Creating event details for a Professional free-to-attend event
The ‘Create an event’ wizard is as smart as it is simple to use. It guides you through creating your own registration website, step by step. And in next to no time, you’ve got a great looking site. No hassle at all.

As you make your way through the wizard, you can:

Add event title
This is the name of your event. It will appear as the title on your event registration website, and it will also be the URL for your site.

Add event capacity
You can set the maximum number of people that can attend your event. The figure you choose will also determine the number of tickets you can later make available for the event. If you don’t want to put a cap on the number of attendees that can attend, just leave the field blank.

Add event date
The wizard will ask you for the dates of your event. You’ll need to add the start and end date, and also the times that the event will start and finish. You’ve also got the option to set it as an all-day event.

Note: when you select the dates, make sure you click the calendar logo – this ensures dates are added in the correct format.

Add the website go-live date
This is the date from which attendees can register for your event. No-one will be able to access your event registration page before this date.

Add event location
This is the venue where you’re holding your event. When you add the address of the venue, EventElephant automatically provides your website with a Google Maps link so your attendees can get directions to your event.

Categorise your event
Later in the wizard, you’ll be offered a selection of pre-built design themes for your website. The design themes will vary according to the category of event you’re creating. EventElephant will automatically display the themes that it thinks will be most useful or relevant to your event.

Add event keywords
Keywords are the headline words that most accurately define what your event is about eg the top ten words that best describe your event. Keywords help search engines find your event more easily. And the easier it is for them to find your event, so much the better. This is because once search engines have found and indexed your website, it will be much easier for potential attendees to find it when they search on Google or Yahoo etc.

Choose a free or paid-for event
You can set your event as either free or paid-for. In this instance, set the event to ‘free’.

Set your event as public or private
EventElephant gives you the choice to categorise your event as public or private. If you make it a public event, any visitor to EventElephant can search for it – either by name, subject matter, date, location or company.

If you mark your event as private, visitors to EventElephant won’t be able to find it via the EventElephant home page or when they run a site search.

Set up tickets
EventElephant lets you set up tickets for you event, but as yours is free to attend, there won’t be a price assigned to them.

Create the website URL
EventElephant takes your event name and uses it to automatically creates a URL for your event.

For example, if the name of your event is ‘Event X’, the URL would be www.eventelephant.com/eventx (you’ve got the option to change the URL, if you prefer).

EventElephant will automatically check that the proposed URL for you event is available.

Name contact groups
This is the name of the contact group that you want to give to your target attendees. When attendees register for your event, they will become part of this contact group. For example, a good name for a group would be the name of your event. This would help you in future to find and target this group of people for a new event.

EventElephant also lets you add a description for your contact group, so there’s no chance of forgetting exactly who’s who in your contact database.

Add event logo/banner
You can upload your own banners and logos, or you can use one of the ready-made design themes in the ‘Create an event ‘wizard. Or if you prefer, you can upload a banner or logo onto a design theme.

Set up terms and conditions for attendees
It’s not mandatory for you to add terms and conditions, but there is a step in the ‘Create an event’ wizard for you to do so. If you have some terms and conditions already drawn up for your event, you can simply copy and paste them into the appropriate area.

Use ready-made design themes
EventElephant has a wide range of ready-made design themes that you can use for your registration website.

There are lots of design themes to choose from, all relating to the category that you gave your event earlier in the wizard. If you’d like a preview of one of the themes, simply click the image and a new window will pop up showing you what your website would look like.

Use customisable designs
If you’d prefer to create your own design them, it’s no problem. EventElephant lets you create your own theme from scratch, so you can customise your site with your own colours, banners and logos etc.

Customise your event colours
If you choose to customise your own website, you’ll be taken to a page where you can use drop-down boxes, click boxes and colour kaleidoscopes to build your own design theme.

You can select the colours for all the different parts of your event registration page, such as the text colour, heading colour, panel colour and background colour.

You can also select the font you want for your event title and headings.

If you think the colours don’t look quite right when you’ve finished in the wizard, don’t worry, you can always come back and edit them later.

Note: lots of people find that using just two or three colours produces the best results.

Choose your website layout
Depending on the type of event registration page you have, there are several options for laying out your page and organising where the various information panels and navigation headings are positioned.

You can choose to have your navigation tabs running down the left or right-hand side of the page, or have them appear horizontally across the top of the page.

Set up event sponsors
If you have sponsors for your event, EventElephant lets you display their logo or name on your site.

You can choose the exact location of where you want your event sponsors logos to be displayed. The logos will appear on every page of the site, on either the left or right-hand side. If a sponsor doesn’t have a logo, their name will appear in this space instead.

Next you can categorise your sponsors eg. Platinum, Gold or Silver sponsors etc.

Finally you can add all your sponsors’ details, including name and web address. If somebody clicks the sponsor’s name or logo, they’ll be taken to the sponsor’s website.

Manage attendee registration details
Attendees booking you event may want to book tickets on behalf of others eg family, friends or colleagues. You can stipulate that the main contact must enter all other attendees’ details at the time of booking. Or you can allow the main contact to enter partial information at the time of booking, and then come back later to fill in the remaining details.

Set registration form fields
The registration fields gather information on anyone who registers for your event. When they book their ticket, there are a number of questions they’ll be asked. EventElephant automatically generates the main fields for you, including;

First name

Surname

Email Address

Title

Organisation

Position

Contact Number

Contact Address

Attendees must give their first name, surname and email address. You can choose to include any of the other questions by using the tick boxes, and you can also choose which of these are mandatory for attendees to answer.

Add new registration fields
If the pre-generated questions don’t give you all the information you need about your attendees, you’ve got the option to add your own custom fields. By using a custom field you can ask your attendee any question you wish, and all the answers will show up on the report for the event.

For example, you may want to find out what’s their favourite food or drink. Or you might want to hand out free promotional T-shirts at the event and need to know what size they take.

You can even choose in what format you want to receive the answer – drop-down box, tick box or text field, where the attendee can answer however they want. Plus you can choose which of the custom questions are mandatory for your attendees to answer.

Add speaker details
When you add speaker details, a dedicated ‘Speakers page’ will automatically be created for your site. You can add as many speakers as you like, together with a short biography and a picture of each speaker (images must be no larger than 200x300 pixels).

Create your event programme
Creating a programme gives your attendees an itinerary for your event and lets them know exactly what they can expect. Within your programme, you can create streams and breakout sessions. When attendees register for your event, they can also book specific breakout sessions.

Streams are essentially the main topics that will be discussed at your event, and may well take place in different locations at the venue. You can create as many streams as you like.

The breakout sessions are talks or activities that happen within the streams. The sessions you create can be attached to any of the streams you’ve created. You can add as many details as you want for each of the sessions, including the date, start/end time, location, capacity and session speaker. Plus you’ve got the option to set which sessions are mandatory for people to attend.

Accommodation details
When you add accommodation details, a dedicated ‘Accommodation page’ will automatically be created for your site. This page lets attendees know what hotels are near the event venue. When you add a hotel’s address, a Google Maps link will be added automatically to show attendees how to get there.

You can also add a link to hotel’s website, list hotel costs, and add an image of the hotel (the image can be no larger than 200x300 pixels).