre-launch promotion.

This event is running on fast hosting using WordPress, and build combined with all the tools I describe in this article.

In this article, I will give you the full recipe of my build, the thinking behind it, the tools, and why I stick with WordPress as the flexible platform it is.

Make sure to read this article in detail, as it contains a lot of important notes for how I combine the different tools and systems. Details you probably would never know of, or think about.

First, below is a short list of what we need. Next, I will cover the biggest tools/integrations first. And at the end, I will recap the WordPress plugins used and why we use them. And last, quickly run through the sign-up flow for the summit.

If you want a solid, fully owned, and flexible virtual summit using WordPress – I got a full ready-to-go template build for your next event. Save time, money, and build for recurring events. Reach out.

Or, if you’re a Web Designer building sites for clients, here’s a build process you can use to get well paid build custom event websites on WordPress.

Here’s the Tools to run a virtual summit using WordPress (Short-list)

First, let me quickly run through what tools I’m using. Tools you most likely will need for hosting a virtual summit using WordPress. Keep in mind, the good thing about hosting a summit using WordPress is that we can add and remove tools as we need them.

Plus, you can choose the best tools for your needs. In this article though, you will get my full rundown of the systems and tools I use and recommend. Then I will go through these tools and why I use them. An important part to read through.

Shortlist of Software for Virtual Summits Built on WordPress

• WordPress + a few WordPress plugins to set things up as we want
• WPAlchemy – Premium WordPress hosting
• Wishlist Member plugin — to control content and access levels
• ThriveCart — to sell tickets and products + affiliate management built in
• ConvertBox — for opt-in forms to various landing pages and see stats
• ConvertKit — for building the email list and doing the marketing (alternative explained below)
• Plausible — for simple, privacy-based, and meaningful analytics
• Bricks Builder — for 100% design and content control (+ 2 Bricks add-ons)

So this is the primary list of building blocks I use to build a flexible and scalable summit website. It’s what I have used for building AIWritingSummit.com and other sites. You can go check things out there.

Aside from this list, there are of course some additional plugins we need. I will list those and explain further details below so you understand the reason for these plugins.

Let’s go through the setup process I have when building summit websites. Following the order of my build process.

Fast managed WordPress hosting for summits

Having proper website hosting for virtual summits is nothing but damn important.

I have seen summits crash because the hosts did not choose a proper hosting setup for their event. My experience with website hosting for WordPress grew many years ago when I had to deal with customers having big problems from cheap hosting.

In fact, it resulted in me building out my own custom hosting solution for my own websites, which I later started offering to some of my clients. Then over time it expanded into another business I now run called WPAlchemy.

It’s a more premium and custom hosting service, started to serve our own needs. And we know what WP hosting should be, especially website hosting for virtual summits using WordPress.

Here’s what you need to keep in mind when using WordPress for virtual summits.

• Choose fast (non-shared) hosting on solid servers
• Run on a server that can handle big spikes in visits
• Keep daily external backups that are NOT running as a plugin in WordPress
• Make sure caching is running properly, not hindering user payments or signups
• Make sure WordPress can send thousands of emails without limitations. Use a solid SMTP service (like SendGrid)

If the SMTP topic is new to you, it basically means that we’re using an external service to make it possible for WordPress to send emails to admin and users. If you have a virtual summit with lots of traffic coming to the site, and people sign up, think about how many emails WordPress has to send to those users with login details, receipts, and admin notifications.

If you run on cheap hosting, this system WILL crash unless you are running a solid external SMTP service.

For us, we have solved this issue with our hosting. We have SMTP built in for all our customers. And we’ve found that it’s perfect for running virtual summits.

Building a Custom Attention-Grabbing Website Design

For designing the summit websites, I use nothing else than Bricks Builder. It’s the most flexible and professional page builder you can find for WordPress at this point.

You can build virtually app-like experiences right in WordPress.

Then, like for all my website projects, I always build using a solid CSS framework called AutomaticCSS. This is a no-code tool to define the style, color scheme, and “sizing” of the website, which automatically adjusts for mobile and tablets.

Next, we move on to prepare for the content of the website. And when you run a summit, you’ll often need custom types of content like speakers, speaker pages, live panels, custom content for download, custom members pages, and such.

Building a custom virtual summit website using Bricks makes all this possible in combination with ACF plugin. I use the ACF plugin to create new post types and custom fields in WordPress. Pretty sexy plugin.

For example, while planning and building the AIWriting Summit, I built custom post types for speakers, live panel discussions for video, members content, and even custom website settings pages.

Custom settings pages make it easy for the summit host and team members to manage the summit details, turn on and off sections of the website, and launch live video streams.

You won’t find many of these features in fixed “summit software.” And you won’t have the option to custom-build content and presentation pages as you please unless you build your own.

When the website and content pages have been built, I further extend the capacity for Bricks Builder using two other plugins:

• Bricks Forge
• BricksExtras

Both of these tools are external WordPress plugins built to extend the functionality and building features of Bricks. And it makes it possible to really build advanced no-code features for these summit websites.

So, the combination of WordPress, Bricks Builder, Bricks Forge, and BricksExtras will make it possible for you to build a very slick and flexible user experience.

One important note about using BricksExtras here is that they support reading Wishlist Member Plugin member levels. So when I build members-only pages, I can set conditions to show and hide elements of a page based on a user’s membership level, defined in Wishlist Member.

Setting up your email list service and opt-in forms

Next, I just wanted to share a couple of tips on what tools you can use for the email list building and marketing. There are only two that I recommend.

Recommended external email list tool

To recommend an external service, it’s always ConvertKit. It’s the leading email list building service that has a sensible dashboard and is easy to use. My clients actually enjoy it.

