The Events Calendar is a WordPress plugin that makes it easier to create and manage events on your site. The Events Calendar is for anyone who hosts or promotes multiple events and wants a clean way to display them. There is both a free and paid version of this plugin.
This plugin is simple to use, but this blog will go over how to create an event using the plugin.
Once you install and activate the plugin on your website, an “Events” tab will be added to your sidebar navigation on your admin dashboard. Click Events > Add New. This will take you to the events editor.
The events editor looks and functions the same way as a WordPress post or page. You can add a title and a description first.
Fields to include date, times and venues are found below this text editor.
The All Day Event checkbox is useful when the event is taking place on a particular date (or dates) and you feel it is appropriate to say “all day.”
The Start Date & Time is fairly self-explantory – this is simply when the event starts. If you already checked the All Day Event box you will not be able to specify a time – otherwise, you can also pick a time at which the event will start
Use the End Date & Time fields if there is a defined end time for the event – if there isn’t you can leave the end date and time identical to the start date and time: doing so effectively indicates an open-ended event
The location is where you set the venue. If you have a set a venue in a previous event you can reuse the venue, but if this is your first event, you can set a new venue.
The last two checkboxes control whether a map should be shown to visitors and/or a link to a map should be displayed.
You can also set who is organizing the event, but this is optional. Like the location, you can also save presets for the organizer.
You can tag events in the same way you tag your posts and they will be tagged together. This is a really useful feature: let’s say you have some blog posts about vegan recipes and are also promoting a series of vegan cooking classes. You can tag both with a suitable term like Vegan Cooking and help visitors to the website find not only vegan food-related posts but your events, as well.
You can also specify a category, although these are not the same as your post categories.
The event options allow you to hide the event from listings or include it in sticky calendar view.
Sometimes you want to be able to link to an event post (by email, or directly via a menu) but would prefer it isn’t included in the main event views – checking the Hide from Event Listings box accomplishes that.
You might also happen to have a whole load of events taking place on the same day. That can cause some problems in month view – and so, at least by default, no more than 3 events per day are shown in that view – selecting Sticky in Calendar View helps you to ensure that this event is one of the ones that do show.
This should cover most of what you need to create an event using the Events Calendar plugin. For further information, visit the Events Calendar support page.