Create your first event

This tutorial publishes one complete event and checks it as a visitor. Do it once, with real content, before creating a season's worth — every decision you make here repeats on every event afterwards.

Allow about twenty minutes.

Before you start

• The POM theme is active and the license is valid.
• The site timezone is correct under Settings → General.
• You have a title, a date and time, a place and an image.

1. Create the event

1. Open Events → Add New.
2. Enter the title — what visitors will read in lists, in the calendar and on the page.
3. Write the content in the editor. This is the full description.
4. Set a featured image. Without one, lists fall back to the placeholder from the Archive settings, and the single page's subheader has no image.
5. Add an excerpt if you want a short summary in the list view.

2. Set the dates

Open the Date & Time tab of Events settings:

1. Event start date & time — the time is optional.
2. Event end date & time — set it even for a single-day event. The end date decides when the event stops appearing in upcoming lists and when the button switches to its finished label.
3. Date format — how this event's dates are printed. Leave it on the site default unless the event needs something reduced, such as month and year only.
4. All day — enable it if the event runs all day.
5. Hide event date — leave it off; it removes dates from both the single page and the lists.

Dates are the one thing everything else depends on: ordering, the search filter, the calendar, the archive, and whether registration is still open.

3. Fill in the event details

Open the Event info tab:

Leave anything you do not need empty. Empty fields are not rendered.

4. Decide about registration

If the site uses registration, open the Attendants tab:

• Available space — the capacity. Leave it empty for no limit.
• Display remaining space — shows visitors how many places are left, or that the event is full.
• Disable signup button — hides the button entirely.

Then open the Registration form tab and choose the optional fields — last name, telephone, comments, country — and the wording for the waiting-list and finished states.

5. Classify it

In the side column:

• assign one or more Event types;
• assign one or more Categories — these are shown on the public page and in the subheader;
• add Tags if you use them, remembering they are shared with the site's posts.

Types and categories are what the public search form filters by, so a site with no terms has filters with nothing in them.

6. Publish and verify

1. Select Publish.
2. Open the event in a private browser window.
3. Check, in order: the subheader and title, the start and end dates, the details sidebar, the registration button and its label, the introduction, the image and the content.
4. Check it on a phone.
5. Go back to All Events, sort by Event start date and confirm the event is where you expect.

What you should see

• The title over the featured image, with its categories.
• Previous and next arrows, if other events exist.
• A start/end date block.
• A details sidebar with the date, category, place, organizer and telephone, plus Add to my calendar and any additional link buttons.
• The registration button — or Get access if the event has an associated product.

If something is missing

Next, prove the form works: Test your first registration.