Adding new events

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We use the event_organiser plugin, which is fairly self-explanatory and pretty well documented but there are a couple of gotchas and a few quirks about the way we use it.

Events and Venues

Events are events as we know them i.e. one day. We’d probably have one event for 2 rounds of sprint but separate events for training + competitive event in the same woods.

Venues are places we hold events, strictly car parks, so we have separate venues for verulamium-st-michaels-street and verulamium-westminster-lodge, similarly with Northaw and Whippendell.

Every event needs a venue. Reuse existing venues if you can. You can create and edit venues independently of events or add one when you are adding the new event.

Events

  1. In dashboard, Event > Add new. Normally we use the area we are running on as the title for the event. An event needs a unique slug aka permalink (WordPress jargon for id), which defaults to something like Verulamium-4. I have been manually editing the slug (just below the title) to incorporate the date in the format Verulamium-170101.
  2. In the main text box of the event, you can put anything you like, including pictures – indeed any HTML if you switch from Visual to Text view. Suggest you copy from a previous event and modify accordingly. I normally do the text box last, having made sure I’ve got the details around it sorted.
  3. The next few details are straightforward. We normally put start time as first start, finish time as last start. Reoccurrence (sic) we will rarely need although we could use it for consecutive Street-Os at the same venue.
  4. Add a venue, either from the existing list or from scratch. One oddity – you can’t edit a venue, i.e. move the pointer on Google maps, until it is saved.
  5. Now the fiddly bits that ensure all the lists and pages of events update properly:
        • Categories: usually tick HH. You may tick Street-O or Training or Social, as many as apply.
        • Tags: use for things like Saturday League. If you click on Choose from the most used tags you get a clickable tag cloud to choose from. Click all that apply.
        • Custom field: Add a custom field ‘level’ with text that makes sense on an events display. Examples are ‘Street-O’ ‘Saturday League & Youth League’ ‘Ace of Herts’
  6. Preview (button on right) if you wish, then Publish, usually immediately although you can save draft or defer publishing.
  7. When you edit an event or venue, don’t forget to click the blue Update button on the right.

Venues

  1. It’s nice to put a fairly complete address in if you can, including nearest postcode for those with satnavs. If you do put a postcode in, the pin goes to the right place (ish).
  2. You can fine tune the location by dragging the pin. Make sure it looks ok in both Map and Satellite view and when zoomed in or out (use + – buttons or mouse scroll wheel).
  3. One of these days I’ll add a custom field for OS grid reference and display that and postcode on the event page as well as the venue page. And it would be really nice to have a single click to get to the Directions functionality in Google maps.
  4. Publish

Any questions, ask Mike Bennett or Dave Tookey.