Publishing an event
While you are setting an event up it stays in draft, where it is hidden from attendees and the event code does not work. When you are ready for families to start registering, you publish the event through a dedicated review-and-publish page. This is the only way an event moves out of draft, so the decision is always made on purpose rather than as a side effect of saving a settings change.
To begin, open the event you want to publish and choose Publish event. The same button appears on the event dashboard and on the readiness checklist whenever an event is still in draft.
The review-and-publish page
The review-and-publish page brings together everything you need to confirm before an event goes live.
Before you publish
Alongside the publish options you will see a Before you publish checklist. This looks at the event and highlights anything that still needs your attention, such as dates and times that have not been set yet, a time block missing from one of your dates, no staff assigned, or for tours, no stations added. Items that matter most for the event to run properly are flagged more prominently, and gentler suggestions such as adding a description appear as well. Each unfinished item includes a shortcut that takes you straight to the right place to fix it.
The checklist is there to guide you rather than to stop you. You can still publish an event with items outstanding, which is useful when you want families to start registering while you finish the finer details. The same checklist also appears on the event dashboard so you can track readiness at any time, not only at the moment you publish.
Choosing how families reach the event
When you publish you choose whether the event is public or private. New events default to private, where attendees need the event code to register, which suits most events. Public events appear on your event website for anyone to find. You can read more about the difference in event visibility, and you can change this choice later from the event settings.
What publishing costs
Publishing needs either an active subscription or an event credit. Your very first event is free, so there is no cost to try Parent Events end to end before you commit.
If you are on the pay-as-you-go model, the review-and-publish page tells you in advance that publishing will use one of your event credits and how many you will have left afterwards. The credit is only spent the first time an event is published. Once an event has been unlocked this way you can unpublish it and publish it again as often as you need without spending another credit. Subscribers can publish as many events as they like, and never see a credit cost.
If you have no event credits left, the publish option is unavailable until more are available. Finance Managers and Administrators can buy more credits, or move to a subscription, from the Billing section of the Settings page. Anyone else will be prompted to ask their finance manager to do this.
Drafting an event is always free. You can create an event, set up dates, assign staff, and work through the checklist as many times as you need, and you only ever spend a credit at the moment you publish.
Taking an event offline again
A published event can be moved back to draft at any time, for example if you need to pause registrations. Because the event has already been unlocked, you can publish it again afterwards without spending another credit.