Building a community and enhancing engagement on your website is easy when you allow users to submit calendar events. This creates a mutually beneficial scenario: your visitors receive free promotion for their events, while you attract more community members.
WordPress does not natively support user-submitted calendar events. To simplify the process, we tested various plugins and discovered that using WPForms alongside Sugar Calendar is the most straightforward solution.
In this guide, we will demonstrate how to effortlessly set up a user-submitted events calendar in WordPress without granting visitors access to your admin dashboard.
Benefits of Creating a User-Submitted Events Calendar
Crowdsourcing events for your WordPress calendar is an effective strategy to foster community, draw in new visitors, and keep your calendar filled with the latest happenings.
This approach also saves you time, eliminating the need to scour the internet for upcoming events.
Allowing community members to contribute events to your calendar provides them with free promotion. Additionally, your website visitors and fellow community members can easily discover local events.
For instance, if you manage a charity or non-profit membership website, you can enable your members to contribute various events such as fundraisers, seminars, charity activities, webinars, and other community gatherings to your site’s calendar.
The challenge is that, by default, WordPress does not permit users to submit calendar events or upload files from the front end. You would need to create individual accounts for each user and grant them access to the admin area, which can be a lengthy and potentially risky process.
Fortunately, there is a simpler solution. Let’s explore how you can enable users to add calendar events in WordPress.
Enabling User-Submitted Events in WordPress
The most effective way to allow users to submit calendar events without granting them access to your WordPress admin panel is by utilizing WPForms. This is the leading contact form plugin for WordPress, trusted by over 6 million businesses.
The plugin allows you to create a file upload form and includes a Post Submissions addon that enables you to accept event listings, PDFs, articles, quotes, and other content directly from the front end of your website.
Important Note:WPForms offers a free version, but you will need the Pro plan to access the Post Submission addon, premium integrations, and additional customization options.
To get started, install and activate the WPForms plugin. If you need assistance, check out our beginner’s guide on installing a WordPress plugin.
After activation, navigate to theWPForms » Settingssection in your WordPress dashboard and input your license key. You can find this key in your WPForms account.
Then, click the ‘Verify Key’ button to proceed.
Next, go to theWPForms » Addonssection and scroll down to find the Post Submissions Addon.
Click the ‘Install Addon’ button to proceed.
Once the addon is installed, you will see the status change from ‘Not Installed’ to ‘Active.’
How to Create an Event Calendar in WordPress
Now, you will need a WordPress events calendar plugin to set up an events calendar on your site.
For this tutorial, we will use the Sugar Calendar plugin. It is a robust and user-friendly event management system for WordPress that includes a variety of features. You can easily add events and manage organizers and venues. For more information, check out our comprehensive Sugar Calendar review.
In this tutorial, we will be using the premium version of Sugar Calendar. However, you can also utilize the free version of Sugar Calendar to create a calendar for your website.
Begin by installing and activating the Sugar Calendar plugin. For detailed instructions, refer to our guide on installing a WordPress plugin.
Once activated, navigate to the Sugar Calendar » Settings section in the WordPress admin dashboard. Here, you will need to input your license key and click the ‘Verify Key’ button.
You can locate your key in the Sugar Calendar account area or in the confirmation email you received when you registered for an account.
Next, scroll down and click the ‘Save Settings’ button to apply your changes.
After saving, you can create a new calendar by going to SugarCalendar » Calendars in the WordPress admin dashboard.
Click the ‘+ Add Calendar’ button at the top to proceed.
On the following page, start by entering a name for your calendar.
You can also choose a slug or URL for the calendar, select a parent calendar, and provide a description. Additionally, you can pick a color for your calendar entries.
Once you have filled in the details, click the ‘Add New Calendar’ button at the bottom to finalize your creation.
You can repeat this process to create multiple calendars as needed.
Creating a Form for User-Submitted Events
In the next step, you will create a form using WPForms to enable event registration on your website.
To get started, visit the WPForms » All Forms section in your WordPress dashboard and click the ‘+ Add New’ button. This will open the drag-and-drop form builder.
WPForms provides thousands of form templates to choose from. Simply enter a name for your form at the top and select a suitable template.
For this tutorial, we will use the ‘Event Form’ template, which includes all the necessary fields for users to submit their events.
Next, you can customize your event form to meet your needs.
With the drag-and-drop form builder, WPForms allows you to add various form fields. You can include dropdown menus, checkboxes, phone numbers, addresses, website URLs, and more.
