CREATE & SCHEDULE AN EVENT
The Events Scheduler is a very advanced tool and has several settings that may be more than what you need to simply schedule a basic event. If the tutorial listed below is too much information than what you require, simply submit a Support ticket and we would be happy to get your event setup for you at no additional cost.
Configure Your Settings
Let’s get started with setting configuration. Go to Control Panel > Events. You will see the initial ‘Getting Started’ screen that will guide you through a 4-step setup process.
Click on ‘Configure Your Settings’ Button. You will be sent to the Settings Page. You can also get to the Settings Page from the Events > Settings menu link.
Tooltips
Events+ provides lots of helpful tips by way of blue information tooltips with a white ‘i‘ inside. If you hover over these or click on it a dialogue block will appear with some helpful tips on how to complete each field, as seen below:
Settings
Here you’ll find some of the more crucial settings such as the url slug, payment and login options.
Set your root slug here lets you specify the url slug for your event listings. Let’s assume this is a events page is for Regionals, so we enter into the slug field ‘regionals-events’, your url will now be: yourdomain.com/regionals-events/
Tick the Will you be accepting payment for any of your events? setting in order to allow ticket sales through PayPal. Additional PayPal settings will then become available lower in the page and when creating events.
The Allow Facebook and Twitter Login? setting will allow you to connect with both Facebook and Twitter.
Display public RSVPs? lets people see who else is attending your event. Using this option, friends of those attending might sign up to make the event all that more special!
Appearance Settings
Events does a great job of displaying events right out of the box, but for further customization, you can select or create additional page templates then select them for use here.
Please note that if you upload your own custom templates to your theme (other than regular page templates), you effectively override the Appearance Settings of the plugin, so this section will not be available.
The Override default appearance? option lets you select from additional templates provided with Events. These templates help provide some variation in the appearance of the plugin in the front-end.
These template options are as follows:
The Archive template is used for lists of events, similar to how WordPress normally would list blog posts. The built-in templates are as follows:
- Plugin: Calendar – A graphical calendar display of events by month
- Plugin: Default – A master list of events with a sidebar for widgets
- Plugin: Full Width – A list of events that spans the full page width
The Single Event template is used for individual event listings, when viewing a single event. These are the built-in Single event templates:
- Plugin: Calendar – A simple event display with a sidebar for widgets
- Plugin: Default – Event details listed in a nice, full-width display, no sidebar
- Plugin: Full Width – A full-width display of the single event details
You also have the option to select from page templates that your theme provides. And by that means, you can add your own templates by simply creating page templates within your theme.
Payment Settings
If you checked the earlier option Will you be accepting payment for any of your events?, you will see the Payment Settings box after the ‘Appearance Settings’. Here you can configure general payment settings.
Specify the Currency that will be used on your site. Here you can enter the currency you would like to accept / receive via PayPal. You can find a list of the accepted PayPal codes here:
And here are some codes for the most popular currencies:
USD – United States Dollar
GBP – Great British Pound
AUD – Australian Dollar
EUR – Euro
You’ll need to enter your PayPal Email Address as well, so the system knows the account to process payments for. Simply enter the email address that is linked to your PayPal account.
Ticking the PayPal Sandbox mode? will use a PayPal Sandbox test account so you can test the payment process without actually processing live payments. You’ll need to enter your Sandbox account details in the PayPal E-mail address field for this to work. Once you finish testing, you can simply deselect this option, enter your normal PayPal E-mail address and you will be ready to earn some cash!
API Settings
If you checked Allow Facebook and Twitter Login? earlier, you will be able to see the API Settings box, where you can configure various API settings for social services.
- If you intend to allow Facebook logins, enter a Facebook App ID here.
- Ticking My pages already load scripts from Facebook will keep the plugin from loading Facebook scripts. This can help to avoid conflicts with other plugins. Use this if you already have another Facebook solution loading Facebook scripts.
- For Twitter logins, enter your Twitter Consumer Key.
- Enter your Twitter Consumer Secret as well if you are using Twitter.
- The Hide login buttons section lets you disable any of the login methods individually. Simply untick those you don’t wish to use.
