Eventonomy

Setup & Health

The Setup & Health screen is your one-stop check that Eventonomy is configured correctly. It lives at Eventonomy → Setup & Health in the admin menu and is the first place to go after activation.

Eventonomy Setup & Health screen showing a healthy installation

What You Will Learn

  • How the setup wizard, the Getting started checklist and Setup & Health fit together
  • When Eventonomy considers your site "set up"
  • How to run the health check and what each indicator means
  • How to fix the most common setup issues
  • How to load demo data to explore the plugin

Three Surfaces, One Story

New installs meet three different things that all talk about setup. They are not duplicates - each answers a different question:

Surface Question it answers Where
Setup wizard "What do I have to decide before this is usable?" Eventonomy → Setup, its own screen; the menu item is there until you finish the wizard
Getting started checklist "What should I do next?" Command Center, dismissible
Setup & Health "Is anything actually wrong?" Eventonomy → Setup & Health, permanent

The wizard is a one-off. The checklist is a nudge. Setup & Health is the one you come back to when something misbehaves months later.

How the Wizard Behaves

The wizard is a normal Eventonomy screen, not a takeover. Clicking Eventonomy always lands you on the Command Center; the wizard is a separate Setup item in the Eventonomy menu that you open when you want it. Nothing redirects you into it and nothing blocks the rest of the admin while it is unfinished.

It runs as six steps, shown one at a time with a progress tracker across the top:

  1. Welcome
  2. Permissions - who can create events
  3. Locale - time zone and formats
  4. Sample data - optionally load demo events
  5. Pages - the pages that hold the Eventonomy blocks
  6. Finish

Two things about the run are worth knowing:

  • Your progress is remembered per user, so leaving the wizard and coming back, or saving a step (which reloads the page), keeps you in the walkthrough instead of dropping you back at the start. Only Finish ends a run - loading sample data on step 4 no longer ends it early.
  • Finish offers to clean up after you. If sample events are still loaded when you reach step 6, the step warns that "Visitors see them alongside your real events" and gives you a Remove sample data button right there, so you are not sent off to create your first real event with demo events still on the public calendar. With no sample data loaded, that panel simply does not appear.

Once you have finished, opening Setup again shows "Setup is already complete" with a Re-run setup wizard button. Re-running walks the six steps again and changes nothing you have not deliberately changed - the screen says so: "You can re-run the setup wizard any time to revisit the steps - it will not undo anything." The Setup item disappears from the Eventonomy menu at that point, but the screen stays reachable from here and by URL.

When Is Setup "Complete"?

Eventonomy stops treating your site as unfinished once either:

  • you finish the wizard explicitly, or
  • you have chosen who can create events and at least one event exists.

That second path matters: if you skip the wizard and simply get on with it, the plugin notices and stops the reminders rather than nagging forever. Payments are deliberately not required - a site running only free events would otherwise be nagged for the life of the site.

The same two conditions govern everything that talks about setup: the Needs attention row, the Getting started checklist, Setup & Health, and whether the Setup item appears in the menu. Configure your site the long way round - choose who can create events, publish one - and all four agree that you are done, whether or not you ever opened the wizard. The wizard stays reachable by URL if you want to walk the steps later.

"Needs attention" on the Command Center

Separate from setup, the Command Center shows a Needs attention panel. This is ongoing operational advice, not first-run setup, and it stays useful for the life of the site. Typical entries:

  • No payment gateway is connected, so paid tickets cannot be sold.
  • First-run setup is not finished yet.
  • An event starts within 7 days and has no registrations.

Each row links straight to the screen that resolves it. An empty panel means there is nothing to do - it is not a broken widget.

Running the Health Check

Go to Eventonomy → Setup & Health. The screen automatically checks:

Check What it verifies
Database tables All evnm_* tables exist and have the expected schema version
Events page The WordPress page holding the events block is published
Manage Events page The member dashboard page (/manage-events/) is published
Single-event permalinks Pretty event URLs are registered (/event/{slug}/)
WordPress permalink structure A non-plain permalink setting is active (required for pretty URLs)
REST API The eventonomy/v1 namespace responds to a self-test request
Cron jobs Scheduled background jobs are registered
License (Pro) Pro license key is active and the site is authorized for updates

A green checkmark means the item is healthy. A yellow warning or red error means action is needed.

Fixing Common Issues

Events page not found

The Events page was deleted or is in draft. Go to Pages → Add New and create a page containing the eventonomy/events-list block. Then go to Eventonomy → Settings → Display and enter the page's ID or slug in the Events page field.

Alternatively, go to Eventonomy → Setup & Health and click Recreate pages; this recreates both the Events and Manage Events pages with the correct blocks.

Permalink structure is plain

Eventonomy requires a non-plain permalink structure for pretty event URLs. Go to Settings → Permalinks and choose any option other than Plain. Click Save Changes; this also flushes rewrite rules.

REST API failing

If the self-test returns an error, a security plugin or server firewall may be blocking REST API requests. Check:

  1. iThemes Security / Wordfence - ensure the REST API is not globally disabled.
  2. Server-level rules - ensure your hosting does not block wp-json paths.
  3. Plugin conflict - deactivate other plugins one by one to find the conflict.

Database tables missing

This usually happens if the activation hook was skipped (e.g. the plugin was installed by copying files rather than through wp-admin or WP-CLI). Go to Eventonomy → Setup & Health and click Run database upgrade to create any missing tables.

Loading Demo Data

To explore Eventonomy before you create real events, load the demo dataset.

  1. Go to Eventonomy → Setup & Health.
  2. In the Quick start & demo data card, click Set up with sample data.

This applies the recommended default settings and creates around 20 events chosen to show every shape of event rather than twenty copies of one: published, draft and pending events, a recurring weekly series, an online event with a join link, an announcement that takes no registration, an event whose registration lives on another site, an event with two ticket types, one event sold out at capacity, and one event that asks custom registration questions - plus realistic venues, organizers, categories, RSVPs and cover images.

Loading sample data also switches Custom questions on and seeds a small question bank, because those questions cannot render otherwise. Both changes are recorded, so removing the sample data puts them back exactly as it found them - and a question bank you had already created is left alone.

To remove it when you are ready to go live, click Remove all demo data on the same card (the button appears once sample data is present). Only rows created by the seeder are removed; any events you created yourself are untouched. You can also remove it from the wizard's Finish step, which offers a Remove sample data button whenever a seed is still loaded.

Note: Demo data is available on development and staging environments. It uses the same wp eventonomy seed / wp eventonomy unseed WP-CLI commands behind the scenes.

What's Next?

Create your first event.

Create Your First Event →