How to Create a User-Submitted Events Calendar in WordPress (2024 Guide)

Want to allow your community to submit events directly to your WordPress site‘s calendar? In today‘s virtual-focused world, a user-generated online events calendar is more valuable than ever.

The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically accelerated the shift to virtual events. Even as in-person gatherings have returned, many events now follow a hybrid model with both online and offline components.

Consider these key stats:

Source: Zippia Virtual Event Statistics 2023

Online events calendars have seen similar growth:

• 500% increase in events published on Facebook in 2020 vs 2019 (The Verge)
• 81% of people used an online events calendar in 2022 (Statista)

Adding a user-submitted events calendar to your WordPress site has several key benefits:

1. Boost engagement: Increase user interaction and time on site by involving your community
2. Expand reach: Tap into attendees of listed events to grow your own audience
3. Crowdsource content: Reduce your workload by empowering your community to contribute event listings
4. Provide value: Become a go-to resource for finding relevant events in your niche
5. Improve SEO: Rank for more event-related keywords in search results

Best of all, launching a user-generated events calendar on WordPress is easy with the right plugins. In this comprehensive tutorial, I‘ll show you step-by-step how to get set up.

Why Use The Events Calendar + WPForms?

To enable user-submitted events on your WordPress site, you‘ll need two key ingredients:

1. A robust events calendar plugin to manage and display listings
2. A user-friendly front-end form to accept event submissions

Here‘s why The Events Calendar and WPForms are the ideal combination:

The Events Calendar

The Events Calendar is the most popular WordPress event management plugin with over 800,000 active installs. It offers both a free core plugin and powerful paid add-ons.

Key features include:

• Smooth event creation with the familiar WordPress editor
• Professionally designed calendar views out of the box
• Venue and organizer management for quick event entry
• Customizable event fields and taxonomies
• Integrations with Meetup, Eventbrite, Google Calendar, and more

WPForms

WPForms is the leading drag-and-drop form builder plugin with over 5+ active installs. Its intuitive visual builder makes creating forms easy for anyone.

Key benefits for events calendars include:

• Build event submission forms with custom fields without code
• Map form fields to event data for automatic event draft creation
• Enable moderation by saving submissions as pending drafts
• Manage form entries from the WordPress dashboard
• Extend with payments, user registration, and tons more add-ons

Together, The Events Calendar and WPForms provide a seamless solution to accept and display user-generated events. So let‘s walk through getting everything set up on your site.

Step 1: Install The Events Calendar

To get started, install and activate the free The Events Calendar plugin:

1. In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins → Add New
2. Search for "The Events Calendar"
3. Click "Install Now", then "Activate"

Once activated, you‘ll see a new "Events" menu item in your WordPress sidebar.

Step 2: Configure Events Calendar Settings

Next, head to Events → Settings to configure global settings:

A few key settings to pay attention to:

• License key: Enter your license key here to enable automatic updates (paid add-ons)
• Time zone: Be sure to set this to your local timezone for proper event times
• Location: If you run a local events calendar, set default country, state, and more
• Currency symbol: Set the default currency symbol for event ticket prices
• Date & Time formats: Control exactly how dates and times display on the front-end

Feel free to explore the other tabs to see all available options. You can always come back and adjust settings later as needed.

Step 3: Create an Event Submission Form

Now you‘re ready to build a front-end event submission form. For this, install and activate the WPForms plugin.

Then head to WPForms → Add New to launch the drag-and-drop form builder. Give your form a name, then select the "Blog Post Submission Form" template as a starting point.

From here, you can add, remove, and modify fields to fit the event details you want to collect. The Events Calendar will automatically recognize the following fields:

• Event name
• Description
• Start date & time
• End date & time
• Venue name
• Organizer name
• Event website
• Attendee capacity
• Ticket price
• Featured image

You can also include any custom fields you want like event categories, tags, or additional meta.

Best practices for event submission forms:

• Minimize required fields to reduce friction
• Add helper text and placeholders to explain fields
• Use dropdowns for common options (event type, topic)
• Display clear error messages if a field is missing or invalid
• Explain the event moderation process and timeline
• Include a confirmation message upon successful submission

Once your form structure is ready, let‘s map those fields to event data.

