Managing events
Event status
Every event has a status that controls whether it's publicly visible.
- Draft — Not shown publicly. Use this while you're still working on an event, or when you want to save progress without publishing yet.
- Published — Visible on the city hub, included in the iCal feed, and eligible for push notifications. Changes to published events go live immediately.
- Cancelled — Still visible, displayed as cancelled. Use this instead of deleting. See Cancelling an event below.
- Pending review — Set automatically when someone submits through the public form. Not shown publicly until approved.
- Rejected — Declined submissions. Not shown publicly.
To publish a draft, open the event and use the Publish button. To return a cancelled event to draft, use the Revert to draft button.
Creating an event
Go to Dashboard > Events > New event. Fill in the required fields — title, description, event type, start date and time, and city — then save as draft or publish directly.
The form handles times in local timezone. Select the correct timezone for the event location before entering the date and time. The form converts to UTC when saving and converts back when you open it again.
If you pick a city first, the timezone field pre-fills with that city's default. You can change it if the event is in a different timezone than the city default.
Editing an event
Open any event from Dashboard > Events. All fields are editable regardless of status. Changes to published events go live as soon as you save.
The date and time fields show the event's local time, not UTC. You don't need to convert anything manually.
Cancelling an event
Cancel instead of delete. When you cancel an event, it stays visible on the city hub with a cancelled notice. That matters because people who saw it before it was cancelled need to know it's off. It also sends an update through the iCal feed — anyone who subscribed to the calendar will see the cancellation on their next sync.
If you delete an event, calendar subscribers get no update and may still show up.
To cancel: open the event, click Cancel event, and add a cancellation note. The note is shown publicly on the event detail page. Keep it short and direct — "This event has been cancelled" is fine if there's no specific reason to share. If the date moved, say so: "Rescheduled to March 14."
To undo a cancellation, use Revert to draft. The event goes back to draft status and the cancellation note clears. Publish it again when ready.
Disability group
The disability group field indicates which community the event primarily serves. It's used for filtering — people who filter by "Blind/VI" will only see events tagged for that community. Pick the most specific match. Use "Cross-disability" for events that serve the broader disability community without a primary focus.
Leave it blank if the event is genuinely open to all communities and isn't specifically organized for or by a particular group.
Location and geocoding
Enter the venue name and street address separately. When you save an event with an address, the site attempts to geocode it and store the coordinates. Events with coordinates appear on the activity map.
If geocoding fails, you'll see a warning but the event saves. Fix the address and save again to retry. Common causes of geocoding failure: overly abbreviated streets, suite/unit numbers that confuse the geocoder, or addresses in areas with low map data coverage. Try a simpler address format — "123 Main St, Denver, CO" works better than "123 Main St., Ste. 400, Denver, Colorado 80203."
For virtual events, leave the address blank and check the Virtual event checkbox. Paste the meeting link in the virtual link field.
Contact information
Contact name, email, and phone are shown publicly on the event detail page. Fill these in when there's a specific person attendees should reach out to. If the event has a general registration or info page, the external URL field is usually better.
Volunteer events
Check "Seeks volunteers" if the event is actively recruiting. This surfaces the event in the volunteer events view and adds a badge on the event card. Don't check it for events where volunteers are welcome generally — use it when the organizer is specifically asking for help.
Event reports
Visitors can flag events as inaccurate using the "Report an issue" link on event detail pages. Review reports at Dashboard > Reports. For each report, either edit the event to fix the issue, cancel it if the event is no longer happening, or mark the report as reviewed if no action is needed.
Recurring events
Recurring series are managed separately. See Recurring event series.