The Community Events add-on gives visitors a frontend form for submitting events to your calendar. Once you have that form running, there are several points in the submission lifecycle where a little code can make things work more like you want them to: getting users to the form, handling what happens when they submit, and following up after an admin approves the event.

This article collects five customizations covering that full lifecycle. Each one is independent — skip to whichever you need. Most are PHP snippets that go in your theme’s functions.php or the Code Snippets plugin; see Using Custom Code Snippets for the general how-to.

Adding a Submit Event Button

If you want visitors to easily find the Community Events submission form from your main calendar page, you can add a button or link using the built-in settings — no code required.

1. In your WordPress Dashboard, navigate to Events → Settings → Display → Additional Content Settings.
2. In the Add HTML before calendar field, insert the following HTML:

<div class="eventSubmitButton">
    <a href="https://yourwebsite.com/events/community/add/" class="tribe-common-c-btn">Submit Event</a>
</div>

3. Replace https://yourwebsite.com/events/community/add/ with the actual URL of your Community Events submission form.
4. Scroll down and click Save Changes.

This displays a “Submit Event” button above your main calendar view. You can style the button further with custom CSS if needed. Community Events must be installed and active for the destination link to work.

Auto-Categorizing Submissions

You may want to automatically assign a specific category — say, “Community Event” — to every event submitted through the form, without letting users choose it themselves. By default, the plugin doesn’t have a setting for this, but a small filter handles it cleanly.

<?php

add_filter( 'tec_events_community_alter_submission_mapping', function( $submission ) {
    // IDs of categories you want to always add
    $required_category_ids = [ 4 ];

    $existing = [];
    if ( isset( $submission['tax_input']['tribe_events_cat'] ) ) {
        $existing = (array) $submission['tax_input']['tribe_events_cat'];
    }

    $merged = array_values( array_unique( array_map( 'intval', array_merge( $existing, $required_category_ids ) ) ) );

    $submission['tax_input']['tribe_events_cat'] = $merged;

    return $submission;
} );

Replace the 4 with the ID of your desired category. You can find the category ID by hovering over or editing the category in your WordPress dashboard — the ID appears in the URL.

You may also want to hide certain categories from the submission form so users can’t pick them.

Auto-Publishing for Logged-In Users

Under Events → Settings → Community, you can set a default status for submitted events (Draft, Pending Review, or Published). But sometimes you want more nuance — for instance, auto-publishing events from trusted logged-in users while still holding anonymous submissions for review.

This snippet auto-publishes any event submitted by a registered, logged-in user. Anything submitted by an anonymous user falls back to whatever your default status is set to.

<?php
/**
 * Community Events (CE): If user is logged in, set post status to Published, else fallback to CE settings' default.
 *
 * Irrelevant if default post status in CE settings is Published or Anonymous Submissions are not allowed.
 */
function set_community_events_publication_status( $option, $default, $optionName ) {
    if (
        ! class_exists( 'Tribe__Events__Community__Main' )
        || 'defaultStatus' !== $optionName
        || ! is_user_logged_in()
    ) {
        return $option;
    }

    return 'publish';
}

add_filter( 'tribe_get_single_option', 'set_community_events_publication_status', 10, 3 );

This snippet has no effect if your default post status is already Published, or if anonymous submissions are disabled.

Redirecting After Submission

After a user submits an event, they’re taken to a default success page. You may want to redirect them somewhere more specific instead — a thank-you page, a pending-review explanation, or your calendar’s main view.

[EDITOR: INSERT SNIPPET — The original article at /redirect-to-a-different-url-after-event-submission/ contains a “The Snippet” section with lead-in prose but the actual PHP code is not present in the rendered page. Based on the “For Developers” references at the bottom of the source article, the missing snippet likely hooks into tribe_community_event_save_updated, checks tribe_is_event(), and issues a redirect (possibly via window.location.href or wp_safe_redirect). Please retrieve the original code from the source article’s revision history or associated Gist and insert it here.]

In the snippet, replace /sample-page/ with the URL of the page you want users to be redirected to after submission.

For Developers

Functions and references used by this customization:

• tribe_community_event_save_updated — the action that fires after a Community Events submission is saved
• tribe_is_event() — check whether a given post is an event
• window.location.href — JavaScript location API, for client-side redirects

Notifying Submitters on Publish

By default, submitted events are saved as drafts until an administrator publishes them — but the original submitter isn’t notified when that happens. This snippet sends the submitter an email once their event goes live.

Unlike the other snippets in this article, the original guidance for this one is to install it as a tiny single-file plugin rather than dropping it into functions.php. Either approach works — you can also use the Code Snippets plugin if you prefer. If you want to follow the file-based approach, create a new PHP file called events-community-notify-submitter.php in your wp-content/plugins/ directory and paste the snippet in:

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Tribe Snippet: Send email notification when the event is approved
Requires PHP: 5.6
Version: 0.1
 */

add_action( 'transition_post_status', function ( $new_status, $old_status, $post ) {
    // Early bail: We are looking for published posts only
    if ( $new_status != 'publish' ) {
        return;
    }

    // Early bail: Unexpected value
    if ( ! $post instanceof WP_Post ) {
        return;
    }

    // Early bail: We need the "tribe" function to be loaded
    if ( ! function_exists( 'tribe' ) ) {
        return;
    }

    $main = tribe( 'community.main' );

    // Early bail: We could not get the desired class from the Container
    if ( ! $main instanceof Tribe__Events__Community__Main ) {
        return;
    }

    $default_status = $main->getOption( 'defaultStatus' );

    // Early bail: Old status is not the default status
    if ( $old_status != $default_status ) {
        return;
    }

    // Early bail: We are just interested in Events
    if ( $post->post_type != 'tribe_events' ) {
        return;
    }

    $author = get_user_by( 'id', $post->post_author );

    // Early bail: Author not available (eg: Anonymous submission)
    if ( ! $author instanceof WP_User ) {
        return;
    }

    $email = $author->user_email;

    // Early bail: Invalid email
    if ( ! filter_var( $email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL ) ) {
        return;
    }

    $subject = sprintf( 'Congratulations! %s was published!', $post->post_title );
    $message = sprintf( 'Congratulations, your event was published! Click <a href="%s">here</a> to view it!', esc_url( get_post_permalink( $post ) ) );

    wp_mail(
        $email,
        esc_html__( $subject, 'tribe-events-community' ),
        __( wp_kses_post_deep( $message ), 'tribe-events-community' ),
        [ 'Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8' ]
    );

}, 10, 3 );

If you used the file-based approach, activate the plugin from the WordPress dashboard — it appears in the plugin list as “Tribe Snippet: Send email notification when the event is approved.”

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I customize the subject of the email?
Edit the $subject line of the snippet.

How do I customize the body of the email?
Edit the $message line of the snippet.

Does it send notifications for anonymous submissions?
No. If you have “Allow anonymous submissions” enabled (Events → Settings → Community) and a user submits an event without being logged in, the snippet can’t identify an email address for that user and will not send a notification.

Does it send a notification if events are set to be published without review?
No. If the “Default status for submitted events” (Events → Settings → Community) is set to “Published”, this snippet will not send any emails.