Remove wordpress.org login requirement for buying WordCamp tickets

[jdevalk]

Describe the bug

Recently, a change was made to require people to have a WordPress.org account to buy a ticket for a WordCamp. Because of that change, the new Holiday Break imposed by Matt causes issues. Because of that imposed holiday break, people can no longer sign up for a WordPress.org account and thus can no longer do that before buying a WordCamp ticket.

There are several, large and small, WordCamps that might be affected by this, as can be seen from the list on Central, and probably including WordCamp Asia 2025.

To reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Go to https://ahmedabad.wordcamp.org/2025/tickets/ in an incognito screen
2. Click on the dropdown near "Regular ticket" and select "1"
3. Click Register
4. You will be redirected to a WordPress.org login screen. Since we assume you don't have an account, you have to click "create an account".
5. See that "New user registration is currently unavailable."

Expected behavior

You should be able to buy a ticket for a WordCamp that is happening 3 weeks from now...

Screenshots / Screencasts

Steps:

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WordCamp

This affects all WordCamps currently selling tickets.

Proposed solution

Remove the login requirement that was imposed recently. While I think everyone deserves a holiday break, not making this change would cause the (volunteer) WordCamp organizers to be collateral damage.

[MakarandMane]

+1

Thank you @jdevalk for promptly raising this concern.

Following 2 weeks there are two Wordcamp Kolhapur & Kolkata.. After 2 weeks another WordCamp in pune.
Kolhapur is new community which focus totaly on new attendee who don't have an account. This will affect our tickets sales and contributor day.

[sebastienserre]

And WCEU has just opened their ticket sales...
In the WordCamp rules, we have to be inclusive.... refusing to sell a WordCamp ticket is not really.... welcoming to new community members

[TheJeffr0]

Based on the slides shown during the State of the Word presentation, this one highlights the importance of community in WordPress, and the account requirement clearly opposes that mentality.

If the requirement is not removed, at the very least, for WordCamp sites with events coming up and they suffer because of it, that's going to be such a huge blow to current and future event organizers and to the community itself.

[sagarpatel124]

@jdevalk Thank you for raising this concern here. I am one of the WordCamp Ahmedabad organizers, and we have been discussing this matter since morning. With WordCamp approaching soon, this issue might create a negative experience for those who were planning to get tickets at the last moment.

This isn't just about our WordCamp Ahmedabad Edition; there are many others in the queue, and this situation could lead to chaos. We're unsure whether we should mention this on the site for transparency with attendees or wait for Central to take action?

We hope the community enjoys a wonderful holiday season, as they truly deserve a good, long break. Hopefully, this concern will be addressed before the holidays begin.

Our organizing team is super excited about all the plans for WordCamp Ahmedabad, a two-day event with 1200+ attendees. We hope the above concern will be resolved soon to ensure a better experience for last-minute attendees.

[dd32]

It's been agreed to re-open the registration for WordCamp purposes, that's been done in https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/14325

[jdevalk]

Thank you @dd32!

[sagarpatel124]

@dd32 Thank you so much for your prompt action and for strengthening the trust within the community. This will be incredibly helpful for all WordCamp organizers and attendees.

[nilovelez]

Thank you very much, @dd32

The referrer events.wordpress.org should also be added, as NextGen WordPress events use URLs like this:

https://events.wordpress.org/denia/2024/trabajoremoto/

[mrfoxtalbot]

Thank you, @dd32