Creating & Editing Sessions

Core5 Min.Updated: October 2, 2026

Main event and session – the most important chapter for your daily work. Here is every field of the edit screen, what it does and how to recognize a well-maintained session.

The principle: one bracket, many sessions

In the admin, both are simply called “Event”. One field makes the difference: Parent event. Every session names the bracket above it there, e.g. “Book Fair 2026”. A session without this assignment is an orphan: the dashboard flags it as critical, and it does not appear in filtered views.

Main event and session compared

Property	Main event	Session
“Parent event” field	set to “None”	points to the main event
Date and start time	may stay empty	required – otherwise in no time-based view
Typical number	one per year or edition	ten to several hundred
Daily opening hours (doors open/close)	maintained here	–
Image	serves as fallback image for the sessions	its own image takes precedence
Ticket URL	applies to all sessions	its own URL overrides the inherited one

The edit screen: title, description and the “Event Details” box on the left; Publish, primary category, categories, attributes and featured image on the right.

A – Title, description and excerpt

Field	Purpose
Title	Appears everywhere: card, timetable, ticker, every screen. Keep it short enough for a narrow timetable card.
Description	The full text with images, videos and formatting – on the detail page or in the pop-up.
Excerpt	A summary in one or two sentences for card, list and timetable. If empty, WordPress cuts off the start of the description – usually unattractive.

The underrated field

The excerpt is the only thing your guests read in the overview – it decides whether they click. The dashboard lists missing excerpts under “Missing short description”. The excerpt is a WordPress panel; if it is not visible, enable it via “Screen Options” at the top.

B – Event data

The “Event Data” card: date, start and end time, parent event, the read-only event ID, the cancellation switch and the venue.

Field	Meaning
Date	Required. Without a date, the entry appears in no time-based view.
Start time	Required. Defines sorting and the position in the timetable.
End time	Strongly recommended. Defines the height of the timetable card and the switch from “Live” to “finished”. Without it, the live views assume one hour.
Parent event	Assigns the session. “None” makes the entry a main event itself.
Event ID	Assigned automatically and read-only – the stable key for CSV import and export.
Event is cancelled	Switch: shows the “Cancelled” badge in the front end and marks the entry red. See Cancelled & replacement.
Venue	Choose from your venues; the entry takes over the venue’s color and image. The link below leads to venue management.
Daily opening hours	Visible on main events only – see below.
Hall plan / exhibitor	Only visible when the exhibitor plugin is active.

C – Link & display action: what happens on click?

Click action, external link and target window.

Click action	Effect
Show detail page	The default. A click opens the detail page or the pop-up. If an external link is set, it appears there as a “More information” button (if enabled in the settings).
Open external link	A click goes straight to the stored URL – e.g. a stream or a video meeting. Without a URL, the system falls back to the detail page.
No link (information tile only)	The entry is purely informative. The mouse pointer deliberately does not change on hover – guests see at once that there is nothing to click.

Open link in sets same or new window; “Default” follows the setting under Design & Options.

D – Persons / roles

Three linked speakers: the first row appears below the title image, all others as a list further down. Below: profile URL of the first person and the language.

Name: From two characters on, matching speaker records appear; one click links them. You may also just type a name without a record.
Role, position, company: Leave empty when a speaker is linked – the details then come from the record (pale placeholder, e.g. “— Author (from speaker)”). Only fill them in if you deliberately want something different.
Click target: where a click on the name leads – speaker page, profile URL, exhibitor or no link.
Order: drag by the handle on the left. The first row is the main person.
Language: free text such as “German” or “DE/EN”; applies to the whole session.

More on linking under Creating & managing speakers.

E – Ticket system

Price, price note, ticket URL and the visibility of the ticket icon.

Field	Meaning
Price	Free text, e.g. “10 EUR”.
Price note	Addition, e.g. “only valid with festival pass”.
Ticket shop URL	Direct purchase link. Overrides a URL stored on the main event.
Icon visibility	Default follows the global switches. Hide suppresses the icon for this session only – e.g. a free opening within a paid fair. Force show shows it even if it is switched off globally.

The ticket button is missing?

Three conditions must be met: (1) a ticket URL on the session or its main event, (2) the matching one of the five ticket switches under Settings → Design & Options is on, (3) the visibility on the session is not set to “Hide”. Usually the URL is missing.

F – Links & social media

A box with fields for 24 platforms in six groups (Web & Shop, Social Media, Video & Music, Community & Messenger, Professional, Portfolio & Support) plus contact email and an internal info page.

Short forms are completed: @myprofile in the Instagram field becomes the full URL, my-domain.com becomes https://my-domain.com, @name@mastodon.social the Mastodon link, a phone number for WhatsApp a chat link.
Email addresses appear as mail links, obfuscated against spam bots.
The internal info page also accepts short paths like /program-info/ and always opens in the same window.
Empty fields do not appear in the front end at all.

G – The right sidebar

Box	Purpose
Categories	All matching topics – they are your guests’ filters.
Primary category (badge)	Which single category appears as the badge on the card. Without a choice: the primary category from Yoast SEO or All in One SEO, otherwise the alphabetically first.
Event attributes	The WordPress parent assignment (same as the “Parent event” field) and the order.
Featured image	The image for card, timetable, detail view and room monitor. Without its own image, the session inherits the main event’s image, then the venue’s, and finally the global placeholder.

The save trick for the primary category

On a new entry, the drop-down is empty at first: it can only offer categories that are already saved. Tick the categories, save once – then your choice is available.

Multi-day events: doors open and doors close

1
Open the main event
Not a session – the bracket.
2
Fill in the daily opening hours
The “Event data” box shows the Daily opening hours block. The plugin derives the days from the assigned sessions; enter start (doors open) and end (doors close) per day.
3
Save
The timetable now shows a green line for doors opening and an orange one for the end of each day.

No input fields yet?

As long as no sessions with a date are assigned to the main event, the block only shows a note. As soon as the first session has a date, the fields appear.

What a well-maintained session looks like

Title short enough for a narrow timetable card
Date and start time set
End time set – otherwise the system assumes one hour
Assigned to a main event
Venue chosen – otherwise the session is missing from the timetable
At least one category plus the right primary category
Excerpt with one or two sentences
Its own featured image (or a good image on the venue)
Persons and roles entered if someone appears
Ticket URL set if tickets are needed

No need to check each entry yourself

The dashboard checks most of these points automatically for your whole program. Change many entries at once in the Master Editor.