If you are thinking to create an events portal, but confused what to do and when to start, this is the perfect place to begin with.
Creating an events portal, or a website like EventBrite is a good idea because your website will act as a two ways event directory platform.
The visitors can browse for the events on your site, buy tickets/register, while the event organizers can submit their events on your site. And therefore, your events directory website acts as a central application for both the event organizers as well as event goers.
In this article, we have listed step by step procedure to create an events portal like EventBrite, where you can sell the tickets as well as let the front end visitors register and submit their events by paying a fee.
Even if you don’t want to follow the exact procedure, or don’t want to use the tools mentioned in this guide, you can still get a lot of information about how to get a quick start on your events website.
So lets get started right away:
- A little about EventBrite
- How can a website like EventBrite be a form of online business?
- How to create an Events website
What is Eventbrite? How does Eventbrite work?
Eventbrite is one of the most popular events website, that allows visitors to browse as well as submit events, buy as well as sell events tickets.
It is an events portal, or an events directory website, where people can search for events, and events organizers can promote events and sell tickets.
The platform, therefore, works two ways:
As events directory for the visitors looking for local events
And as a promotional platform for event owners, who can attract the audience looking for events.
This website works exactly like online directories. The listings are in form of Events. Organizers and Event management companies register and publish a listing for their event on Eventbrite. They can post their events under different categories like musical events, entertainment, educational events, business events, etc.
The visitors looking for local events will look under the categories of their interest to find the events. They can register for the event, and buy the tickets if available online.
The event organizers, in turn can share the event listing page on their social media, with friends who want to know the details of the events. Each event listing page therefore serves as an individual website for the event that displays all the important information about the event.
How can a website like EventBrite be a form of online business?
Eventbrite is one of the most popular directories among the event organizers to promote their events and sell event tickets.
You can too create a local version of such an event portal using the Eventum WordPress theme. This website can help you make money by being the middle ground between event organizers and even goers.
There are several ways you can make money through an event website:
- By allowing paid event listing submissions to the event organizers
- You can even create a membership environment where exclusive information is protected for paid access.
- By allowing the sale of event tickets and through commissions on ticket sales.
- Create an eCommerce store for the event goers as well as organizers for related products. For example: event props, merchandise shop, banners & posters, etc.
- Or use the simplest way to make money through a website, by displaying Advertisement banners.
- Use an advertisement network like Google Adsense to display targeted advertisements and make money based on the click through.
You can even use the traffic of your website to run exclusive offers, promote new business or services, or for sharing your content through blogs. Ultimately there can be a number of different ways through which you can use your event website.
Initially, your events portal may not get the desired number of listing submissions. You can use different features then to populate your website with event listings. Tools like import Facebook events and allowing free listing submission cam help you set your website with content.
Eventually, with proper promotions, when your website starts gaining enough traffic you can stay crafting packages for paid submission and even stay using other methods to make money through your events website.
Here an important point to know is that any kind of website, whether it is on an event portal, a directory website, an eCommerce website, a business website or a personal or professional blog site, takes time to bring the best results. Consistency is the key. When it comes to website building there’s no miraculous results. Only persistent efforts can help you achieve your objective with your website.
Another fact is that your website even needs constant maintenance for keeping up the good results. The Internet is the best place for a business setup because it eradicates the local boundaries and opens up doors for many opportunities that you won’t find locally. But this also means that the competition will be intense. I’d you don’t keep up with the current trends, there are going to be a lot of competitors to take you down.
Essential features top create a website like EventBrite:
User Registration:
The users here are generally event manners and organizers who are looking for a platform to promote their events. So your website will need a user registration and management system through which these event owners can easily register and use their account to make event listing submission on your website.
Event submission form:
You will need a complete and fully functional even submission form where the event owners can fill in the event details and submit their events. The form shown here is what you get with the Eventum WordPress theme. It is customizable so you are free to add or remove the details as and when required.
Account management:
For flexibility, the basic feature you need is to allow the event authors the freedom to update their event listings anytime they want. For example: the Eventum WordPress theme allows the registered users top log in to their account and check their submitted listings and edit them.
