How to Add Events with RSVPMaker

Posted byDavid F. Carr 46 Comments on How to Add Events with RSVPMaker

This is a brief illustrated tutorial on the RSVPMaker event editor and the primary options it provides.

Here’s how you set up a basic event, with just a headline, event description and date and time set.

A basic event - headline, description, date and time

And here’s what it gets you:

A basic event

Here, we’re specifying both a start time and a duration, so that the system will display both a start time and an end time.

Setting the duration
Event showing end time

You can also set up a multi-day event with a common headline and description for a weekend camping trip or week-long conference.

Setting up a multi-day event. Setting it to hide the display of the time for these all-day events.
Multi-day event

If you want to collect RSVPs, you need to check the Collect RSVPs checkbox and specify an email address for whoever needs to receive notifications when someone completes the form. You can also view a report of everyone who has RSVP’ed.

There are also options you can use to:

  • Set a deadline for RSVPs (leave this blank otherwise)
  • Set a maximum number of participants (leave it at zero for no limit)
  • Prompt users to sign up for one-hour timeslots, an option intended for use staffing volunteer events. A future release may allow you to set the time interval for the volunteer timeslots, but right now it’s fixed at one hour.
screenshot
Setting RSVP Parameters

If you view an event listing, you will now see an RSVP Now button at the end of the listing. You can also send out email invitations that include this button to prompt a response (See How to Post and Email an Event, which explains the related ChimpBlast plugin for use with MailChimp email broadcast accounts).

Event listings include an RSVP Now! Button

Click the button or the headline, and you’ll be taken to a view of the single event with the RSVP Form displayed.

screenshot
Clicking button or other link to single event display brings up the RSVP Form

The RSVP editor will also display options for setting prices for online payments if you have PayPal enabled. See How to Set Up PayPal with RSVPMaker for details.

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46 Comments

  1. Everything is working great with the exception of the RSVP NOW button. After the event has been created, clicking on the RSVP NOW button takes me to a Page Not Found?

    Can you help?

    1. Sorry I’ve been slow to respond. If you go into options, there’s a setting to tweak the permalink settings and make WordPress reset the rewrite rules every time — seems to be necessary on some setups and not others.

      Let me know if that makes the difference.

      1. Hi David,

        I was so hoping this was the fix, because I’m having the same problem.
        When I click an RSVP Now! button for an event, I get a new page with:

        Not Found

        Apologies, but we were unable to find what you were looking for. Perhaps searching will help.

        and a search box.

        I have Tweak Permalinks checked.

    1. Is there any way you can share a link to the problem listing? I don’t really understand the issue you’re having.

  4. Hey there, I’m looking to use your plugin, and I see that on your pages, you have a calendar. Is that somewhere on the plugin that I’m not seeing?

  5. I am having some issues with the plugin.

    1. Under the “RSVP Events” in the WP admin (where is should list all the events posts), none of my listings are shown. It is simply empty despite the fact that I have added an event.

    2. The RSVP buttons do not show up on events that I have specified RSVP.

    My “Events” page (only 1 event listed on the left): http://www.tiltstudioinc.com/events/

    As you can see, if you click the 1 event I have, there is no RSVP button.

    1. The RSVP button appears when you display a listing of events. When you view a single event, it just displays with the RSVP form (assuming you have rsvps turned on for that event). 

  6. Perhaps I missed this, but is there a way to require certain info when RSVPing like email and/or phone number?

  7. Hi- considering using this plugin for an upcoming project. What is the minimum WP user access level to create events?

    We have a situation where we’d like to have others submit event info, and if we approve of that event, we’ll publish it to the site.

    I suppose I’d be able to latch onto some of the functions in the plugin and make this happen, but was wondering if that sort of functionality was available out of the box.

    Thanks!
    -Rob

    1. Works the same as blog posts, so they would have to be contributors (with an editor or admin approving the events for publication) or authors to publish events independently. 

  8.  Hi – I am testing your plugin for a website and wondering if you know how to set up a Public (Forward Facing) way for members to add Events?

    thanks, Wade

  9. I have the same problem. Tried clicking the tweak permalinks and no change. Looks like it’s trying to append some stuff to the end of the url and creates a syntax error. 

