Move from The Events Calendar
Overview
If your site has been running The Events Calendar (the plugin by StellarWP, with or without Events Calendar Pro), you can move its events into Dirigible Events without exporting anything. Go to Events → Import & Export → Import: when The Events Calendar has events on the site, the page starts with Move from The Events Calendar and a button that reads them.
It works like any other import: you see a preview of every event first, nothing changes until you choose Import, and you can Undo it for 7 days. The Events Calendar's own events, venues and organizers are never changed, so you can go back and forth until you're happy. You need an Editor or Administrator account.
Before you start
- Update the Dirigible theme and Dirigible Events to the latest versions.
- If you use Locations, move the venues first with Move venues from The Events Calendar; events moved afterwards get their Location straight away. Events whose venue has no location keep the venue's name and address on the event itself, which still shows on the page.
- You can leave The Events Calendar active while you import; the button also appears after you deactivate it, because its events stay in the database until you delete the plugin.
Move the events
- Go to Events → Import & Export and open the Import tab.
- Select Read … events from The Events Calendar.
- Check the preview. Every event says New, Update, Skip or Error, and the notes under each one say what couldn't come over (a repeat pattern Dirigible Events doesn't have, a second organizer). Untick anything you don't want.
- Select Import. Repeating events make their dates a moment later, as when you publish one in the editor.
- Open a few events and your event lists to check them. If something's wrong, select Undo this import: it removes everything the import added and nothing else.
- When you're happy, deactivate The Events Calendar. Its old addresses then send visitors to the new pages (see below), so add Dirigible's Events block to a page for your calendar first.
Reading the events again later is safe: an event that's already on the site is found by its web address (or its title and start) and shows as Skip (No changes) unless something changed in The Events Calendar since.
Old addresses redirect on their own
Once The Events Calendar is deactivated, anyone who opens one of its addresses (a link shared on social media, a search result, a bookmark) is sent permanently to the new page, so nothing is lost and search engines move their listings over:
- An event's address (
/event/jazz-night/) goes to the Dirigible event. An Events Calendar Pro date address (/event/weekly-yoga/2026-11-09/) goes to that date's occurrence, or to the series when that date was skipped. - The calendar (
/events/) and its views (/events/list/,/events/month/2026-11/,/events/today/…) go to the page with your Events or Events Calendar block, when there is one. - A category or tag (
/events/category/music/,/events/tag/jazz/) goes to the Dirigible category or tag of that name. - A venue's address (
/venue/cafe-zoe/) goes to its location when you moved the venues with Locations.
Only published events are sent to; a draft or private event's old address stays a "page not found", and an organizer's address does too (Dirigible Events has no organizer pages). Nothing redirects while The Events Calendar is active: it keeps serving its own addresses. Undoing the import takes the redirects away with the events, and a custom events slug in The Events Calendar's settings is handled too. There's nothing to set up.
What comes over
| In The Events Calendar | In Dirigible Events |
|---|---|
| Title, content, excerpt, featured image, published / draft / private / scheduled | The same. The image is shared, not copied. Content written in the classic editor becomes paragraphs, headings and lists you can edit block by block. The Events Calendar's own blocks (event date, venue, tickets, RSVP…) are left out, since Dirigible Events shows those itself. |
| Start and end | Start and End. |
| All day | All day: the event runs the whole day (or days) and shows dates without times. |
| Cost | Cost, as The Events Calendar showed it, with its currency symbol: $10, $10 – $20, and Free for a cost of 0. It's shown on the event page; tickets aren't set up from it. |
| Event categories (with their parents) and tags | Categories and Tags; ones the site doesn't have yet are added. |
| Venue | Venue, Street address, City, State, ZIP code, and the venue's phone when the organizer has none. With Locations on, a location of the same name is linked as the event's Location. |
| Organizer | Organizer, Organizer website, Email and Phone. An event with several organizers keeps the first. |
| Event website | Website. |
| Cancelled or postponed | Event status. |
| Repeats (Events Calendar Pro) | The repeat settings: every N days, weeks, months or years; the weekdays of a weekly series; a monthly or yearly series on the same day of the month or on the same weekday (the third Wednesday, the last Friday); the months of a yearly series; and the end (on a date, after a number of times, or never). The preview shows each series' rule in words. Dates the series skips come over as Skip dates, both single dates and exclusion rules. A series with no end gets its dates two years ahead and is extended as time passes. |
| Repeats in a way Dirigible Events doesn't have | It comes over as one event on its first date, and the preview says why: more than one repeat rule, a monthly or yearly series on a weekday that isn't the first date's (every second Tuesday, starting on a Wednesday), or an exclusion rule of that kind (the dates stay). Extra one-off dates added to a series aren't carried over; add them as events after the import. Repeats with times of their own keep the event's times. |
What doesn't
- Tickets and RSVPs sold through Event Tickets or WooCommerce, and their orders. Set up ticketing afresh if you sell tickets on the site.
- Venue websites, countries and map settings, and additional fields added by other plugins.
- The old addresses themselves: Dirigible events live at
/events/<name>/, The Events Calendar's at/event/<name>/. Once The Events Calendar is deactivated, the old ones redirect to the new (see above).
Times come over as written. An event in another time zone than the site's keeps its clock time, and the preview notes it.
