01 · Before

Setting up the gathering.

An invite is a promise. Everything before you publish is about deciding what you're promising and to whom.

Write the title like a friend would say it.

“A barbecue.” “Morning walk in Karori.” “Phone-bank, Tuesday.” Not “Summer Community Networking BBQ 2026”. Titles that sound like a brochure get treated like one. The title is the first thing a stranger reads on a phone, half-distracted, in fifteen seconds.

Keep it under 50 characters. If you're tempted to add a tagline, write the tagline as the description instead.

The cover photo is doing more work than you think.

A real photograph signals a real person. Phone photos are fine. Photos of the venue, the food, the previous time you ran the thing all work. Photos of you holding a sign do not.

If you skip it, the platform falls back to a deterministic pastel by event slug. The page never looks broken. You've still missed a warm moment though.

Open RSVPs sooner than you think.

People decide whether to come within a day or two of seeing the invite. A two-week lead-time with a save-the-date feel beats a three-day scramble.

If you aren't sure about the venue yet, publish anyway and update the address later. Keep the edit link somewhere only you can access.

Capacity is a forecast, not a wall.

Set a number and the platform manages a waitlist for you. Anyone beyond the limit lands there, and when someone cancels the next person on the waitlist gets promoted automatically.

If you're hosting in a lounge, set a number that's true. If you're hosting in a park, leave it blank.

Decide if you want approval gating.

If you check “require approval” when creating the event, RSVPs come in pending and you tick them off one by one. The full street address stays hidden from pending RSVPs until you confirm them.

Useful for political events and anything in a private home. Default to off unless you know why you'd want it on.

Approval gating decides who comes. If instead you want to control who sees the event in the first place, make it unlisted. The page still works at its direct URL, but it doesn't appear in browse.

Save the edit-link email.

When you publish, an email arrives with a link to manage the event. Treat it like a key: anyone with it can manage the event. If you lose it, the recovery page mints a new one for any email that's hosted before. Signing in for a dashboard is the cleaner long-term option if you run events often.

Or, if you'd rather skip the email-link dance for every event you run, sign in for a dashboard. Your events attach to your account automatically.