HappenBoard can show the weather for an event’s date at its venue. It is handy for outdoor events: visitors see at a glance whether to bring a coat.
The feature is off when you install the plugin. Nothing is sent to a weather service until you turn it on.
Turn on weather
- Go to HappenBoard → Integrations.
- On the Weather card, click Configure.
- Switch on Enable weather.
- Click Save changes.
That is all the setup most sites need. The data comes from Open-Meteo, a free European weather service that needs no account.
Turning weather on does not add it to your pages by itself. Add the Event Weather block to your event page, as shown below.
What visitors see
What the block shows depends on how far away the event is:
- In the next 16 days: the forecast.
- In the past: the weather observed that day.
- More than 16 days away: the usual weather for that time of year, based on ten years of records.
So an event six months away still shows something useful instead of an empty box.
Your server asks Open-Meteo for the data, not your visitor’s browser. Your visitors’ details are never sent to the weather service.
The other settings
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Forecast cache duration (hours) | How long a forecast is kept before HappenBoard asks for a fresh one. From 0.5 to 168 hours. Past weather and seasonal averages never change, so they are kept for a year. | 3 hours |
| Show “Weather data by Open-Meteo” credit | Prints a short credit line under the weather, linked to open-meteo.com. | On |
| Credit text | Your own wording for the credit. Leave it empty to keep the default. | Empty |
| Open-Meteo commercial API key (optional) | Only for sites that bought an Open-Meteo commercial plan with higher limits. | Empty |
Leave the cache duration as it is unless you have a reason to change it. A longer cache means fewer requests, a shorter one means fresher forecasts for events happening today.
About the credit line
Open-Meteo’s data is free on one condition: you credit them. The credit setting applies to every Event Weather block on the site. If you switch it off, add the line “Weather data by Open-Meteo (open-meteo.com)” somewhere else, such as your footer or a credits page.
If you write your own Credit text and it mentions Open-Meteo, that word becomes the link. If it does not, the link is added at the end.
Show the weather on an event page
The weather needs two things on the page:
- The Event Weather block, usually added once to your single event template so every event gets it.
- A location. Link the event to a venue that has coordinates (see venues and coordinates), or type a latitude and longitude in the block settings.
With no location, the block shows nothing.
If something goes wrong
- The block is empty: check that Enable weather is on and that the event’s venue has coordinates.
- The forecast looks old: open the Weather card and click Clear weather cache. The next page view fetches fresh data.
- Open-Meteo cannot be reached: the block keeps showing the last forecast it stored, or nothing, and tries again five minutes later.
The Weather card also shows API calls in the last 30 days and the time of the last request, so you can check how often your site asks for data.
Next steps
- The Event Weather block: choose what the block shows and how it looks.
- Venues: creating and setting coordinates: give your venues the location the weather needs.
- Maps: OpenStreetMap or Google Maps: the same coordinates also place your venue on a map.