HimoEXPO — UK Exhibitions WordPress Plugin

A WordPress plugin that automatically scrapes daily-updated UK B2B trade exhibition listings, categorizes them, and lets site visitors search, browse, and register interest in exhibitions — with a full admin dashboard for managing registrations.

Built for Royal Hermes Group by HimoEXPO (h.maghsoudloo).

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What it does

The plugin scrapes UK B2B exhibition listings from EventsEye once a day via WP-Cron, stores them in a dedicated database table, and displays them on the front end through a shortcode. Visitors can search, filter by category, and submit a registration-of-interest form for any exhibition — which triggers a confirmation email to the visitor and dual notification emails to admins.

Key features

• Automated daily scraping — WP-Cron job (with a manual "Run Scrape Now" button) pulls exhibition data from EventsEye: name, dates, city, venue, cycle, and description
• Auto-categorization — a keyword-based engine sorts every exhibition into one of 20 default categories (Automotive, Aerospace, Construction, Energy, Technology, Food & Drink, Healthcare, Fashion, Finance, Marketing, Manufacturing, Logistics, Real Estate, Education, Science, Agriculture, Sports, Printing, Franchise & Business, Other), each with its own bundled icon and a custom-image upload option
• Front-end shortcode [rhg_exhibitions] — a responsive (desktop/tablet/phone) card grid with:
  • Live debounced search and a configurable per-page count (10/20/40/50)
  • Multi-select category filtering (dropdown on mobile, pills on desktop)
  • "Days to go" badges, hover-to-reveal descriptions, and a branded registration popup
  • A "Can't find your exhibition?" flow for visitors to manually request a listing that isn't in the database yet
• Registration system — full name, email, job title, searchable country/town, and an optional phone number, with server-side validation
• Email notifications — visitor confirmation email plus two configurable admin notification addresses, with a built-in "Send Test Email" diagnostic and captured SMTP error reporting
• Admin dashboard ("HimoEXPO" menu in wp-admin) with three pages:
  • Registrations — every submission, filterable by keyword, date range, city, and category, including flagged "not found" requests
  • Exhibitions — all scraped listings grouped into a collapsible accordion by category, with registrant counts and drill-through to each exhibition's registrant list
  • Settings — admin notification emails, category management (add/edit/remove + keyword rules + images), scrape controls, and a shortcode reference
• Self-upgrading database schema — new columns introduced in later versions are added automatically on first load after an update, no manual reactivation required

Requirements

• WordPress (tested on recent 5.x/6.x releases)
• PHP 7.4+
• MySQL/MariaDB (standard WordPress database)
• WP-Cron enabled (either the default or a real system cron hitting wp-cron.php)
• Outbound HTTPS access from the server to eventseye.com (required for the daily scrape)
• A working mail transport for notification emails — on local environments (XAMPP, Local, etc.) install WP Mail SMTP, since PHP's built-in mail() function has no real mail server to talk to on localhost and will fail silently. See docs/TROUBLESHOOTING.md.

Installation

Option A — Download a release (recommended)

1. Go to Releases and download the .zip for the version you want (the latest tag is the current production version)
2. In wp-admin, go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, choose the zip, and click Install Now
3. Click Activate

Option B — Clone from GitHub

cd wp-content/plugins
git clone https://github.com/devhimoco/UKExhibition-Wordpress-Plugin.git himoexpo-uk-exhibitions

Then activate HimoEXPO from Plugins in wp-admin.

First-time setup

1. Activating the plugin creates its database tables (rhg_exhibitions, rhg_registrations) and schedules the daily scrape automatically
2. Go to HimoEXPO → Settings and:
   • Enter the two admin notification email addresses
   • Use Send Test Email to confirm mail delivery works before relying on it
   • Click Run Scrape Now to populate exhibitions immediately instead of waiting for the next daily cron run
   • Review Category Management — edit keyword rules or upload custom category images if desired
3. Add the shortcode to any page or post:

   [rhg_exhibitions]
   

4. If Run Scrape Now reports 0 exhibitions (most common on local XAMPP setups), see docs/TROUBLESHOOTING.md — it covers SSL/certificate errors, connectivity issues, and bot-detection responses, matched to the exact error message the plugin shows.

Project structure

royal-hermes-exhibitions.php   # Plugin bootstrap: activation, cron, schema auto-upgrade
admin/
  class-rhg-admin.php          # wp-admin menu + Registrations/Exhibitions/Settings pages
includes/
  class-rhg-categories.php     # Keyword-based auto-categorization engine
  class-rhg-db.php             # Database schema + queries
  class-rhg-scraper.php        # EventsEye scraper
  class-rhg-cron.php           # Daily WP-Cron scheduling
  class-rhg-shortcode.php      # [rhg_exhibitions] front-end rendering
  class-rhg-ajax.php           # Search/filter/registration AJAX handlers
  class-rhg-email.php          # Registration + admin notification emails
assets/
  css/, js/, img/              # Front-end and admin styling, scripts, category icons
docs/
  TROUBLESHOOTING.md           # Scraper failure diagnostics (SSL, connectivity, bot-blocking)
CHANGELOG.md                   # Full version-by-version history from v5.0.0 onward

Version history

This repository's main branch always reflects the latest version. Every historical build — including early pre-release prototypes and alternate variants — is preserved and downloadable from Releases, each with its own notes and the original .zip as a downloadable asset.

For the detailed, version-by-version technical changelog (what changed and why, from v5.0.0 through the current release), see CHANGELOG.md.

Versioning follows semantic versioning from v5.0.0 onward:

• +0.1 — small changes (bug fixes, minor UI tweaks, small feature additions)
• +1.0 — big changes (new pages, new systems, major redesigns, new integrations)

Versions prior to v5.0.0 (v0.1.0–v0.4.0 in this repo's Releases) were early prototypes built before this versioning scheme was adopted.

License

Proprietary — All rights reserved. This code is the property of Royal Hermes Group / HimoEXPO and is not licensed for reuse, modification, or redistribution by third parties. See LICENSE.

Author

HimoEXPO (h.maghsoudloo) — built for Royal Hermes Group