Create your first event

This guide covers creating your first event in HappenBoard, from opening the right screen to publishing a page visitors can sign up on.

Before you begin

You need the HappenBoard plugin installed and activated. Once it is active, a HappenBoard entry appears in your WordPress admin sidebar.

Note that events do not get their own top-level menu in WordPress. Events, venues, organizers and attendees all live inside the single HappenBoard screen.

Two ways to create an event

Go to HappenBoard → Events. In the top-right corner there is a New event button with a small arrow attached to it. The button and the arrow give you two different starting points.

• New event (the main button) opens a compact create panel. Use it for straightforward events: a title, a date, a venue.
• New event in block editor (under the arrow) opens the full WordPress editor. Use it when you want a rich description, an RSVP form, or HappenBoard blocks on the event page.

The choice is not final. An event created the quick way can be reopened in the full editor at any time: in the Events list, use the row action Edit in full editor.

Option 1: the quick way

Click New event. A panel titled Add event opens, with the fields grouped into short sections.

1. Type your Event title.
2. If the event has no particular time, switch on All-day event. The time pickers disappear and only dates remain.
3. Set Start and End. Click a field to reveal the calendar. Nothing is selected until you actively pick a date.
4. Under Location and people, pick a Venue and an Organizer if you have already created some.
5. Under Details, set a Capacity (0 means unlimited), a Format (In person, Virtual or Hybrid), a short Summary and a Featured image.
6. If the event happens online, open Online, choose a Provider (Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Jitsi, Whereby, or Other) and paste the Meeting URL.
7. If the event repeats, open Recurrence and build a repeat rule.
8. Click Create event.

Important: Create event publishes the event immediately. It is live on your site as soon as you click. If you want to review it first, create the event in the block editor and save it as a draft instead.

Option 2: the block editor

Click the arrow next to New event, then New event in block editor. You land in the standard WordPress editor, with the title and content area in the middle and the event settings in the right-hand sidebar.

The first time you open a new event this way, a short welcome tour appears. You can close it and reopen it later from the editor options menu (the three dots at the top right).

The sidebar holds six panels.

When

The only panel you have to fill in. Toggle All day event if no time matters, then set Starts and Ends. Leaving Ends blank mirrors the start.

The panel notes that times are stored in UTC. This is an internal storage detail. On your site, dates are displayed using the timezone and the date and time formats set in Settings → General.

Recurrence

Leave this empty for a one-off event. For a weekly meetup or a monthly workshop, build a repeat rule here: daily, weekly, monthly or yearly.

Capacity

Drag Maximum attendees to cap the number of seats. Left at 0, RSVPs are unlimited. Above 0, the number counts total seats across all RSVPs rather than the number of sign-ups, so one person reserving three seats uses three.

Once you set a cap, a notice confirms the behaviour: when the cap is reached, the RSVP form switches to a sold-out message on its own. There is nothing else to configure.

Format

Choose In-person, Virtual or Hybrid. This choice changes the panels you see.

• In-person: the Venue panel stays and there are no online fields.
• Virtual: the Venue panel disappears entirely, and you fill in a Meeting URL and a Provider.
• Hybrid: you get both, and a notice reminds you to fill in the physical details as well as the online ones.

Venue

There are two ways to fill this in. Either pick an existing venue, which is reusable across events and carries its own address, coordinates and capacity, or type directly into the fallback fields Venue name and Address for a one-off location.

Organizer

Pick an existing organizer, or fill in Organizer name and Contact email for a one-off. The contact email is used as the reply-to address on the confirmation emails sent to your attendees.

Let visitors sign up

In the content area, insert the RSVP Form block where you want the sign-up form to appear. It picks up the capacity you set automatically, with nothing to connect.

You can compose the rest of the page with the other HappenBoard blocks: Event Date & Time, Event Venue, Event Organizer, Event Countdown and Add to Calendar.

If you use a block theme, HappenBoard already ships a single-event template that places several of these blocks for you. Preview your event before adding them by hand, so the date does not appear twice.

Publish and check

Click Publish, then View event. Your event page should show the date, the venue, and the RSVP form if you added one.

Back in HappenBoard → Events, the event now appears in the list with its start date, its venue and its capacity. Sign-ups appear under HappenBoard → Attendees.

What’s next

• Set up a recurring event.
• Create reusable venues and organizers instead of retyping them each time.
• Show your events on the site with the Calendar block or one of the listing blocks.