An event needs a title and a start time. Everything else is optional, and most of it you should leave alone the first time.
Make one
- Open Events and click New Event.
- Give it an event title and a start date and time. That is the minimum.
- Add a venue / room: "Fellowship Hall", whatever people call it. If you also fill in the address, the event page shows it with a link to get directions. Leave the address blank and it uses your church address.
- Choose how to save it. Create Event saves it with the publish choice you made under Visibility (it starts as a draft); Save as Draft keeps it unpublished no matter what.
A new event starts as a draft, and nobody can see it until you publish it. That is deliberate.
Every event also gets its own page you can share. The address is made from the
title: your church website, then /events/, then a short name such as
christmas-eve-service. In the Events list, the menu on any event has
Preview public page, which opens it. Only published events are visible to
other people.
Publishing is a separate decision
A saved event is a draft. It appears on your website when you publish it, and not before, so you can build out a whole season of events in one sitting and release them when you are ready.
The Visibility section has three states:
- Published: it goes onto your website immediately.
- Scheduled: set a publish date and it appears on its own, at that time. Useful for a registration you do not want opening until Monday morning.
- Draft: for something not yet confirmed.
The fields worth understanding
Members Only. The event is only visible to logged-in members. Right for a members' meeting; wrong for anything you want visitors at.
Event Type. Worship Service, Meeting, Outreach, Camp / Retreat, Meal, Conference, Social or Other (your church can add its own types in settings). It drives how the event is grouped and filtered. Pick the honest one: "Other" is fine when nothing fits.
Cost. This is a free-text line: "$10/person", "Free will offering", "Bring a dish". It tells people what to expect and collects nothing. Taking money through the app is a separate switch, covered in Take registrations.
Associated Group. Attaching an event to a group makes it that group's event. It shows on the group's page.
Cancelling, when it comes to that
Do not delete a cancelled event. Deleting it leaves everyone who saw it with a plan you have no way to correct.
Open the event and use the Cancellation section (it appears when you edit an event). Choose how loudly:
- Quiet Cancel: it comes off the calendar. For something nobody registered for.
- Public Cancel: it stays on the calendar marked cancelled, with your reason and, if you want, who to contact or what is happening instead. This is what you want for a snow day. The people looking for it are exactly the people who need to be told.
Before you publish
Open your website and look at the event the way a stranger would. The three things that go wrong most often are a start time in the wrong half of the day, a location only staff recognise, and no description at all on an event a visitor was considering attending.