Setting dates on your event

Under the Dates tab you can set the date and time of your event, and also a dates and times for when the site can be accessed by viewers. You can select the Conference Time Zone to the city best placed for your audience.

The times used across your conference form should be entered in GMT/BST regardless of the time zone you’ve selected.

Conference Date

The conference dates fields set the time for your event, the date and time it occurs. This date and time will be used by the landing page’s countdown clock.

Conference Opening / Closing Date

The dates entered in these fields will limit access to the event site outside of the entered dates. Event sites accessed before the Start Date will display the landing page description and allow users to register – but they will not proceed beyond the landing page.

Events accessed after the End Date has passed will see a message stating the Event has ended.

Date Formats

The date format fields allow you to edit the way the dates are shown across the site. The default will be DD/MM/YYYY, HH:MM. You can alter the layout to enable the date to display MM/DD/YYYY and the time to be 12 or 24 hour format, and can add a timezone too (i.e. GMT / EST etc.)

Each field affects different sections of the site. These are explained below the fields.

To affect the date displays you can change the codes being used. You can add spaces and punctuation between the codes, and they will transfer to your site (see the US events example below for an illustration of this).

There are a vast number of options and a link to the codes required is included below the fields. Below are the most common formats used on previous VCPs, but you are welcome to experiment using alternative codes available on the link.

UK/ZA events - j F Y, g:ia – displays as 2 February 2024, 10:00am (add T to the end for the timezone and make it 2 February 2024, 10:00am GMT)

US events – F j, Y | g:ia T – displays as February 2, 2024 | 10:00am ET (N.B. the , and | transfer to how your date and time are displayed)