A venue is a reusable record: one address, entered once, attached to as many events as you like. This guide covers creating one, filling its coordinates, and where those coordinates are used.
Create a venue
- Go to HappenBoard → Venues.
- Click Add venue. A form opens over the list.
- Fill in Name. It is the only required field: the create button stays disabled until it has a value.
- Optionally add a Photo and a Description.
- Click Create.
New venues are published straight away. That matters, because only published venues appear in the venue picker on an event and only a published venue is rendered on the front end.
To change one later, click its name in the list. The same form reopens on the existing record.
The address fields
Under Address you get five fields: Street address, City, State / Region, Postal / ZIP code and Country. All are optional.
On the front end they are joined with commas, in that order, and any field you left blank is skipped. Each one is also emitted separately in the event’s structured data, which is what lets search engines read the address properly. Event structured data covers that output.
Coordinates are entered by hand
The Coordinates section has two fields, Latitude and Longitude, in decimal degrees with six decimal places of precision.
HappenBoard does not look these up for you. There is no address lookup anywhere in the plugin, so typing a street address will not fill the coordinates in, and correcting an address will not update coordinates you entered earlier. You enter both numbers yourself, and you keep them in step with the address.
To find them, open the location in any online map that displays decimal coordinates and copy the two numbers across. Latitude first, longitude second, both with a leading minus where the location is south of the equator or west of Greenwich.
Leave both at zero and the venue is simply treated as having no coordinates. The Coordinates column of the Venues list shows a dash for those venues and the two rounded numbers for the rest, which makes it easy to spot what is still missing.
Capacity and contact
The last section of the form is Capacity & contact.
- Maximum capacity: the room’s own limit. 0 means no cap.
- Phone
- Website
Venue capacity is a property of the place and is stored on the venue record. It is separate from the per-event limit described in capacity and available seats.
Attaching a venue to an event
Open the event and find the Venue panel. Start typing and the list narrows to matching venues. Once one is selected, an edit link takes you to that venue’s form, and Manage venues opens the full list in a new tab.
If no venue is linked, the panel offers two free-text fields instead, Venue name and Address. They are a quick way to note a one-off location without creating a record for it. They hold plain text only, so they carry no coordinates and cannot show a map. The panel is hidden entirely on an event whose format is virtual, which the guide to in-person, virtual and hybrid events explains.
Where the coordinates are used
- The Event Venue block draws an embedded map, but only when Show map is on and the linked venue has both coordinates. Its own help text says as much.
- The block’s Map provider can follow your site setting or be set per block, as described in the maps guide.
- The event’s structured data gains a geo section listing the two values.
The venue name in the block links to the venue’s own page on your site. If a venue is missing coordinates, everything else still works: name, address, listings and filtering are unaffected.