Version 5.7 release

Released on December 7, 2015

The Version 5.7 release of Wild Apricot consists of the following changes and enhancements.

Significant changes

Revised payment workflow

The payment workflow that takes place when a visitor to your site applies for or renews membership, or registers for an event, has been streamlined and enhanced. These changes apply to membership application, renewal, and level change, and to event registration. The processing of d onations has not changed.

Previously, the payment workflow involved some unnecessary steps and an excessive number of emails being sent to contacts.

The most significant improvement in the new workflow is a reduction in the number of emails being sent to contacts. Now, if online payment is completed within 15 minutes of the application or registration being confirmed, the following emails will not be sent:

  • Invoice
  • Event registration initiated
  • Application initiated (unless admin approval required)
  • Renewal pending
  • Level change initiated

To allow administrators to further reduce the number of emails, macros have been added to insert the invoice URL and payment instructions into automatic emails. That way, you can turn off invoice emails and include the macros in event re gistration and membership application/renewal emails, and event and renewal reminders.

As well, administrators can now choose whether to enable online or offline payment methods for events and membership levels. Previously, offline payment options were always available, and an online payment option was always available if online payments were enabled at the site level.

For events, the available payment methods are controlled as part of the registration settings on the Registration types & settings tab.

For each membership level, you can specify the payment methods from the General tab.

The online option is only available  if online payments have been enabled for your site.

Depending on which payment method option you choose, different payment workflows will take place. Previously, the same workflow took place for all scenarios, leading to unnecessary steps in some cases.

  • If only offline payment is enabled, then an invoice will be emailed to the contact after they click the Confirm button. Instead of being directed to the Invoices & payments tab on their contact record, a summary of the registration or application is displayed. From there, the contact can choose to view or pay the outstanding invoice.
  • If only online payment is enabled, then a Pay online button will appear instead of a Confirm button. Clicking the  Pay online  button will take the contact to the online payment screen for your site's payment provider.
  • If both online and offline payment is enabled, then two buttons will be displayed: Pay online and Invoice me. Clicking the Pay online button will take the contact to the online payment screen for your payment provider. Clicking the Invoice me button will result in the contact being emailed an invoice which they can pay online or offline. From the summary of the registration or application that appears, the contact can choose to view or pay (online) the outstanding invoice.
When paying using PayPal Express Checkout, the Pay online button with be replaced with two buttons: Pay with credit card, and PayPal Express checkout.

When paying online, any existing unpaid online invoices will be included by default in the amount being charged on the payment screen. If the contact doesn't want to pay multiple invoices, they can click the Cancel button from the payment screen. They will be redirected to the Invoices & payment tab on their contact profile. 

On various screens during the payment process, icons will be displayed to indicate the possible payment options.

Invoice and receipt settings

The settings for invoices and receipts have been combined onto a single Invoice and receipt settings screen.

Within the invoice settings section, the When user confirms transaction, email invoice option has been replaced by a Send invoices for pending payments, since invoices are no longer sent if an online payment is completed within 15 minutes of the event registration or membership application/renewal being confirmed.

In addition, the maximum number of digits allowed for invoice and donation numbers was increased from 5 to 7. The default invoice and donation number remains 5 digits – 00 001.

Simplified newsletter composition

Clients have identified newsletter composition as one of the most frustrating processes in Wild Apricot. Our email templates looked dated, and are difficult to modify, and the resulting email can appear differently on different email readers.

To address this pain point, we have overhauled our email editor, and developed new email templates that are more visually engaging, easy to customize, and produce consistent results on all email readers.

The new editor is not only easier to use, but also provides enhanced control over the appearance of your emails. 

Now, when you begin editing an email or email template, a General settings panel appears on the left. 

From here,  you can easily set an overall background color, and easily change the overall font set. (If other settings appear in this panel, you can display these settings again by clicking the Appearanceicon at the top.)

If you click a cell within the email or email template, the panel displays settings for the cell. 

For each cell, you can set a background color, control the cell padding and margins, and set a border width and color.

To change the overall layout of the email or email template, click the Layouts icon and select a different layout.

The icons representing the different layouts do not include the header and footer blocks that are included in every layout.

After switching to a different layout, you can undo the layout change from the layout panel (along with any other changes you have made since the layout change).

You cannot currently add or remove individual columns and rows from an existing layout. There are, however, a large number of layouts you can switch between.

You continue to use the content editor toolbar to add content such as images, links, and macros.  You can also  paste external content from documents or web pages with minimal loss of formatting and no subsequent editing errors.

Currently, you cannot access the HTML for the entire message. You can, however, access the HTML for individual cells using the HTML icon within the content editor toolbar. 

The new email templates work in conjunction with the new email editor. These templates only use formatting that can be reproduced by the editor, thereby avoiding editing issues. The templates are responsive by default – the resulting emails will automatically reflow on mobile devices – and are designed to display the same on all email readers. There are basic templates in a variety of layouts, and themed templates in a variety of different colors. A blank template with no layout is available for clients who wish to design their own email templates from the ground up.