Step 4: Map Form Fields to Event Data

In the form builder, go to "Settings » Post Submissions":

Make sure the following settings are configured:

• Post Type: Set to "Events"
• Post Status: Set to "Pending Review" to moderate before publishing

Then map each form field to the corresponding event data field:

This will ensure event drafts are automatically populated with the submitted details.

Step 5: Publish Your Event Submission Form

Once your event form is ready, head back to the WordPress editor to publish it:

1. Create a new page titled "Submit an Event"
2. Click the "Add Form" button to embed your WPForms event submission form
3. Add instructions, guidelines, and formatting around the form
4. Publish your event submission page

To maximize visibility of your event submission form:

• Link to it from your main navigation menu
• Feature it on your sidebar or footer
• Promote it to your email list and social media audiences
• Mention it in the submission guidelines of your other forms

The easier you make it to find, the more quality submissions you‘ll receive.

Step 6: Moderate and Publish User-Submitted Events

As users submit new events, you‘ll see them appear under Events → All Events. New submissions will be saved as drafts in "Pending Review" status.

For each pending event:

1. Open the event and review the details
2. Make any necessary edits to the event title, description, date/time, etc.
3. Set the event author, categories, tags, and other meta
4. Preview the event to check for proper formatting
5. If approved, change the status to "Published"

It‘s important to moderate each user-submitted event before it goes live on your calendar. This helps catch spam, duplicates, or inappropriate submissions.

Some best practices:

• Create event submission guidelines and link to them from your form
• Define criteria for acceptable events (topic, quality, geographic area)
• Communicate expected turnaround time for event review
• Email users if you need to reject an event with a reason why
• Reward quality submissions with a featured spot or social media shoutout
• Remove users who repeatedly submit low-quality events

With a little up-front planning, you can maintain a high-quality, user-generated event calendar with minimal admin time.

Step 7: Display Your Events Calendar

The final step is to display your now user-powered events calendar on your site. Simply create a new page and use The Events Calendar block to insert your preferred calendar view:

Some of the available views:

• Month: Classic grid view of events by month
• List: Display events in a list view by month or day
• Day: Show all events for a single day
• Map: Plot events on an interactive map

For example, here‘s what the list view looks like out of the box:

Feel free to use the block settings to filter events by category, location, or more. You can also customize colors and styles to match your site design.

The Events Calendar also provides shortcodes to display your calendar in other areas like your sidebar or footer. This can help boost visibility and registrations.

As your community events calendar grows, consider upgrading to Events Calendar Pro for more advanced features:

• Custom calendar views like Week and Photo
• Recurring events support
• Advanced widgets like a calendar countdown
• Location search for events
• Event tickets and RSVPs
• And much more

Regardless, the core free plugin offers everything you need to create a professional, user-generated events calendar.

Bonus: Create an Admin-Only Events Calendar

Want more control over a simpler events setup? The free Sugar Calendar plugin is a lightweight alternative to manage an internal calendar without the complexity of user submissions.

After installing the plugin, go to Calendar → Add New to create a new calendar. Then you can create events with all the core details:

Sugar Calendar supports:

• Recurring events (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly)
• Flexible event durations
• Simple event locations
• Varied event access (public, member, ticket)

To display your calendar on the front-end, use the Sugar Calendar block or shortcodes:

While you lose the scalability of crowdsourced events, Sugar Calendar is great for personally curated event lists.

Launch Your User-Generated Events Calendar Today

In a world gone virtual, an online events calendar is an invaluable resource for any website. Enabling your community to submit their own events is a win-win for everyone:

• Expands the quantity and variety of events listed
• Boosts engagement by empowering users to contribute
• Establishes your site as a go-to industry resource
• Grows your audience through event partnerships and cross-promotion

With The Events Calendar and WPForms plugins, you can easily start collecting and publishing user-generated events in WordPress. Just follow the steps in this post to configure your setup.

From there, focus on promoting your calendar and event submission form to your target audience. Over time, you‘ll see your calendar grow into an ever-expanding database of exciting community events.

So what are you waiting for? Get started with your user-generated WordPress events calendar today!