Calendars can display all events in your nation, events with a specific tag, or only events created within the calendar. You can also choose whether or not to accept user submitted events in your calendar.
To start a new calendar, go to Websites > {Your Site’s Name} > New page. Name your calendar, select calendar as the page type, and decide whether to include the calendar in the top nav or supporter nav of your site. We recommend leaving the calendar in draft mode until you have completed the setup process.
In this video from NationBuilder Live, VP of Community Adriel Hampton walks you through setting up a calendar and creating an event:
The events and calendars video is also available in higher definition on our YouTube channel.
Calendars can host all events in your nation - or events by type
Go to Calendar > Settings. Decide what an event in your calendar should be called. If all events will be a specific type (e.g. house party or coffee klatsch), you can choose to call an event one of those names. Be sure to type in the name for a single event. Choose whether to include all events in your website, not just the ones created within this calendar. You can limit the events shown to only include events with a specified tag(s). This could allow you to include all events in your website that are phone banks in one calendar, while showing all fundraising events in another calendar. By default, events are sorted by date. You can change this to sort by distance from the site visitor if you choose. You can also choose to show a map of all events on your calendar. If both of these options are checked, a visitor will see a map of events nearest to her. Click the “Save Settings” button when you are done making your selections.
You can provide an introduction to the calendar under Calendar > Intro blurb. The content editor is the same as on other pages - if you want to include an image in the introduction, you can save it to the Files section then insert it with the insert / edit photo icon. You can also embed videos and other content by typing the URL on its own line within the content editor.
Grow your nation with user-submitted events
You can choose whether or not to allow people to add their own events to the calendar under Calendar > User submitted events > Settings. An event host will have to include her email address to submit the event, you can decide whether to also require a phone number from event hosts.
- You can tag events that are user submitted with page tags. You can also tag event hosts with people tags.
- You can assign event hosts to a point person - if the event host already has a point person, her assignment will not be changed.
- You can also specify the default date / time for new events as well as the default time zone for new events.
- Finally, you can restrict user submitted events to be added after a particular date and/or before a particular date.
The autoresponses for user submitted events are formatted using Liquid code to provide details to attendees and event owners about the event. These settings are under Calendar > User submitted events > Autoresponses. You probably don’t want to change the content of these autoresponses, though you may want to change the broadcaster they are sent from. You can also consider whether you want to send event owners an email every time someone RSVPs to an event and/or cancels his RSVP to an event.
Whether or not you leave these features on, you should consider creating PDFs of RSVPs for each user submitted event and emailing the PDF to event owners prior to the start of their event so they have a complete list of RSVPs from which to mark attendance at the event.
Preview
Once you have completed setting up your calendar, go to Preview to see what your calendar will look like on your live site. If you are satisfied with how it looks, click the “Publish” button. You can also edit your settings and return to the Preview screen to see revisions before clicking the “Publish” button.