The deprecated system templates are provided for compatibility and should not be used for new emails since they do not provide the consistency and stability of the basic and themed templates.

Send again button renamed

The button that you click to use an existing email as the basis for a new message was previously labeled Send again. This label was interpreted to mean that the email is immediately sent to same recipients, so we renamed it to Save as new email

Clicking this button will create a new email with the same recipients selected by default. You can modify the email and change the recipients before sending.

New features

Event waitlist

Once an event reaches its registration limit – either for a particular registration type or for the event as a whole – you can maintain a waiting list of prospective event registrants.

After you set a registration limit for an event, a waitlist option becomes available. You can enable a waitlist separately for each registration type and for the overall event. The option to enable the waitlist for an event appears on the Registration types & settings tab. 

After enabling the waitlist, you can choose how much information to collect from people wanting to join the waitlist.

The option to enable the waitlist for a particular registration types appears within the registration type settings.


When the registration limit is reached, an option appears within the event details on your public site to join a waitlist.

When the prospective registrant clicks the Join waitlist button, they will be prompted to provide the information you specified. After providing the information, the prospective registrant clicks another Join waitlist button and is added to the waitlist.

From the event's emails settings, you can choose to send a waitlist registration message to the prospective registrant, and a copy to the event organizer.

Once a waitlist is enabled for an event, a Waitlist tab appears beside the Registrants tab.

The Waitlist tab displays registration information for everyone on the waitlist.

The waitlist does not distinguish between contacts waiting for spaces within a particular registration type, and those waiting for overall event spaces.

If spaces become available for an event or registration type with a waitlist, a warning icon will appear on the Waitlist tab. When you hover over the icon, a message will appear informing you of the additional spaces.

Automatic emails are not sent to either contacts on the waitlist or administrators when spaces become available.

Within the Waitlist tab, you can click an entry to view the details of a particular waitlist registration.

From the waitlist registration record, an administrator can register the contact for the event, send an email to the contact, or remove the contact from the waitlist.

Contacts cannot remove themselves from waitlists, and administrators cannot manually add contacts to waitlists. If an administrator registers a contact for an event, the contact is automatically removed from the waitlist, but they are not automatically emailed an event confirmation. As with all manual event registrations, it is the responsibility of the administrator to send a manual confirmation message.

Administrators can email the entire waitlist from any tab on the event setup screen.

New Facebook comments gadget

Using the new Facebook comments gadget, visitors  can comment on your site page using their Facebook account, and optionally, post their comments to their Facebook walls.  To post a comment, visitors have to log into their Facebook account.

Within the gadget settings, you can control the number of comments to be displayed and the color scheme of the gadget. The gadget will occupy the full width of the placeholder or layout cell in which it appears.

Photo album sorting

You can now control the order of photos in photo album gadgets. You cannot manually arrange photos, but you can choose the order in which they are automatically sorted. You can choose to display them by name or date added – the date the photo was uploaded to the album – in ascending or descending order.

Previously, photos were displayed in the order in which they were uploaded.

New responsive theme set: Showcase

The new Showcase theme set was designed for associations that wish to use an online portfolio to publicize a particular service or product.

Showcase themes includes a dramatic image link effect, whereby an image displays a tooltip, and a surface color with an opaque background is applied, when you hover over it.

Another theme-specific element is the single-level menu style that allows the visitor to scroll horizontally through menu options.

API enhancements

  • You can now use the Contacts API call to delete a contact
  • The Events API call now returns a list of event sessions. For each session, the ID, title, start date, and end date are listed.
  • The Events API call now returns guests registration settings as part of the event details
  • The registration details returned by the EventRegistrations API call now indicates whether the registration is a guest registration, and if so, provides a link to the parent registration.

Bug fixes

A number of bugs were fixed, including the following: 

  • Event announcement sent multiple times
  • Event calendar appears incorrectly on mobile devices
  • Event details not displayed properly on Homestead themes
  • Register button overlapping description on event calendar in narrow layout column
  • Member album settings not updated after applying global settings to all members
  • Forum summary emails sent to archived records
  • When specifying a starting page for members, the Stay on the same page option is not working
  • Renewal notifications are sent for level with renewal period set to Never
  • Recurring payment charged on PayPal but not recorded in Wild Apricot
  • SSL error when processing payments via CRE Secure
  • Author name is overlapping the Reply button in forums using Terra and Firma themes
  • Losing changes when saving and closing an email draft on Internet Explorer 11
  • Save and Cancel buttons sometimes missing on Colors and styles screen for Bookshelf, Treehouse, and Whiteboard themes
  • Widget content not shown for pages using template with right or left column master layout
  • {Donation_Date} macro returns wrong date

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