Install Events & Bookings and publish your first activity

Before you begin

Drecha Events & Bookings requires WordPress 6.2 or newer and PHP 8.0 or newer. Free works without a Drecha account, license, tracking request, event quota, or booking quota.

Install and activate Events & Bookings

1. In WordPress administration, open Plugins > Add New Plugin.
2. Find the official Drecha Events & Bookings package, or select Upload Plugin and choose the Free ZIP you downloaded.
3. Select Install Now.
4. When installation finishes, select Activate Plugin.

Confirm the Free plugin is active

1. Open Plugins > Installed Plugins.
2. Find Drecha Events & Bookings and confirm that its action is Deactivate.
3. Confirm that Events & Bookings appears in the main WordPress administration menu.
4. Open Pages > All Pages and look for the published Events page created during the initial migration.

On a fresh website, the plugin creates a published page with the events slug and the Drecha Events & Bookings block. If a page already uses that slug, the plugin reuses it rather than creating a duplicate; review its content before relying on it as the calendar page.

Publish your first activity

Free can publish one-time Events, Classes, and Sessions. Recurring schedules are a Pro editing feature.

1. Open Events & Bookings > Add New.
2. Enter a clear title.
3. In Activity details, choose Event, Class, or Session under Activity type.
4. Choose a future start date and time.
5. Select a duration, or enable Set a specific end date and time when a preset duration is not suitable.
6. Optionally select a saved location and teacher, or enter a one-off location.
7. Enter the public description in the Description field inside Activity details.
8. Select Publish.

Use a future start time for the first test. The default upcoming calendar does not show an activity that has already ended.

Check the public Events page

1. Open Pages > All Pages and view Events.
2. Confirm that the newly published activity appears in the upcoming list.
3. Open the activity and verify its title, start, end, location, and description.
4. Check the page once at desktop width and once on a phone-sized screen.

To place the calendar on another page, add the Drecha Events & Bookings block. You can choose Upcoming, List, Grid, Month, or Week, set the maximum number of activities, and show or hide filters. In a shortcode-aware editor, [drecha_activities] provides the backward-compatible upcoming view.

Make a safe first configuration change

1. Open Events & Bookings > Settings.
2. Review the duration choices used in the activity editor.
3. Add or remove only durations your team will use.
4. Select Save settings.
5. Create or edit a test activity and confirm that the duration selector reflects the change.

Troubleshoot installation and publishing

The Events & Bookings menu is missing

Confirm that the Free plugin is active and that your account can edit posts. Administrators and Editors can work with event content; some booking operations use separate capabilities.

The Events page was not created

Check whether another page already has the events slug, including pages in Trash. Restore or edit the existing page, then add the Drecha Events & Bookings block or [drecha_activities] shortcode if its content is empty.

The new activity does not appear

Confirm that it is Published, its start time is in the future, and the public block's filters do not exclude its activity type or category. Clear any page cache after publishing.

The displayed time is wrong

Open Settings > General and select the correct named timezone for the website. Avoid a manual UTC offset when the location observes daylight-saving changes.

WordPress rejects the ZIP or shows a PHP error

Download the Free package again and verify that the website uses PHP 8.0 or newer. Record the complete error before disabling the new plugin or asking the hosting provider for help.