With worldwide restrictions on people's gatherings, event planners have made efforts to move their meetings, social gatherings and classes to the internet. Major online meeting platforms from Google, Microsoft and Zoom have responded with a wave of new features and price reductions to win over these new customers, though they each have a different focus.
Google Meet is running Google's Gmail, Microsoft Teams has become the business option, while Zoom has been adopted by virtually everyone. But you don't just have to use a third-party service - you also have the option of using your own website.
The WordPress plugins calendar of events have begun to cater to this new niche. First, we'll characterize some of the unique challenges of moving events to the internet, then dive deep into four great options you can use to host your events on the web.
But before, if you have never installed WordPress discover How to Install a WordPress Blog in 7 Steps et How to search, install and activate a WordPress theme on your blog.
Then, back to why we are here.
Challenges of internet events
Events present a set of challenges. But when planning and managing an online event, there are a few that you will want to keep in mind.
Time zone
When planning an event in a physical location, the time is always local. The concert starts at 20 p.m. in Seattle wherever you are in the world.
Things get more complicated online. A Zoom meeting can be in New York City, but attendees in London and Hong Kong need to know when to join. Worse yet, your event planner might be in New Zealand, planning events in Buenos Aires for attendees in Cape Town. Every online event calendar should address the time zone area.
Where is the link?
All online meeting platforms work by generating a link to send to meeting participants. They click on the link to join her. Invariably not everyone gets it, the link may have been changed at the last minute, or the invitation may be buried in your spam mailbox.
Zoom's security concerns have taught organizers to be careful with ties. They must be delivered in a secure and reliable manner to only confirmed participants.
Mix and Match
Some events are purely online. Some are face-to-face. Some are hybrid events where people can attend a face-to-face class or connect online. Still other events can be face-to-face, but with an online livestream.
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An event calendar should seamlessly combine these scenarios, so that the registration flows match the use case. For example, face-to-face participants should not receive an invitation link, and online participants should not receive scannable tickets.
The top WordPress event calendar plugins
Here are four event calendars that target features to address those points. We have tried all the features and verified that they are ready for your application.
EventAgent.ai
Newly released and fully native, EventAgent.ai offers the best overall experience among these calendars. While its distinguishing feature is data driven AI marketing for automated event promotion, it also offers several advanced and hybrid features for online events.
The EventAgent.ai calendar detects the visitor's time zone and moves online events to local time. These events are clearly marked from all points of view. Events that require physical presence are displayed in the location's time zone.
This minimizes planning errors. A New Yorker visiting Seattle will know how to show up at the yoga club at 7 a.m. If he stays home, at 11 a.m.
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Zoom's recommended security protocol is to implement a Zoom waiting room. This is a virtual lobby where Zoom's host personally checks participants upon arrival. This is very cumbersome for hosts or service providers who need an additional receptionist in the lobby to check on attendees as they enter the lobby.
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EventAgent.ai offers rigorous control at check-in, so it doesn't become a bottleneck. An event can be set to Moderate, which will delay confirmation until the organizer approves the attendee.
EventAgent.ai provides a full set of moderation tools, including personalized responses to the registration form, notes about the attendee and their previous attendance record, which is also useful for checking class prerequisites.
EventAgent.ai handles arrival instructions differently between face-to-face and online events. Face-to-face participants receive an email with driving and arrival instructions 24 hours before departure time. Online, hosts often change the invitation URL a few hours before the event and attendees arrive at their computers 5 minutes early.
Online participants do not receive a driving reminder, but the link will arrive in their inboxes 30 minutes before the departure time. This greatly facilitates attendance.
EventAgent.ai tailors the registration experience to the type of event. Participants in face-to-face events have digital tickets scannable on phones they present at the door, while online participants are automatically checked in when they join the Zoom meeting.
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Finally, EventAgent.ai provides true two-way sync with Zoom. Change the time of an event and the associated Zoom meeting updates will be automatically updated. If the invitation link changes, the new link is automatically sent to attendees. If the meeting is accidentally deleted in Zoom, EventAgent.ai will retrieve it if the event goes as planned.