Additionally, you can rearrange the order of the form fields and remove any fields that are not needed.
For instance, we will add the ‘Date / Time’ fields to our form template to capture the ‘Event Start Date / Time’ and ‘Event Finish Date / Time’. We will also include a ‘File Upload’ field so users can upload images and banners for their events.
Pro Tip:When adding the Date/Time field, be sure to check the box for ‘Disable Past Dates.’ This option is located in the Advanced Options tab.
This will ensure that all new events are set for future dates, helping to prevent errors if someone mistakenly enters an incorrect year.
While creating your form, you have the option to rename the various form fields.
To rename a field, simply click on it and change the ‘Label’ under Field Options in the left menu. For instance, we renamed the File Upload field to Event Image.
Next, navigate to the Settings » Sugar Calendar tab within the form builder.
Ensure that the ‘Enable Sugar Calendar Event creation’ option is activated.
Additionally, you will need to align your form fields with the fields that the Sugar Calendar plugin will recognize.
For example, here’s how we mapped our demo form fields:
- Event Title corresponds to Event Name
- Event Description corresponds to Event Description
- Event Featured Image corresponds to Event Image
- Start Date and Time corresponds to Event Start Date & Time
- End Date and Time corresponds to Event End Date & Time
- Event Status corresponds to Pending Review
- Location corresponds to Event Location
The Pending Review status allows you to review and approve each event submission. Additionally, if you are accepting online payments, you can verify the payment status before approving the event.
Next, you can modify additional settings for your form.
In the ‘Confirmations’ tab, you will find options for displaying a thank you page that appears after users submit a calendar event.
You can either display a message on the same page or redirect users to another URL upon form submission.
Additionally, you can adjust the ‘Notifications’ settings.
The plugin allows you to customize various settings for receiving email notifications when someone submits a form. For example, you can modify the recipient email address, subject line, sender name, and more.
Remember to click the ‘Save’ button at the top to save the changes to your event submission form.
Publishing Your User-Submitted Events Form
Now that you have created a user-submitted events form, it’s time to publish it on your WordPress website.
WPForms provides several options to embed your form into WordPress, including using the WPForms block in the block editor, a shortcode, or a sidebar widget.
For this tutorial, we will utilize the Embed wizard provided by WPForms.
To begin, click the ‘Embed’ button located in the top right corner.
A popup window will appear once you click the button.
Click the ‘Create New Page’ button, and WPForms will automatically generate a new page for your form.
Alternatively, you can select ‘Select Existing Page’ to add the form to an already published page.
Next, enter a name for your page. After that, simply click the ‘Let’s Go!’ button.
On the following screen, you will see your user-submitted events form displayed on the new WordPress page.
Feel free to preview the page and then click the ‘Publish’ button.
You can now visit your website to see the form in action.
Here’s how it will appear on the front end of your WordPress site.
Next, review the calendar events submitted by your users by navigating to theSugar Calendar » Eventspage from your WordPress dashboard.
All user-submitted events will be displayed in the calendar. You can click on any event and then select the ‘Edit’ button to review it.
Next, check the event details to ensure the user has provided all the necessary information.
If any details are incomplete, you can either fill them in or decline the calendar event if it doesn’t align with your website’s standards.
Next, simply click ‘Publish’ to make the user-submitted event live.
You can now check your website to view the event displayed on the calendar.
Bonus: How to Create a Simple Event Calendar in WordPress
If you prefer to create a calendar where only you can add events, you can achieve that with Sugar Calendar.
It is the top calendar plugin available, allowing you to create multiple calendars, set event start and end times, sync with Google Calendar, and much more.
After activating the plugin, navigate to the Calendar section in the WordPress dashboard. Here, switch to the ‘Calendar’ tab and click the ‘Add New’ button.
This will bring up a prompt where you can enter a name for your calendar.
Once you’ve done that, go to the ‘Events’ tab and click the ‘Add New Event’ button.
The content editor will open on your screen, allowing you to input all the details for your event, such as name, date, time, and duration.
Finally, click the ‘Publish’ button to save your settings. You have successfully added an event to your calendar.
For comprehensive instructions, refer to our tutorial on building a straightforward event calendar in WordPress.
We trust this article has assisted you in creating a user-submitted events calendar in WordPress. Additionally, explore our guides on selling event tickets with WordPress and hosting virtual events in WordPress.
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