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 saved it is on the events page, in the calendar, and at its own address you can send people to. It can take sign-ups, hold a limit on numbers, and ask whatever you need to know from the people coming. If you have not opened the tool before, How to make edits on an Avistra website shows the sign-in.
Where events live
Sign in, choose Manage in the bar in the lower right, then Events. The panel lists everything, soonest first, with what each one has: the date, and how many people have signed up. New event starts one. Edit opens one you have already made. Sign-ups shows who is coming.
A passed event comes off the events page on its own. It stays in this list, so next year's is a copy away rather than a rewrite.
Making one
Choose New event. The form is one page and none of it is a surprise.
- 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 featured image goes with it, the picture 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.
Sign-ups
Two things sit under the details.
Limit on people caps it. Leave it blank and there is no limit. When the limit is reached, the page says so and stops taking sign-ups, so you are never oversubscribed by accident.
Take sign-ups on the page is on to start with. Turn it off for something that needs no booking at all — a shop open late, a stall at a fair — and the page simply says when and where.
What the form asks
Every event has a sign-up form, and the standard one asks how many people are coming, then a name and an email. 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 Update 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.
Who has signed up
Sign-ups, next to the event in the list, shows everybody who has booked: their name, their address, how many they are bringing, 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".
If your site also keeps members, a sign-up made by somebody signed in shows their membership beside it — their tier, and whether their dues are current — so you can tell a member's booking from a stranger's without looking it up.
Members only
On a site with members, an event can be marked Members only, and you can say which tier 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.
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.