Publishing an Event
What the publish gate checks, what you can still edit afterwards, and what freezes for good
Publishing turns a draft into a page buyers can reach. It is one action, and it either passes completely or changes nothing.
The gate exists because a half-configured Event takes money it cannot honour: a Pass with no Sessions, a sale window past the end date, a venue with no state for tax.
The gate
| Check | Fails when |
|---|---|
| Summary present | Empty after trimming |
| Category | Empty. Catalogue validity was checked when the Event was saved |
| Timezone | Not an IANA name |
| Schedule | End is not after start |
| Venue | In-person or hybrid with no venue name, venue, or city |
| Online link | Online or hybrid without a valid http or https URL |
| Passes | No active Pass |
| Attendance modes | Empty, or a mode the Event does not permit |
| Selected Sessions | Empty, or a Session from another Event |
| Sale window | Ends after the Event, or starts at or after the Event end |
| Per-order limits | Below one, above fifty, or minimum above maximum |
| Indian tax | Paid, in-person or hybrid, no venue state |
A failure returns one error, never a list, so fix the obvious one and retry.
Free Events skip the money gate
An Event with only free Passes publishes without KYC or a settlement account. The moment any active Pass has a price above zero, the gate applies.
What publishing does
Publishing sets the publication timestamp, records who published it, and writes the first public revision. The revision becomes the first notice on the public page.
Calling publish twice is safe. A published Event returns itself without writing a second revision, so a retried request after a timeout cannot duplicate history.
Publishing does not create Passes, Sessions, or prices. It only checks what already exists.
What you can still edit
After publication, fields split into four groups.
| Group | Fields | How to change |
|---|---|---|
| Free edits | Summary, description, artwork, visibility, FAQs, contacts, sponsors, style, topics | Direct edit, no revision |
| Quiet edits | Venue name, address, city, state, country, online link | Direct edit, no revision |
| Workflow edits | Dates, participation mode | Postpone, reschedule, or relocate, with a notice |
| Frozen | Category, slug, fulfillment mode, name, timezone, team settings, capacity | Refused |
Frozen means frozen: a name change, a timezone change, a capacity change, or a slug change is refused with an error saying the field is fixed after publication. A direct participation-mode change is refused the same way; relocate is the only route. There is no approval queue to send it to; the answer is a new Event.
Category is refused with its own error, because the taxonomy is a platform decision rather than an organizer one. Fulfillment mode is refused too, since changing how a pass is delivered after selling one would strand existing buyers.
Membership is quietly editable: an Event can join or leave an EventSeries or EventGroup after publication. That changes where it is listed, not what it is.
Venue edits are the exception
A direct edit of venue fields on a published Event is accepted and writes no revision, so buyers are not told. Use relocate when the room actually changes.
Editing Passes after publication
A Pass splits the same way, with a sharper line.
| Still editable | Refused after publication |
|---|---|
| Name | Price |
| Description | Capacity |
| Requires approval | Minimum and maximum per order |
| List price (the strike-through MRP) | Sale start and end |
| Session scope and selected Sessions |
A change in that right-hand column is refused, not silently applied. The workaround is to end the old Pass and create a new one, so buyers see two clearly different offers rather than one that changed underneath them.
Pass editing is a full replace. If you resend a Pass without a capacity, the capacity is cleared rather than kept. Read the Pass, change the field you mean, and send the whole object back.
Attendance modes are not part of this update at all; they belong to the registration module's participation settings.
Deleting, cancelling, archiving
Only a draft can be deleted. Once published, an Event leaves through cancellation (refunds, notices) or archive (removal from public view, history kept).
A draft disappears on delete. A published Event never does.
A publish that fails twice
Priya tries to publish Vidyut 2027 and gets refused. The summary is empty, so she writes two sentences and retries.
The retry fails again: the online link is vidyut.live with no scheme, which is not an absolute URL. She fixes it to https://vidyut.live.
The third attempt passes, because the Event has one active Pass, a valid window, and a venue. The public revision records the moment, and the page is reachable at its slug.
Related
- Event Lifecycle — postponing, rescheduling, relocating, cancelling
- Passes — what the gate validates
- Visibility — who can see the page once published
- Publishing rules — the same checks as reference
- Publish an Event — the organizer walkthrough