Event tickets:
A complete event portal will generally allow the sales of event tickets too. Sip three event owners can not just prompt their events but also sell their tickets to the interested event goers. And the visitors looking for the events can not just find the events they might be interested in but also RSVP and buy the tickets.
Payment processing:
A safe, secure and widely popular payment processing system helps the visitors easily pay for the event tickets and the organizers can easily pay for the event submission or the membership package.
Cancellation and refund:
Along with proper payment processing systems, make sure your event website also ensures proper cancellation and refunds processing. Also, all the rules and conditions for the cancellation and refund should be clearly stated to avoid any dispute at a later stage.
Contact form:
A contract form can play a central role in helping youth find and fix the issues that may hinder the popularity and growth of your website. Listen to what the contract form messages bring to you.
Proper categorization and filters:
This feature helps the visits on your website find the events of their choice easily. Categorization even helps you keep your listing organized. Also search and filter facilities make sure that the visors are served with the results that are most meaningful to them.
How to create an events website with WordPress?
In previous section we discussed how WordPress is ideal for creating an events website, now we will see how you can create such a website with WordPress.
With a WordPress theme, you can easily create, manage, maintain and update your website whenever required, without technical assistance.
WordPress themes for Events website – which will serve you as the most important tool to quickly build your website, are available in different designs and with different features.
In this tutorial, I will use the WordPress Eventum theme, to create an events directory (or you can call it an events portal).
The following are the simple steps to build your events website:
Get a Domain and Hosting
To start with any website, you need a domain name as well as a host. Of Course there are website builders, that lets you build a website without looking for hosting. You can use such website builders if you are looking for quick solution for creating your events website and don’t care about the extensible and flexibility.
Choosing a reliable host on your own isn’t that difficult. We recommend using Bluehost for your WordPress events websites. Bluehost is reliable, has a great pricing structure and gives you the best up time.
Here is a complete guide on how to choose a domain name and a host for your WordPress website.
Choose a WordPress events theme
As mentioned earlier, there are a lots of WordPress events themes you can choose from. Here is a list of WordPress Events themes to choose from.
The themes for creating events website in WordPress come with different designs and features. While some are basic themes with an event calendar to display events, some are events directory themes to create an event listing website like EventBrite.
To choose an ideal theme for your WordPress, you have to consider the following
- Type of design you want (dark, modern, minimal, etc.)
- The features you need in your site
- Customization of the theme and the customization flexibility you need
While some themes are simple, and come with very basic features to display events on your WordPress website, there are complex themes too. You can choose a theme that has all the features you need, and the flexibility you are looking for.
If you are looking for a simpler alternative, you can settle for a basic WordPress events theme instead.
Get started with the setup
When you buy a premium WordPress theme, it should come with good documentation on how you can use the theme to create a website of your imagination.
The theme guide typically covers everything starting from the theme installation and setup, to how to use the theme features, customize it and use it with the available settings and options.
However, here are a few steps you should follow to get started with your WordPress website:
Installing WordPress & Events theme/plugins
With hosting already acquired, and the theme zip file downloaded, you are now ready to go. Most of the hosting companies (Bluehost included) come with an option to choose the technology you want to use to build your website.
WordPress being one of the most popular website building tools, is available with almost every hosting company. So all you have to do here, is choose WordPress to build your website, and it will be automatically installed for you.
Another way, is by accessing the control panel, and manually uploading the WordPress package, and theme files to get started. But you won’t have to do that with Bluehost as well as The Eventum Theme for Events website.
Just choose to install WordPress at your hosting panel, and then navigate to Appearance ⇒ Theme, and choose to upload a new theme. This is where you can upload the theme zip file you downloaded from the provider.
The Eventum theme comes with an easy install package – so you don’t have to care about installing individual components of your website.
With just a single upload and install, your WordPress will be configured with the theme & required plugins installed and activated.
The sample data
WordPress is website making made easier. Almost every premium event theme, will come with sample data to populate your website with temporary content.
This sample data is nothing but a package of example data – event listings with location & timings, images, widgets in widget areas, sample categories & blogs, etc.
When you finish installing your theme, you will be asked if you want to install the sample data. At this stage, your website won’t look like the theme demo yet. With the sample data installed, it will.