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The Event Calendar
The Event Calendar is the WordPress Plugin most installed event and is a perennial item on the top 10 lists. It is backed by an impressive catalog of add-ons making it very flexible.
The Event Calendar: Virtual Events is a recently released module for organizing events online. When installed, it adds the following section to the event editor.
Virtual events can connect to a Zoom account which allows them to create Zoom links from the event editor. When you save this event, it creates a corresponding meeting in your Zoom account. Most of the other options relate to where to display the Zoom link. Adding the link in RSVP emails ensures that only registered people receive the link.
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However, this is not true two-way synchronization. Changing the event time is not reflected in the Zoom meeting, for example, leaving the new time without a Zoom link. Removing the Zoom meeting does not remove the Zoom link from the event, so people will receive a dead link. It's little more than a convenient copy and paste of the link.
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The events calendar has good support for time zones. You can set time zones per event and display the time zone to attendees. However, they still need to manually calculate event times based on their local time zone.
Download | Demo | Web hosting
Modern Event Calendar
Modern Events Calendar is another top freemium plugin. He focuses on the Reservations online events easily found by search engines.
Google released a new scheme for online and moved online events which will direct visitors to a link. If you rely heavily on SEO to find attendees for your events, this is a valuable upgrade.
It also allows events to be displayed at the local time of your website visitors. This is exactly what online participants need to see. However, this is not the right approach for face-to-face events. A New Yorker visiting Seattle will show up at our concert from 20 p.m. to 23 p.m., because that's the time on their calendar.
Download | Demo | Web hosting
Bookly
Bookly is another WordPress Plugin event management software tailored to the specific use case of people booking appointments with service providers. This type of workflow is poorly suited for a standard calendar plugin, so it's nice and lovely to see that this template is also getting some attention.
All plugins that offer Zoom integration require connection to a Zoom application created from the Zoom Marketplace. Depending on the type of integration the plugin requires, creating the app will provide one or two keys that need to be copied into the Bookly plugin settings.
Afterward Bookly provides a token to insert the Zoom link in any view custom created. This allows the greatest flexibility for privacy. The link can be displayed after the visitor has posted an appointment or sent an email confirmation.
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When the service provider is viewing the appointments, they have a button to start the Zoom session in their dashboard, which makes the workflow seamless.
Unfortunately, like WordPress Plugin The Event Calendar, Bookly's Zoom integration is not a two-way street. Changes made from Zoom or Bookly can result in broken meetings.
Bookly does not support time zones. It also does not alert visitors when viewing the schedule from a different time zone than the service provider. This can easily lead to missed appointments due to scheduling errors.
Download | Demo | Web hosting
Which plugin is right for me?
If you are already invested in the ecosystem plugin The Event Calendar, virtual event management is a worthy upgrade. The zoom integration automates the creation of meeting URLs, and its flexible time zones make it easier for distant participants.
If you primarily rely on search engines for event discovery, Modern Event Calendar has the best SEO integration to notify your attendees that events have been moved.
Among the plugins that target service appointments from Reservations, Bookly is ahead of the pack with a seamless end-to-end workflow for online events in your local time zone.
If you want to give the best experience to online and hybrid event attendees, hosts and organizers, EventAgent.ai is the way to go. Its built-in automated promotion tools are an added bonus.
As the world slowly opens up to face-to-face gatherings, we can be in an extended period of online and hybrid events. Many organizations have gained new clients, expanding their reach beyond local communities.
Losing these new clients as they return to face-to-face services is an option many want to avoid, which requires a long-term strategy. The plugins in this article form an essential part of this strategy.
Recommended Resources
Find out about other recommended resources to help you build and manage your website.
- How to Moderate Comments in WordPress: The Guide
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- 6 WordPress plugins to add Authorize.Net to your website
- 9 WordPress plugins to optimize the zoom on images
Conclusion
Here ! That's it for this article which allows you to understand why and how to organize virtual events on WordPress. If you have some Comments or suggestions, do not hesitate to offer them.
However, you can also consult our resources, if you need more elements to carry out your projects of creation of Internet sites, by consulting our guide on WordPress blog creation or the one on Divi: the best WordPress theme of all time.
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