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Events

For many publishers, a calendar of events is a core reader service that creates strong and loyal bonds with an activity hungry audience.

Metro Publisher's events system is packed with features designed to make your events a major driver of inbound traffic and reader engagement.

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What's Included?

Our events system includes an unlimited amount of events and event calendars. By using custom tags and categories you can create calendars around specific event types.

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Event Calendars

Event calendars include several features to maximize utility and SEO:

  1. Keyword Search –  Users can use keywords to find events. 
  2. Search Filters – Filter search by category and tags.
  3. Maps – Allows your users to switch to map based search.
  4. Sponsored Listings – Configurable options to display sponsored events. This feature requires Metro Publisher's Directory Add-on.
  5. Event Information – Displays essential event info and links to buy tickets.
  6. Interactive Calendar – Users can browse and filter upcoming events by date. Additionally, they can save calendars via ICS or RSS.
  7. Search Engine Optimized – With the implementation of industry standard formats like Microdata, we ensure that your directory remains at the forefront of changes in SEO.

Input, Import, Export or Re-use

To build your events calendars, Metro Publisher offers several options from manual input to automated subscriptions.

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Enter Events Yourself

Staff can quickly enter events manually because Metro Publisher’s event system lives and breathes the iCalendar standard. iCalendar supports advanced rules for all kinds of recurring event scenarios, such as events that happen weekly, monthly, or even on an irregular basis.

Let Your Users Enter Events

Enjoy the benefits of direct input from your readers without losing any control over your content. Via a public events submission form, users can easily contribute events to your calendars. By controlling the settings on this form you can be sure that your standards are maintained at all times.

And, for events from trusted venues such as museums or night clubs, we’ve made it even easier By importing or subscribing to event calendars, their events will show up automatically.

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Import or Subscribe to Events

With Metro Publisher, it is possible to pull-in events automatically from any iCalendar compliant calendar. This includes thousands of Google calendars maintained by organizations and venues world-wide.

It gets even better.

You can define the behaviors of these event imports/subscriptions. For example, you can decide in advance whether events from a specific organization are good to go or need to be reviewed.

All you have to do is set up a feed once and – until you decide to cancel it — watch the events flow.

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Export and Re-use Your Events

As a further bonus, the event system can also integrate into your print workflow. Metro Publisher provides a powerful tool to export your events in various formats including XML for Adobe Indesign.

For advanced users, Metro Publisher now also provides an advanced Application Programming Interface (API) which can be used by software developers to build completely new products or mobile apps around your event data.

Metro Publisher’s feature-rich and powerful events system is included in every version of Metro Publisher. If a great events calendar is important to you, you’ll find ours is second to none.

What is iCalendar?

iCalendar is a computer file format which allows Internet users to share calendars and events. iCalendar is used and supported by a large number of products, including Google Calendar, Apple Calendar (formerly iCal), Yahoo! Calendar, and Microsoft Outlook.

  1. List of applications with iCalendar Support

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Additional Features

Combine Metro Publisher's event system with these additional features to promote events in a more targeted way throughout your website and highlight advertiser events.

Special Styling for Sponsored Events

For clients using Metro Publisher's Directory Add-on, sponsored events can be easily inserted into landing pages and other key areas throughout your website. With a highlighted appearance, sponsored events provide publishers yet another tool for promoting advertisers. 

  • Use tags to designate sponsored content. 
  • Special styling anywhere that sponsored events appear.
  • Pro users can customize the look, feel, and behavior. 

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Custom Layouts

Create Custom Landing Pages

With our drag and drop page builder, your team can create customized landing pages. These are ideal for promoting events in a more targeted way. There is no limit to the number or style of landing pages you can create. Create custom landing pages to promote festivals, advertiser events, and more..

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Let’s not forget SEO — Metro Publisher’s constant evolution ensures that the search optimization of your event calendars is always at the cutting edge.

To keep your site ahead of your competitors, our team continuously tracks changes and requirements in SEO, constantly refining, optimizing and automatically delivering improvements to all our clients with every new release of Metro Publisher.

Tutorials

Take a look at our videos to learn more about how you can use Metro Publisher's events to maximise reader engagement with your site.

Ready for more?

Find out how Metro Publisher can help your publication engage readers, promote advertisers, and build revenue.
Contact us for a free consultation.