It’s easy to set up integration with the website and ThriveCart payment system.

Another tool I will mention here, one I love using myself on my own websites, is ConvertBox. You can quickly build good-looking and effective sign-up forms with various logic for different actions and pages on your website. My email signup forms on this page (and website) are built using ConvertBox.

ConvertBox will give you much more flexible form builds, logic, and good-looking signup forms. Both embedded and as modals. But another important aspect of this tool is that you can do several actions in one user sign-up. So besides adding the user to ConvertKit, we also send webhook actions in the same sign-up flow.

Recommended self-hosted email list tool

If you want to consider self-hosting your email list building service to reduce cost and number of external services, there is only one WordPress plugin I can recommend for this.

MailMint is a well-built WordPress email marketing plugin. I use it for my course website and email newsletter as a Web Designer.

I have set up a webhook that I use in ConvertBox, so when users sign up, they instantly get added to MailMint as new subscribers.

If you go for this solution, you will have the option to even sign up the subscriber as a user on your WordPress website instantly. Though, this is not the workflow I’m recommending in this article. We use another integration for the user signup. Explained in more detail below.

Payment system for virtual summits on WordPress

Let’s move on to the payment system we use for virtual summits on WordPress.

For this, we use ThriveCart. It’s a well-known platform in the industry. It’s not a plugin, but an external service where you can create and sell digital products using pre-designed and properly built sales and purchase pages.

Here’s the reasons why we use ThriveCart:

1. We don’t need to use a payment plugin in WordPress
2. It’s a ready-made sales-page builder, cart, and payment system
3. ThriveCart has a built-in affiliate system (often used for virtual summits)
4. ThriveCart integrates with Wishlist Member.

When the ticket product for the summit has been created in ThriveCart, we just paste the embed code for that product in a sales-page built in Bricks.

When users purchase, they will have a secure payment form to buy. They will get a receipt sent to their email, and ThriveCart will plug the user straight into our WordPress website on a Wishlist Member membership level we have set up in the ThriveCart integration settings.

Now the user gets a welcome email from WordPress with login details automatically. They have also been assigned the membership level they paid for. Now they can log into the summit website and access content according to my setup controlled by overall WishList Member level settings, and what is showing and hiding using the BricksExtras plugin integration with Bricks.

Website analytics for the summit

Since I’m not a fan of Google Analytics, both for privacy and complexity, we use Plausible instead. They have gained popularity specifically for their privacy concept, but also because it is simple and sensible to use.

My clients love it, and that’s a good sign.

Using Plausible makes it easy to create an analytics dashboard to keep track of visitors and traffic. You can also set up conversion tracking and funnel paths.

When building this out, I grab the JS code snippet for the website tracking and stuff it into WordPress using the Codebox plugin. That way I can make sure to set it up so only public users get tracked, and not admins and other logged-in users that have already purchased the summit access.

WordPress Plugins List for Building the Summit

There are, of course, a few more plugins we use to have a well-functioning WordPress site. I will list the important ones here, excluding irrelevant plugins for the setup, like those specifically for our hosting and maintenance service at WPAlchemy.

Consider these as tips on how to improve your own site builds.

• Admin and Site Enhancements (ASE) Pro – I use this to secure the site by disabling WordPress functions and changing the login URL.
• Advanced Custom Fields PRO – I use this to build out custom post types and add custom fields to these post types. I also build custom settings pages in WordPress specifically for the summit functionality.
• Automatic.css – I use this as my primary CSS framework and design structure.
• BricksExtras – This is a third-party Bricks add-on plugin I use to build more features and to control content access. They support reading Wishlist Member levels.
• Bricksforge – An extensive third-party plugin for Bricks to add more functionality. I use it especially to improve form building.
• Email Log – I add this plugin to keep track of and document emails delivered to users.
• Simple History – I use this to keep track of summit team and member user activity on the site. This can be very useful at times.
• WishList Member – I consider this the most flexible membership plugin for WordPress. They support lots of integrations. Plus, it’s easy to have 100% control of content using Bricks.
• WPAlchemy.io – Our own maintenance plugin for our hosting. We customize the hosting and maintain the WordPress installation for all our customers.

The workflow of this summit website

So, as a last segment I will go over how the workflow for the website actually happens. If you read the whole article until now, it can seem like a lot with the different tools, plugins, apps, and integrations.

But this is a one-time setup. And it’s what makes us own our platform and have 100% flexibility to make changes in the future. And truly build a summit solution that is custom to the event.

Here’s the action that happens with the setup I have built:

• Users land on the summit homepage or a free lead-magnet page
• They sign up in a form built using ConvertBox
• ConvertBox adds the user to a list, plus a couple of Tags
• Wishlist Member is integrated with the email service, and reads the user getting the specific tag. Wishlist then adds them to a given membership level. Login details are sent automatically.
• The user is forwarded to a sales page being offered to all-access ticket
• If they click to purchase access to the summit, they will see a ThriveCart form
• They purchase, and ThriveCart adds the user to another level in Wishlist Member since we have integrated this in ThriveCart
• User receives new details from Wishlist Member according to our setup in the plugin
• The website will now display new content when the user logs in or refreshes the website

This is primarily the workflow of the system I have built for this summit website running on WordPress. Of course, there are other details around how I build the design, set up pages, access control, and integrations.

Since this article is not a web design course, I won’t be including all these details. But you now get the overview and full breakdown of how I build virtual summit websites using WordPress as the platform, and the integrations and workflows between them.

If you’re interested in owning your platform and launching an effective and flexibly built virtual summit using WordPress, contact me. I offer this full package as a template starting point.

And if you’d like, you can have this ready to go with premium WordPress hosting including monthly maintenance.

Reach out if you want a full build of your summit project.