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Hosting a digital event

Can't meet in person? We have tips to help you set up a successful virtual event on NationBuilder.

Updated over 4 years ago

Our team has put together a guide to boosting your online fundraising with a digital event and a video on how to optimize digital events when meeting in person is not possible.

To make sure your NationBuilder event is set up for success there are a few tweaks to the event settings you'll want to make.

Table of contents:

Making the venue name 'webinar' or 'online'

To make your NationBuilder event digital you'll need to update the Event settings > Basics > Venue name to say 'webinar' or, 'online'. You can also put a note that the webinar link will be included when someone RSVPs.

πŸ“Œ Note: Do try not to do the below step - never add anything to Event settings > Location for a virtual event. If you do you will need to edit the code or start a new event to remove the map.

If you add an event location to the event page in Event settings > Location it will force you to add a city and zip code. When you add the city and zip code it will map the event on your calendar page.

Once the location has been added the page won't save without one - so, if you add a location you can't delete it, but you but you can delete it in your event template.

Removing address from an event template

In this example we are using the Raise theme.

To help find it where to delete the event location make the location name, city and state all 'online' and you will see them on your live or preview page -

Next, you want to find where in the template the 'Online, Online' lives so right-click on my page and choose 'inspect element' if you click on the 'inspect' button on the top of the code you will be able to choose the 'Online, online' text and see it in the code.

Stay with me, we are close!

Scrolling up in the code to the last grey piece of code that looks like this -

<!-- _event_header.html -->

That is telling me that the code for the address is in event_header.html - now I need to find that!

If you navigate to website > theme you can see if you have a custom theme or a NationBuilder stock theme. If you don't have a custom theme simply click 'new custom theme' and clone your current theme to access all the files.

πŸ“Œ Note: It really can take up to 10 minutes so please be patient!

Next step is to find event_header.html. I looked in my Theme > Files and found it there:

I found the word 'where' in the code and ended up deleting lines 34 - 50 (remember, this is on the Raise theme - just make sure to begin and end what you delete with the green text).

Now it looks like this:

πŸ“Œ Note: This change will be seen on all events on your site. To avoid doing this at all never go into the 'Location' setting in the first place! If you do you can either do the above in the template or, just start a new event.

Removing location from event auto response

All NationBuilder events include an autoresponse that has information about your event in Event settings > autoresponse you'll want to delete the code that automatically brings in the location and add a link to your online event.

You can also schedule a reminder to your attendees by scheduling an email blast to attendees, learn more at Events: creation to completion.

That's it! Now your event does not show a location and you can add the webinar link to the autoresponse.

Please reach out to us at [email protected] if you have any questions!

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