Event

The Event A collection of fields that describe a specific type of content, like a news article, a person, or an event. Site admins can add additional content types by enabling optional modules. WDS can also create custom content types for a site. is used to inform your site's visitors of upcoming and past events related to your site. This content type has a date, title, location, speaker, sponsors, and other event-related fields to capture important information about your event. Similar to news, you can enhance your event pages by adding categories to organize your events and for easy browsing. Additionally, you can create event lists and relationships with other content types to enhance your key or landing pages. 

Enable the Events A collection of features or functionality that can be enabled on sites. WDS has made several optional modules available to site administrators to enable on their site. For example, the "News" module enables the News content type and provide a News List Block for displaying news on a page.

The Events module must be enabled before you can add events.

Adding an Event

Visit the event form by clicking Manage » Content » Add Content » Event.

In the main area of the form on the left, you'll find some important fields to fill out:

  • Event Title: The primary event heading. All content types have a title.
  • Subtitle: Displayed beneath the title on event detail pages and optionally displayed in event list blocks. This field can be useful when you want to include additional information that may not be appropriate to include directly in the title.
  • Event Description: Used to populate details of the event. Displayed on the event detail page.
  • Summary: This field is hidden by default (click "Edit summary" to reveal). The summary is used to provide a brief overview of the event. It will be displayed in Events List blocks that are displayed on landing pages.
  • Date: Input one or multiple dates for the event. You have the options to add an all-day event, add a start and end time, and to add multiple dates. If your event is canceled, you can check the Canceled box. This will display a canceled message on your event page. Note that all event dates must provide both a start and end date.
  • Generating recurring dates: This fieldset is used to automatically generate dates based on a recurring schedule. For example, use this to quickly generate dates for office hours that are available twice a week for 4 weeks.
    • Using this generator will replace all dates on the form with newly created ones.
    • Avoid creating rules that generate more than 50 or so dates. If you have an event with that many occurrences, it may be best to split it up into distinct events. A good rule of them is to create a new event when a new academic year starts.
  • Location: Use to add location building and room number, if any (for example Lewis Library, Room 301). Users can select from a list of Princeton locations that match what they are typing. Upon doing so, the Princeton Location ID field (below) will be automatically populated with the correct ID. Users can then modify the name of the location as needed (for example, to add a room number).
  • Princeton Location ID: This field appears once you enter a location. This is the ID of a Princeton location from Princeton's locations database. It is used to provide a link to the Princeton Mobile Map with the correct location. This ID field is automatically populated when a Princeton location is chosen from the Location field above. This field should be left blank if the physical location of the event is not at Princeton.
  • Virtual Location: Used if this event has some virtual meeting location. This might be used to provide a link to a zoom meeting.
  • Registration URL: Provide the registration URL, if one exists. Will be output on the detail page as a link with label "Register".
  • Related Link: If there's another web page (on your site or on some other site) with more details about the event, you can use this field to indicate that. The link will be displayed on the event detail page.
  • Redirect detail page to related link: This essentially disables the detail page for this event. Visitors that click the event in a list or calendar will be redirected to the related link website specified above.
  • Related Documents: Sometimes it can be useful to attach some documents for the event, perhaps after the event has completed.
  • Sponsor: Use to add sponsors to your event.  You can add multiple sponsors and rearrange them by dragging the crossbar handles of sponsor items to change their order.  
  • Speaker Type: Only shown if the Event Speaker module is enabled. Used to control if the speakers for this event should be specified using the simpler direct method, or the more advanced method which references speakers from the separate Speaker content type.
  • Speakers: Use to add one or more speaker and their affiliation. If the optional Event Speaker module is enabled and the "Advanced" speaker type is specified, this will be a reference field to one or more speakers from the Event Speaker content type. Otherwise, basic information about the speakers can be specified directly on the event form.
  • Contacts: Add one or more contact (name and email) for the event. Contacts are displayed on the event detail page to inform visitors about who to reach out to for questions.
  • Session Recording: After an event is over, a recording can be provided. This is reference to a video in your media library, which supports videos hosted in YouTube, Vimeo, or Princeton's Media Central.

On the right sidebar, you'll find additional fields:

  • Featured Image: A primary image to associate with this event. It can be displayed in a number of ways on the event detail page and will also be used if this event is displayed in an Events List block.
  • Featured Image Display: Used to control how the image is displayed when viewing the event directly.
  • Categorization: Used to categorize your event. See Content Categorization learn about managing the available categories.
    • Event Audience is used to tag events for a specific audience.
    • Event Category is used to tag specific types of events (for example: seminars, workshops, event series, conferences, symposiums).
    • Sitewide Category is available on all standard content types and is typically used when you want to tag content items from multiple content types with the same category. For example, you may have events & news both related to a topic.
  • The user-friendly path for a content item or taxonomy term that replaces the system path. For example, /my-page can be an alias for /node/123. : This allows you to control the event URL. Most times you want to let Drupal choose the automatic alias for the event, which will be based on the title and date of the event. However, there are times when you want to override this and provide a custom path. You can uncheck the Generate automatic URL alias box and enter your own custom URL alias. Keep custom URL aliases short but descriptive and use hyphens to separate words.
  • Metatags: Refer to the documentation on SEO and Search.
  • Authoring information: Contains content creator user and date/time of when the content was created.
  • Scheduling options: Allows you to schedule the date and time when the event is published instead of publishing it right away. You must uncheck the "Published" checkbox at the bottom of the form to use this feature.
  • URL redirects: This will show you all existing redirects to this content.
  • Promotion options: This is used if displaying a Events List block to stick the event at the top of the list.

Use the Save button at the bottom of the form to save the event. The Published checkbox can also be used to control public visibility. If unchecked, visitors to your site will not be able to view the contents.

More Options

If you manage your events using My PrincetonU, they can be imported into your website. See the documentation on My PrincetonU integration for more details.

Configuring the Events Module

A site admin can visit the modules page to configure settings for the events module. Here you can control a several options:

  • The default value used for the "Featured Image Display" field when adding new events.
  • The day and time format to use for the event dates on the event detail page.
  • Enable or disable the optional feature to display an "add to calendar" button alongside event dates on the event detail page.
  • Control how the various taxonomy vocabularies are displayed on the event detail page.