- Recurring Event End Dates
In Worship Times sites we have limited recurring event end dates to 2 years in the future. “Why is that?” you may ask, “We know worship will always be at the same time, and I’d love to have 10-years worth of worship times in my calendar, so I don’t have to think about it for a while.” Well, there are several reasons:- Think about how many events you are adding when you add an event like Sunday worship, which happens every week (and for some of you, more than once every Sunday): At least 52 times per year, which is already over 100 events at the end of two years. Then multiply that by additional services, Sunday School, Choir Rehearsal, etc. – any event that is likely to happen 30-50 times per year. That adds up quickly.
- The more events you have in your calendar, the more data they take on your website, the slower it gets. Imagine 10 years of events at a busy church, and you are pretty much using all of your data storage on events.
- That many events loaded into the Event Management system has been known to cause not just slow-downs in loading your site, but other issues, including not being able to edit or delete individual events within the recurring event. This means valuable time lost you could be spending on other things.
- Editing Recurring Events
When you edit a recurring event it creates a bunch of individual events, as mentioned above. When you are editing a recurring event, it is important to remember the following:- When you edit a recurring event within the recurring event (rather than in a single event within that series of events), you edit every event attached to that recurring event. There are ways to detach single events from the recurring event, but most of the time this will change every event attached to this recurring event, so:
- If you have edited single events (with information specific to that date or meeting), editing the recurring event will override those changes.
- So, try to avoid editing recurring events unless there is a major change, like a change in meeting time or day of the week that will continue into the future.
- Renewing Recurring Events (Setting up new recurring events with new end dates.)
Since you can only set end dates for recurring events to 2 years into the future, you might want to set a reminder near and before that end date, so you can add new versions of those recurring events with new end dates. - Cleaning Up Past Events
At the time you renew your recurring events is a good time to clean up events that have passed, too. You can filter your events by category, but you can also filter them by whether they are future or past events. To clean up past events, you can filter the individual events, then select the ones you wish to get rid of, and use Bulk Action to send them to the trash. Even when they are in the trash, they are not completely deleted from your site, so if you accidentally trash an event you meant to keep, you can always restore it from the trash until you empty the trash to delete permanently. (Keeping at least a couple calendar months of past events isn’t a bad idea if someone needs to remember a recent meeting or event date.) - Best Practices
You might want to develop some best practice guidelines around entering individual and recurring events into the Event Manager so if multiple people in your ministry are entering events, or if there is ever a change in volunteer or paid staff, they will know what procedures work best, keeping in mind our tips above. - Remember Worship Times Support!
If you ever have questions about entering, editing or deleting recurring or single events, we have several ways to get help.- Video Tutorials – Available in the Support section of your Worship Times website Dashboard. (And on worshiptimes.org)
- Support Tickets – Send us a Support Ticket, also available in the Support section of your Worship Times website Dashboard. Email us questions, concerns, fears or successes as you create events. We love hearing from you, and we want to help whenever we can.
