Create and Manage Events

How to create, publish, and update events in SGEN

The Events area is where site administrators create time-bound entries — conferences, workshops, webinars, community meetups — that appear on the public events archive at /my-events. Each event has a date range, an address, a content block, optional recurrence rules, per-event banner, SEO fields, categories, and a thumbnail. Events use SGEN's text editor (not SG-Builder) for their body content.

What is this for?

Use the Events area to publish dated entries that your audience can browse and attend. Events appear on the public /my-events archive page, sorted and filtered by date. Each event gets its own URL. An "Add to Calendar" button lets visitors export the event to Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, or iCal. Events are distinct from blog posts and pages: they carry structured date, time, address, and recurrence data that the archive uses to split Upcoming from Past events.

Good use cases

Example 1: Annual company conference. The marketing team needs to publish a two-day conference for late October. They create an event with the correct date range, the venue address, a rich body description, and a banner CTA button linking to the registration page. When published, the event appears at the top of the Upcoming section on /my-events, and visitors can add it directly to their calendars.

Example 2: Weekly recurring webinar series. A team runs a product demo every Tuesday morning for ten weeks. They create one event, set Date/Time to the first session, choose Recurrence: Weekly, check Tuesday, and set End Repeat: After 10 times. The archive displays all ten occurrences as separate cards in the Upcoming section so visitors can register for any session.

Example 3: Updating an event after a venue change. A gala was booked at one hotel but moves to a new venue two weeks before the date. The administrator opens the event's edit form, updates the Address field, adjusts the banner CTA link to the new venue map, and clicks Update Event. The public /my-events page reflects the new venue immediately. Because the event URL (slug) did not change, no redirect is needed.

What NOT to use this for

• Attendee registration and ticketing — The Events area has no RSVP or registration form built in. If you need ticket sales or signups, create an Ecommerce product or embed a third-party form, then link to it from the event's banner CTA button.
• Bulk date changes — The event edit form edits one event at a time. There is no bulk-date-shift operation for a recurring series. To shift all sessions, update the first event and recreate the recurrence, or edit each occurrence individually.
• Site-wide event styling — Banner colors and layout for the public events archive are controlled in Events Settings, not on the individual event form. Per-event banner styling only affects the single-event detail page.
• Non-dated content — If the content does not have a fixed date and time, use a Blog Post or a Page. The /my-events archive sorts and filters by date; a dateless piece of content will not display correctly there.

How this connects to other features

• Events Settings — Site-wide configuration for the /my-events archive (title, slug, layout, pagination, categories toggle). Change the archive layout and appearance in Settings; change individual event details here.
• SEO (Events archive panel) — Per-archive SEO title, description, and canonical URL live in the SEO area under the Events panel at /sg-admin/seo/events. Per-event SEO fields are on the event edit form itself.
• Media Library — The thumbnail and banner background images on each event are selected from the Media Library. Upload images there before attaching them to events.
• Custom Fields — If your SGEN installation has Custom Field groups assigned to the event post type, those fields appear as an additional card on the event edit form automatically.
• Redirects — If you change an event's slug (URL), the old URL becomes a 404. Create a redirect from the old URL to the new one in the Redirects area to preserve inbound links.

Before you start

• Sign in to SGEN admin with an account that has the EVENTS module enabled.
• Prepare the event date, time, venue address, and a body description.
• If the event has a banner image, upload it to the Media Library first.
• If you want to assign a category, create it in Events (the categories panel) before creating the event.

Where to go

1. In the left sidebar, click Events.
2. To create a new event, click Add New (top right of the list).
3. To edit an existing event, click its title or the Edit row action.

Steps

1. Fill in the event basics

Enter the event name in the Event Name field. This becomes the page title and the link text on the archive listing.

The Permalink field (visible in edit mode) shows the current URL slug for the event. The slug is set automatically from the name when the event is first saved.

2. Set the date, time, and address

Click the Date & Time field to open the date-range picker. Select the start date and time, then the end date and time. The picker stores the range as a single value in the format MM/DD/YYYY HH:MM AM - MM/DD/YYYY HH:MM PM.

If you need a free-text override (for example, "All day, doors open at 9am"), enter it in the Date Display Override field. That text replaces the formatted date on archive cards and on the single-event page.

Enter the full venue address in the Address field.

3. Write the body content

The Content section uses SGEN's text editor. Write a description, agenda, speaker list, or any other narrative content. The text editor supports formatting, links, and inline images.

Events do not use SG-Builder — the content block is text-editor only.

4. Configure recurrence (optional)

Open the Recurrences card. Set Recurrence Type to one of: Doesn't repeat / Daily / Weekly / Monthly / Yearly.

For Weekly, check the days of the week the event recurs (Mon through Sun), and set an interval (every 1 week, every 2 weeks, etc.).

Set End Repeat to one of:

• Never — the series continues indefinitely.
• After N occurrences — the series ends after N events.
• On date — the series ends on a specific calendar date.

5. Add a per-event banner (optional)

Expand the Event Banner card. Check Enable Banner to activate it. The banner appears at the top of the single-event page — it does not appear on archive cards.

Add banner body content in the code editor field. Add CTA buttons using the Add CTA repeater. Set text and background colors using the color pickers. Attach a background image via the media file picker.

6. Fill in SEO fields (optional)

Expand the SEO card. Enter:

• SEO Title — overrides the browser tab title and search-result headline for this event.
• SEO Description — the meta description shown in search results.
• SEO Canonical — set if this event duplicates another URL.
• Search engine visibility — check to tell search engines not to index this event.

7. Assign a category and thumbnail

In the sidebar, use the Categories multi-select to assign one or more event categories. Type in the field to search.

Click the Thumbnail media picker to select an image from the Media Library. This image appears on the archive listing card.

8. Set the status and save

In the sidebar Status dropdown, choose Publish (visible on /my-events immediately) or Draft (hidden from public).

Click Create Event (new event) or Update Event (existing event).

The complete event form

What success looks like

After clicking Create Event or Update Event, you are redirected to the edit form for that event (with the event's ID in the URL). The event then appears on the public events archive at /my-events. For published events, the archive card shows the event title, date/time, address summary, and thumbnail.

To confirm the event is live: open /my-events in a new browser tab. Published events appear in the Upcoming section (for future dates) or the Past Events section (for past dates).

The public events archive

What to do if it does not work

• The event does not appear on /my-events after publishing — Confirm the Status is set to Publish (not Draft) and that the date is entered correctly. Reload the archive page in a new incognito window to bypass any browser cache.
• The date shows incorrectly on the archive — Verify the date format in the Date & Time field matches MM/DD/YYYY HH:MM AM - MM/DD/YYYY HH:MM PM exactly. The separator between start and end must be a space-hyphen-space ( - ). Do not use a dash from a keyboard shortcut as it may differ from what the system expects.
• The thumbnail does not appear — Confirm the image was uploaded to the Media Library and selected via the Thumbnail picker in the sidebar. The thumbnail field stores a media ID; if the media was deleted after selection, re-select a new image.
• Move to Trash is not visible — Move to Trash appears in the sidebar only in edit mode (on an existing event). It does not appear on the create-new form.

Next step

Configure how the events archive displays to visitors in Events Settings — control the archive title, layout (list or grid), pagination, and the Add to Calendar button.