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Tickets Please

Community Events

Community Events

Community events let logged-in users submit events from the frontend of your site without needing access to wp-admin. Submitted events go into a moderation queue where you review and approve them before they go live. This is useful for community organizations, co-working spaces, or any site where multiple contributors need to add events.

Enabling Community Events

  1. Go to Events > Settings in your WordPress admin.
  2. Find the Community Events section.
  3. Check Enable Community Events (enable_community_events).
  4. Choose whether submitted events require approval by checking Require Approval (community_event_approval). When enabled, submitted events are saved with pending post status. When disabled, they publish immediately.
  5. Save settings.

Once enabled, the frontend submission and management pages become available.

Frontend Pages

Community events adds three frontend pages:

PageURLPurpose
Submit Event/events/community/add/Form for creating a new event
My Events/events/community/list/List of the logged-in user’s submitted events
Edit Event/events/community/edit/{id}/Edit form for a specific event the user owns

All three pages require the user to be logged in. Visitors who are not logged in are redirected to the WordPress login page.

The Submission Form

The frontend submission form includes these fields:

FieldRequiredDescription
TitleYesThe event name
DescriptionNoRich text area using wp_editor
Start Date + TimeNoWhen the event begins
End Date + TimeNoWhen the event ends
VenueNoSelect an existing venue or create a new one
OrganizerNoSelect an existing organizer or create a new one
CategoryNoHierarchical category selector
TagsNoComma-separated tag input
Featured ImageNoFile upload for the event image
CostNoFree-form cost string
Website URLNoExternal link related to the event

The venue and organizer fields include inline creation options, so submitters can add new venues and organizers without admin access. New venues and organizers created through the frontend form follow the same approval workflow as the event itself.

Approval Workflow

When Require Approval is enabled:

  1. The user fills out the submission form and clicks Submit Event.
  2. The event is saved with pending status. The user sees a confirmation message that their event is awaiting review.
  3. The event appears in the wp-admin Events list with a “Pending” status label.
  4. An admin or editor reviews the event, makes any edits, and clicks Publish.
  5. The event goes live on the site.

When Require Approval is disabled, submitted events publish immediately with no admin intervention. Use this option only if you trust all users who have accounts on your site.

Managing Submitted Events

For Submitters

Logged-in users can view their submitted events at /events/community/list/. This page shows all events they have created, with their current status (Pending, Published, Draft). From this list, users can:

  • Edit their own events at /events/community/edit/{id}/
  • Delete their own events (moves to trash)

Users can only see and edit their own events. They cannot see other users’ submissions or access wp-admin event management.

For Administrators

Admins manage community-submitted events the same way as any other event — from the Events list in wp-admin. Pending events are clearly labeled. You can filter the events list by status to see only pending submissions.

When reviewing a submission, you have full access to all event fields. You can edit the title, adjust dates, change the venue, reassign categories, or modify the description before publishing.

Permissions and Access

Community events requires a logged-in WordPress user account. The submission form checks is_user_logged_in() and redirects unauthenticated visitors to the login page.

Any authenticated user can submit events. If you want to restrict submissions to specific roles, use a capability management plugin to control which roles have the edit_tribe_events capability.

The edit and delete actions are scoped to the current user. A user can only modify events where they are the post author. Attempting to edit another user’s event results in a permission error.

Common Questions

Can anonymous visitors submit events without logging in? No. Community event submission requires a WordPress user account. Users must log in before accessing the submission form. If you need public submissions, consider adding a user registration form to your login page.

Are community-submitted events visible before approval? No. When approval is required, submitted events have pending status and are only visible in wp-admin. They do not appear in event lists, calendar views, or search results until an admin publishes them.

Can submitters add tickets to their events? No. Ticket creation is an admin-only action. After you approve and publish a community-submitted event, you can add tickets to it from wp-admin.

How do I notify submitters when their event is approved? WordPress sends a standard notification when a pending post is published. You can customize this with an email notification plugin or by hooking into the pending_to_publish transition action.

Can submitters upload multiple images? The form includes a single featured image upload. If you need a gallery or additional media, submitters can use the rich text editor to embed images in the event description.

Can I add custom fields to the submission form? The submission form renders the standard event fields. To add custom fields, use the tickets_please_community_form_fields filter to extend the form, and a corresponding save_post hook to save the extra data.

How do I disable community events if I no longer need it? Uncheck Enable Community Events in Events > Settings. The frontend pages will return 404 errors. Existing community-submitted events are not affected — they remain in your events list regardless of this setting.

Next Steps