HappenBoard Pro can open a public form where visitors propose events for your calendar. Each submission arrives as a pending event: nothing is published until you review it.
Event submissions are part of HappenBoard Pro. See what Pro adds.
Turn submissions on
The feature is off until you turn it on.
- Go to HappenBoard → Settings → Submissions.
- Switch on Enable front-end submissions.
- Choose who can submit, and who is told about new submissions (see the table).
- Click Save.
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Enable front-end submissions | Opens the form. While it is off, the form shows Event submissions are not open right now. | Off |
| Require visitors to be logged in | Only people with an account on your site can submit. | Off |
| Notify this email of new submissions | The address told about each new submission. Leave it empty to use your site’s admin email. | Empty |
Choose who can submit
By default, anyone can use the form, signed in or not. With Require visitors to be logged in, any account on your site can submit, whatever its role. A signed-out visitor sees a sign-in link instead of the form and comes back to the page after signing in.
Requiring an account stops most spam, but people need one first. To let them create their own, allow registration in WordPress under Settings → General, with Anyone can register.
Add the form to a page
- Create a page, such as “Propose an event”.
- Add the Event Submission Form block. In the editor it shows a short description instead of the form.
- Publish the page and link to it from your menu.
The block’s Form fields panel can hide the Venue fields and the Category picker, both shown by default. The category list only appears once you have created categories. The panel also has a Success message field: the text visitors read once their event is sent. Left empty, they read a standard thank-you saying the event is awaiting review.
What visitors fill in
- Event title (required, 200 characters at most) and Description.
- Starts and Ends (required), as a date and time in your site’s timezone. The end cannot be before the start. An All day box is also offered.
- Format: In person (the default), Virtual or Hybrid. Online meeting URL appears for virtual and hybrid events.
- Venue name and Venue address.
- Category, chosen from your categories.
- Your name and Your email (both required).
The visitor clicks Submit event and gets the answer on the same page: the thank-you message, or a message saying what to fix.
The form is short on purpose. It cannot set a repeat rule, an image, a capacity, tickets, tags or your custom fields. The venue is saved as plain text, not linked to one of your venues, so the event has no coordinates and stays off the maps until you link a venue. Plan to finish each submission before you publish it.
Review a submission
New submissions wait with the status Pending review. You find them in the Pending view of the Events screen, or through the Review this submission link in the notification email.
- Open the event and check the dates, the wording and the venue.
- Complete it: link a venue, add an image, fill in any required custom field. An event cannot be published while a required field is empty.
- Publish it to approve it, or move it to the trash to decline it.
The submitter’s name and email are kept on the event and also filled in as its organizer name and email, so you know who to credit or contact.
Who gets emailed
- When a visitor submits an event, the moderator address receives the submitter’s name and email, the event title and date, and the review link.
- When you publish a submitted event, the submitter is told it is live, with a link to it.
- When you move a submitted event to the trash, the submitter gets a short, polite note saying it was not published.
The submitter is only emailed when the event leaves Pending review directly. If you first save it as a draft or schedule it for later, no email goes out. Events you create yourself never trigger these emails.
Keep spam out
The form uses the same defences as the sign-up form:
- A hidden field that only robots fill in.
- A minimum time: a form sent within 2 seconds of the visitor starting on it counts as automated.
- A maximum age: a form left open more than 6 hours must be reloaded before it is sent.
- Limits: 3 submissions per 10 minutes from one IP address (one internet connection), and 5 per hour for one email address. Only valid submissions count, so fixing a typo does not lock anyone out.
Cloudflare Turnstile and Akismet also check the form if you set them up for your forms. Requiring a login remains the strongest option if robots target you. A submission caught by the hidden field, the minimum time or Akismet gets a thank-you message, but nothing is saved: robots are not told they failed.
Personal data
WordPress’s Export Personal Data and Erase Personal Data tools cover submitters. An export lists the events sent with that email address. An erasure removes the submitter’s name and email from those events, and the organizer details while they still hold that address, and keeps the events. See GDPR and personal data.
Next steps
- Protecting your forms from spam: turn on Turnstile or Akismet before you open the form.
- The Events screen: where submissions wait for review.
- Venues: creating and setting coordinates: link a submitted event to a real venue.