For more information on how to create your Facebook and Twitter Apps, please see the below information:
Facebook App ID
You can get your Facebook App ID from here:
https://developers.facebook.com/apps
If you don’t have a Facebook App ID you can create one by following the instructions provided on the Facebook Developers page (see link above).
Twitter Credentials
You can get a Twitter App here:
https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new. Make sure you set the Callback URL in the “Settings Tab” of the App for the App to work. Set the Callback URL as the link to your site.
You will need to enter your Consumer Key and Twitter Consumer Secret to finish this section of settings.
Note: If you get a ‘Whoa there! There is no request token for this page‘ message, do the following:
- Clear cache/cookies
- Create your app as instructed
- Go to ‘Oauth tool’ tab in the Twitter App and copy URI in the ‘Request URI’ field and paste it into the ‘Callback URL’ field in the ‘Settings’ tab
- Select ‘Access’ level (read-only or read and write) as necessary
- Save and proceed as mentioned above
Add an Event
Back at the ‘Getting Started’ screen, let’s go ahead and create a new event.
Click on ‘Add an Event’ Button. You will be sent to the Event editor. You can also get to the editor from the Events > Add Event menu link.
The standard WordPress article creation page will appear, with a few modifications to it. First of all, you will notice the Step by Step blue ‘pop up’ box that will guide you through the rest of your setup.
Start by adding the Event title.
The Event Details meta-box lets you add important details about the event.
2. Recurring event button
3. Enter start and end dates/times
4. Optionally, add more dates
5. Select the event status (default: Open)
6. Specify whether this is a paid event
Enter the Event location. If you have the Google Maps plugin installed you will notice a small globe next to Event Location.
You can click on this globe which will bring up a box to add a map to your Event.
- Enter a name in the Give the map a name field for easy future reference.
- Enter the location(s) you want to display. This can be a specific address or a general area such as city and state/region.
- Click the Add button to add the location to the map as a pin.
- You can optionally make changes to the map, customizing the zoom and other options through the Map options button. Then click the Save changes to this map button to save the map.
- Click the Insert this map button to insert this map into the event.
The result you will see on your Event page will something like this:
Enter Start and End date and time.
You can also add more dates to your Event by clicking on the ‘Click here to add another date to event’ button.
Update the Event status (default is Open). Statuses are as follows:
- Open – available for registration/purchase
- Closed – closed to further registration but still shown in event listings
- Expired – events that are already passed, these will still show in event listings
- Archived – closed and no longer shown in listings
- Cancelled – using the Event cancellation add-on, you’ll also have a cancelled status
If this is a paid event, select Yes from the Is this a paid event drop-down. A new text box will become available where you can enter the cost of the event.
Note that if you activated the Payments via MarketPress Products addon, you will see an additional dropdown menu where you can select the product your event should be associated with. You must create the product in MarketPress before you can select it from the dropdown in the event editor. See the FAQ below for more.
Add your Event details using the visual editor.
See who has RSVP’d in the Event RSVPs section.
1. Clicking Export will let you export a CSV list of RSVPs. Here’s an example of the output:
"User ID","User Name","User Email",Attending,"Ticket Count","Payment Status" 1,David,david101@gmail.com,Attending,1,N/A 15,Tyler,tyler_p@gmail.com,Attending,1,N/A
This CSV file provides a way to get a printed list of RSVP’s and can also be easily imported into spreadsheet software such as Excel.
When using the Additional fields add-on, the additional fields will be included in the exported file as well.
2. In the user details section, you’ll see user’s name, their paid status and a couple other options. Clicking Cancel attendance will cancel this user’s attendance status. And clicking Delete attendance entirely will completely remove any record of this user’s registration.
Click on Publish to make the event public!
Widgets
Events+ provides a number of widgets that you can use in your theme’s sidebars.
1. The Event Attendees widget lets you show the RSVP list for an event. It will only be displayed if an event is being viewed.
2. The Most Popular Events widget will display the most popular events.
3. The Upcoming Events widget lets you show a list of upcoming events based on the settings you specify.