  11. Hi guys.. sorry.. but I’m getting the same thing:
    http://www.robbieandjo.com
    Error says:
     We are terribly sorry, but the URL you typed no longer exists. It might
    have been moved or deleted, or perhaps you mistyped it. We suggest
    searching the site:
    Tweak Permalinks is CHECKED.

    Please Help!!! Thank you,
    Jennifer

  12. Getting the same “not found” error trying to use the RSVP button.  Using the widget gives me the form OK.
    Site is http://stillwaterclub.org
    Look at “Luncheon RSVP” in menu bar across top.
    Widget is in right sidebar “Luncheon Schedule”

    1. The problem seems to be the coding in the distribution for the RSVP link (in the RSVP Link box in settings for RSVPmaker.  I changed the second “%” in the href to “&”, so that it reads
           href=”%s&e=*|EMAIL|*#rsvpnow”.
      Seems to have fixed the issue.

  13. Is there any way we can change the colors of the RSVP Now button to match the color theme of my site?

    1. Yes, in the WordPress settings screen for RSVPMaker there’s a RSVP Link field where you can modify the inline styles. They’re applied inline to make it work better over email.

  14. hey; I’m having a bit of an armwrestle with this, despite your clear instructions. installed, changed permalinks (and created writable .htaccess file to accomodate this), created a new event, and it’s not showing up in the blog at all. When I first installed rsvpmaker, there was a warning for [rsvpmaker_upcoming] to be placed within a page somewhere, but the instructions were a little ambiguous. simandjess.com/news 

    1. wait – all is well now. just had a problem with the shortcode stuffs. I had a shortcode in the event at one point (which terminated script), and some shortcodes on pages or posts will terminate the script as well.

  15. When you do the event like the popcorn sales and setting up time slots, do you create each time slot as a seperate event?

    1.  Once you specify the start time and a duration, you can add timeslots and it will calculate the intervals for you. So they’re not separate events, but the RSVP report will show you which timeslots each person signed up for.

  16. Good Afternoon!

    Love the plugin! I’d like to remove the note box and the phone box how do i do that? thanks in advance for a great plugin and your help!

    Sabre

  17. Good afternoon,
    How can I specify to wich page the website should to after responding to an event?
    Emilie

    1. Normally, the event page is displayed after submit, with either a confirmation or an error message. There’s no automatic functionality for sending people to a different page. Do you need that for some reason?

  18. Hi, How do you create events that runs more than a week, e.g an exhibition which runs for 20 days, e.g 3rd June till 23rd June. Thanks.

  19. Is there anyway to do a cutoff time for RSVP’s. A date is not really beneficial once the event has actually started for me. So, for an event that starts at 9 pm, to be able to do 8:30 or 9:00 pm.

  20. This plugin seems like it would work for my purposes, but I cannot figure out where to input the RSVP list / list of invited guest. I want to use this to invite people to birthday parties, so the guest list will be different every time. Everything seems to work, except I cannot figure out how to get the invitations to go out. Do I have to use Mail Chimp for this? I like the reminder email idea, which indicates an email will go out to the RSVP list, but I’ll be darned if I can figure out where to input that list.

  21. please the reoccurring events i added are not showing in the events page after i have updated the events, please help!

  23. The Form opens in the url /rsvpmaker/draft/?e=*|EMAIL|*#rsvpnow page that has no formatting in the url or the layout of the page itself. Is there a way to have this page and url formatted like my post template? Or popup so that there is not a new page to go to?

    1. Normally, the event post (including the form) is displayed using the same template as a blog post unless you have added a single-rsvpmaker.php template to your site’s theme. So the fact that it is displayed on a screen with no formatting means something is wrong, but I’m not sure what. It could be the theme you’re using isn’t handling the custom post type for rsvpmaker events properly.

      As for your question about notifications, that could be an issue with spam filters or other email delivery problems. There is a section in the settings for registering an SMTP server to be used when sending those notifications, so you can test whether that helps.

          2. I see in your example above the format looks the same as yours. The theme that this software is using is your template. Is there a way to get it to recognize the theme template?

  24. Is there any way to change the color of the calendar entry for each event? For example, I use this plug-in for my Game Store to list our events. If I want all of the events created with one template to show up with a blue banner, and all of the events created with another to show up with a red banner, is that possible?

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