With the sample data installed, your website will start looking like a fully functional events website. Now all you need to do is to replace the example content with your original data and re-configuring it a bit.
Customize & Setup
A WordPress theme is pre designed and pre configured to perform in a specific way. But they are also crafted in a way to make sure that this does not limit your scope to create a website you imagine to have.
The WordPress themes are customizable. While the free and basic themes have a limited customization options, there are a few themes that come with so many customization options.
The Eventum theme also has many customization options to let you make your website look and behave the way you want.
The customization options and method to customize is different for each theme. However, your respective theme guides can help you with the customization of your website.
Eventum theme comes with easy customization options, a theme documentation with clear instructions on how to customize the theme, and supports the page builder by WP bakery for drag and drop page building if you want to create pages with drag and drop options.
What to customize?
- Branding: Updating the logo, favicon, site title
- Header: grabs most of the user attention, customize it for your offers, services, etc.
- Website colors & fonts
- Creating and setting up menus
- Set background
- Create all the pages you want, and make sure that they are linked through your menu, buttons, or links
- Homepage management to make sure that it reflects the content of your site
- Manage the footer with important link and company information
All the above mentioned customization suggestions are optional. You can customize your website based on your requirements as well as depending on the customization possibilities allowed by your theme.
Starting with Events on your website
You can customize your site, and manage the pages to create a website you want. Now is the time to start with event listings on your website.
Create events categories
The events on your website will be divided among different categories and locations. While you will be able to add the locations for your events for individual listings, or use the location management settings (with the eventum WordPress theme), you will need to add event categories before you start.
The event categories can be created in a hierarchical format by creating main event category and sub-categories. The events categories can be: educational events, tech events, science events, entertainment events, music events, dance parties, etc.
So before submitting the events, the visitors can choose the categories they want to make the submission to. The Eventum theme lets you create different fields for different event categories, and also allows you to put different prices for different event categories.
You can also create Events tags that will make your events easier to find.
Customize the events form (optional)
If your theme supports front end events submission, your website will have an event submission form, to let the visitors submit events on your website.
This events submission form will come with all the event fields that will be displayed on the event listing page.
Eventum theme lets you customize these fields using the custom fields settings. You can even set different fields based on the events categories.
So you can easily create a custom field for your events, or for an event category. For example: You want a new field that is a radio button for a field called “dress code”. The answer can be yes or no.
Therefore, you have the full flexibility of choosing what event information is to be shown on your events portal.
Set the location widget on the homepage
One more important customization is setting up the homepage. Your homepage should be configured to show all the snippets of information contained on your website.
The homepage can be customized by
Set the pricing for event submission
If you are running an events portal or an EventBrite clone website, and allow front end submission of events, you will need to create pricing packages.
You can create different packages for submitting events. In each package, the main criterion you can specify is the number of events, the price, the validity of event listing, etc.
The package can also be configured to be shown only for specific events categories. For example: If you allow free submission of upto 1 event on any category except for music events, you can create a submission package, that won’t allow you to submit for music events.
Creating and managing submission packages with Eventum theme is really easy. You just have to fill up the form and make it work the way you want.
The pricing package you create will be shown to those trying to submit events on your site. They can choose the package as per their requirements and proceed to submit the events by filling up the event submission form.
The Eventum theme even comes with inbuilt payment collection options to let you accept payments through your website.
Events website management & maintenance
The one’s we discussed in previous sections are the main tasks for setting up your events website. However, there can be less or more depending on what kind of website you are trying to build.
With a WordPress theme for Events like the Eventum theme, you get the best features running out of the box. The thing you need to do is to reconfigure them as per your requirements. And the theme documentation has the information on how to set your site up.
Besides the tasks mentioned in this post about WordPress website maintenance, you need to make sure that your website is always updated with the latest content and old content is removed.
Are you ready to start with your events website?
With the available tools and technologies, creating your own events website is not difficult. Even if you have never created a website before, you can use the platforms like WordPress to create and maintain an events portal of your own.
No need to hire programmers or experts to take care of your site. Be the manager and controller of your own site and make it work exactly how you want it to.
Know more about Eventum WordPress Theme
Further reading: Best Events Plugins for WordPress