If your site keeps events, the edit tool puts them there. An event is a name, a day, a place and a few words, and once it is published it is on the events page, in the calendar, and at its own address you can send people to. It can take registrations, sell tickets at a member price and a full price, keep a waiting list when it is full, repeat every week or month, and check people in at the door on a phone. If you have not opened the tool before, How to make edits on an Avistra website shows the sign-in.
Making or changing an event, and seeing who has registered, needs your passkey. Signed in with only the emailed code, you can see the list of events but not the people on them.
Where events live
Sign in, choose Dashboard in the bar in the lower right, then Events in the list down the left of the Dashboard. It opens beside that list, with its own sections: Coming up, Previous, Drafts and Canceled, and Settings for what every new event starts with. Each event shows its date, and how many people have registered. New event starts one. Pressing an event opens it.
A passed event moves to Previous on its own. It stays there, so next year's is a copy away rather than a rewrite: Copy is in the event's menu.
Making one
Choose New event. The event opens on Details, and the tabs along the top take you through the rest in order: Details, Tickets, Form, Emails and Settings. Once people register, Registrations comes first.
- Name. What it is called. This is the heading on the page and the line in the calendar.
- Starts, and Ends if it needs one. Both take a day and a time. Under each is No time, just the day: tick it for something that runs all day, or across a few days, where a clock on it would be wrong.
- Place. The name of the place, as somebody would say it. "The yard on Salem Street", not an address.
- Address. Start typing and the tool offers the real address; choose the one that is right. It shows under the place with a link to the map, so nobody has to work out where they are going. The words that end up on your page are only ever the ones you picked or typed.
The details
Below that is the same writing box a post uses, with the same buttons: headings, lists, links, pictures, video and files. Say what to expect, what to bring, who it is for. Paste from an email or a document and the formatting is cleaned up on the way in.
A picture goes with it, shown on the events page and at the top of the event, with a line describing what it shows. It can come from a picture already on your site: How to add pictures, video and files to a post covers that, and it works the same here.
Once, or again and again
Repeats is for the monthly meeting or the weekly class: every day, week, month or year, until a date or for a number of dates, up to 120. The preview lists every date, and Skip this date takes one out, a holiday say. Then choose whether people register One date at a time, picking the dates they come to, or for All the dates together, like a course.
Publish or keep it as a draft
Save as draft keeps it off the site while you finish it. Publish puts it on the events page. An event with no tickets is free to register for, with no limit.
Tickets
A ticket is what somebody registers as: Member, Non-member, Student, a table of eight. Even a free talk can have one.
- Limit for the whole event caps it. Leave it blank and there is no limit. When it is full, either registration closes, or you Keep a waiting list and the next person is offered the place when one opens.
- New ticket adds one: its name, a line describing it, and its price.
- Member price is the lower price a member pays. A signed-in member sees their price; anyone else sees both, and is asked to sign in for the member price.
- Who can register with it: everyone, members only, or only somebody with a registration code.
- On sale from and until a date. Two tickets with different dates are how an early-bird price works.
- Places says how many people one registration can bring, and what a guest pays.
- Registration codes at the foot take a percentage or an amount off.
Taking money online needs a Stripe account connected to the site: How to connect your Stripe account covers that. Without one, people can still register and pay in person.
What the form asks
Every event has a registration form, and the standard one asks how many people are coming, then a name and an email. On the Form tab, under the list of questions, is a box, and you change the form by saying what should be different, in your own words:
Drop the phone number, and ask for a name and email for each person coming.
Choose Change the form and it is rewritten, with the real form beside it so you can see what you have done. You can also press any question to change its wording, whether it is required, and whether it is asked of each extra person, and press the × to drop one. The form always asks for a name. Standard form puts it back as it started.
Emails
The Emails tab holds what people hear from you about the event. The confirmation always goes, with the date, the place and a link to add it to their calendar. Add an announcement to tell people about the event, a reminder to go before it, and a follow-up to go after it, to everyone who registered, or only the people who came, or only the people who did not. Nothing sends while the event is a draft.
Who has registered
Registrations shows everybody who has registered: their name, their ticket, what they have paid or still owe, and the answers to anything else you asked. Everyone in the party is listed as a person, not as "Person 2: T-shirt size L". The chips along the top narrow it to who has paid, who owes, who is on the waiting list, and who has been checked in.
Press a registration to open it. Mark paid records money taken at the door. Cancel registration gives the places back. Add a registration puts in somebody who booked by phone. A refund goes back to their card from here; if you look after events but not money, you can Ask for a refund, and whoever looks after payments decides.
If your site also keeps members, a registration made by somebody signed in shows their membership beside it, their level and whether they are Active, so you can tell a member's booking from a stranger's without looking it up.
At the door
Check in opens a screen made for a phone: type a name, tap it, and tick them in, and each guest with them. Somebody who owes money shows it, so it is taken at the door. Somebody who turns up without registering is added right there.
Members only
On a site with members, an event can be marked Members only, and you can say which level it takes. What the public sees depends on how your site is set up: either the event is left off the events page altogether, or its name and date show with a padlock and the details need somebody signed in.
Canceling an event
Cancel the event, in the event's menu, emails everyone registered with the words you write, and refunds everyone who paid online. You type CANCEL to confirm, because it cannot be taken back.
If you get stuck
Send it to us. Choose Support request in the bar, say what the event is and when, and attach anything you have. How to submit a support request on an Avistra website shows how. It is part of your plan.