Creating an event on the website

When choosing an image for your event:

• Make sure your familiar with the University's use of photography guidelines 
• It needs to cropped to size (1000 pixels x 1000 pixels) so it needs to be quite large to start with. Find out about sizing and uploading images to the Media Library
• Don't use images of text because they are not accessible. But if you really have to (such as a logo) make sure you explain the text in your alt text or on the page 
• You can use existing images in the Media Library, but try not to use the same image for several of your events. Having duplicate images on the calendar at any one time means one event won’t stand out from another and it makes the calendar look less appealing to use.
• Ways to find new images:
  • Search the Media Library for images already uploaded there (making sure they're the correct size)
  • Contact the Marketing team for advice about sourcing images
  • There are free image websites, such as Pixabay and Unsplash, but double check the image is licenced for use on commercial websites
• When you upload your image to the Media Library, make sure it goes into the sub-folder 'Header images' 

If you're event will link to a document, such as an event programme, upload this before you start creating your event.

Find out about uploading a document to the Media Library.

When you upload a document to the Media Library, make sure it goes into a sub-folder contained with the 'Documents' folder.

1. After logging in, select ‘Content Editor’
2. In content tree, open ‘Content’ – ‘Main Site’ – ‘Home’ and then select ‘Events’ (so that the folder goes blue)
3. Make sure you’re on the ‘Home’ tab in the horizontal menu at the top.
4. Select a link called ‘Event’ in a window.

Name your event URL

Next you'll need to name your event. What you enter here will be the event URL or web address. It needs to be relatively short and mustn’t include any punctuation such as commas, apostrophes, hyphens or question marks. If your event does have a question mark, for example, that can be added to the event title later. For the moment, it’s just the URL we’re creating.

Where to find your event in Sitecore

After your event is created it will now be in draft in the 'Events' folder in the content tree. You can see there are several sub folders arranged by year, then month and day. When you add in the dates for your event it will move automatically to that day’s folder.

The information you put in here is picked up and displayed by search engines such as Google and also in our own search function on the University website.

• SEO Meta Title – the full title of your event and here you can add any punctuation to the words in your title. In Google, this is the large blue link text that appears in search results. This wording also appears in the page tab of your browser.
• SEO Meta Description – this is the short paragraph of text that appears under the meta title. This text needs to accurately describe the content of the page to let users know what they’ll find there. It also needs to be interesting and engaging to encourage users to select the link. Aim to include all the key words relevant to the content on the page.
• The Meta Keywords field can be left blank as search engines generally do not use key words for their search results.

Find out more about the importance of SEO and how to improve your search results.

Header title

Enter the full title of your event. It should be the same as your meta title, where you can include any punctuation.

Event titles should be around 50 characters. If the title is long, you could add some of the text in the subtitle. For example, “Big data and privacy: A look at how people can keep their details private in a world that harvests information”, can be split into “Big data and privacy” as the main title and everything else in the subtitle.

Header subtitle

A sentence that appears until the header title. It should be a very short description of your event.

Header image

Next is the header image which you will have already cropped, resized and uploaded to the header images folder in the Media Library. See the instructions above for sourcing and cropping an image. The image is shown in the list on the events calendar. It’s not shown on the page as all the event details are shown here.

To add the header image, select ‘Browse’. You’re taken to the header images folder automatically. You can either search for it if you know the name of the file or scroll through the images to find it. If you don’t have an image for your event, you could use one that already exists in this folder. So if you searched Colchester Campus for example, you’ll get a few options.

Intro and short name

You can ignore the ‘Intro’ and ‘Short name’ fields, we don’t use those on our events.

Hero and Featured check boxes

These options pin events to the top of the calendar. Please leave these boxes unchecked as we need to make sure priority University events, such as Open Days, are featured prominently. If you have an important event and think it should be a featured event, please contact us at wedm@essex.ac.uk.

Opening paragraph

This is the introduction text for your event. It will appear in bold at the start of your event description and is designed to give a brief overview of your event. Keep it short and concise for maximum impact.

Intro

This is where you add the main content of your event. If you don’t have a lot of text about your event, it may be that all your text is entered here.

Seminars should be no more than 300 words, conferences with schedules etc can be longer. You can also include a speaker biography at the end. If you are working with an external partner please do not directly copy and paste information from their website. It may cause problems with their communications or marketing departments.

Events that do not contain any content will not be made live on the website. Speaker biographies in place of seminar or lecture descriptions cannot be used.

Find out how to correctly add text to your event content and how to create links in your text.

Hero image

The hero image is an optional, large rectangular image that can appear with your event. The image needs to be cropped to 1200px wide x 675px high. You should upload your image to the hero images folder in the Media Library.

Content

If you have added a hero image, you can enter the rest of your event information here.

Display date

The display date is the date that the event will be shown on the website (not the date of the event). You can either leave this and the event will display immediately when published, or you can schedule when you want the event to appear.

Location

Select which campus the event is being held, or whether it is online or off campus.

Venue

Write in the name of the venue or Zoom if online.

Venue hyperlink

You can use a Find Your Way campus map URL here or you can add the Zoom meeting link.

Organiser

Select the organiser for the event.

Contact name/email/telephone

Either a person, team or organisation.

Type

Select the type of event it is, such as conference, webinar, open day etc.

Series

If the event is part of a series of events, such as Think Series, you can add that here.

Speaker

You can only enter one or two speakers in this field. If you need to include multiple speakers and biographies, you should add this information to the main body of the event. You can't add links to a speaker's profile in this field. That will also need to be added to the main body of event content.

A speaker's biography should be a maximum of 100 words.

Allow registration

Ignore this option. See the information on event registration below.

If your event is related to a particular subject area, you can add that be selecting it in the box on the left, then selecting the arrow to move it across to the right-hand box. You can have more than one subject area.

You can also select a faculty if it's an event run by an academic department or faculty. You can also add in the department. By doing this your event will show up on department pages where a 'latest events' module has been added.

'Audience study type' and 'Audience' can be left as we currently don't use this functionality. 

Add your date and time settings. Note that all events must include a finish time.

For events that run over several days, just include the date of the first event and the date of the last event, and your event will continue to appear on the calendar throughout the duration of the event period. 

Events that repeat, on a weekly or monthly basis, for example, will need to be added in as separate events.