HOW TO USE THE SITE

Welcome! EVENTULIST is an interactive map of every social event on Earth we can dig up — concerts, festivals, farmers markets, art exhibits, running events, theater, trivia nights and more. One dot per real event. Here’s everything you need to start finding things to do.

• The basics
• What the dots mean
• Find a place
• Command a new search
• While the search runs
• Filter what you see
• Pin events to remember
• Account & balance
• The Map Digest
• Event pages & sharing
• On your phone
• Good to know

1. Start with the whole world. Open the site with no saved location and you land zoomed out over the planet — events are already mapped all over it. Drag to pan, scroll or pinch to zoom. Hover over a dot and a little bubble tells you what’s happening; move away and it goes back to a clean map.
2. Click a dot to open the event. A box appears over the map with the event’s name, a photo from the event’s own listing page, when and where, category, a description, a Get directions link, and an Event website button that goes straight to the event’s own page. The chosen dot wears a black rim and pulses for a few seconds so you can find it again — then it settles. Click empty map space, the × on the box, or press Escape to close it; the highlight ends with it.
3. Zoomed out, numbers group areas. When you’re far away, nearby dots merge into number circles — e.g. “38” means 38 events in that area. Zoom in and the circles split apart gradually, until the map shows individual dots; click (or tap) a circle and it zooms you in until it breaks apart.
4. Zoomed in, numbers mark busy venues. A numbered badge (e.g. “38”) on a venue means that many events share that one place. Click the badge and the individual dots fan out; click one to see the details.
5. The list beside the map shows the events in the current view, each entry carrying a photo from the event’s own listing page (lazy-loaded). A Map | List toggle in the top bar switches to a list-first layout with a wider sidebar (grab the divider between the list and the map to size it how you like). The map always opens first — choose the list when you prefer it. Pan or zoom and the list updates. Click any entry to fly to its dot and open its details.

Pro tip: the list is the fastest way to skim — you don’t have to hunt for dots. If nothing is listed, zoom out or move the map.

Dots are colored by how soon the event starts:

• Green — this week. GO NOW.
• Blue — next week. Good planning window.
• Red — next month. You have no excuse.
• Purple — after next month. For the long-haul planners.

1. The Location field in the search panel doubles as the fly-to box. Type any place in the world — a city, a neighborhood, a venue — and pick the matching suggestion: the map flies there, zooms out until your whole search radius fits on screen (a circle shows the footprint), and the field becomes the search location. Then press Gather & Post Events to search that area. Pick a suggestion rather than just typing — the search uses the exact place you chose, and pressing the button with an empty field makes it flash red.
2. Or outline an area yourself. Hit Draw search area on map in the search card, click to place corner points around the neighborhood you care about, and double-click to finish. Everything inside your shape gets searched.
3. Zoom and browse. The map already holds months of events — the current view’s events are always listed in the sidebar (desktop) or the bottom sheet (phone).

Pro tip: you can bookmark or share the current map view — the address bar carries a link like #/map/@lat,lng,zoom that reopens the exact same view.

The search card in the sidebar (or the + New search sheet on your phone) commands a search anywhere in the world:

1. Location — any place on Earth. Radius in miles or km. From / To dates for the time frame you care about.
2. Optional narrowing. An event type like “dance events” or “art exhibits” tells the research to focus on that kind of event. Leave it blank for everything. You can also paste source URLs (a venue’s calendar, your school’s events page, one per line) that get checked in addition to the open internet.
3. Who can search. Your first search is free — one trial per browser, no account or password. After that, log in and top up at least $5; each search then costs a flat $0.20 from your balance — or check focused bulk for 300+ event sweeps and pay per event instead. The administrator searches free. The server checks the request — obscene searches are rejected.
4. Run it. The research pipeline goes out, reads every events calendar it can find in that radius (including the area’s university calendars), and drops one dot per real event on the map. Searches run in parallel — yours doesn’t wait for anyone else’s — and the compile that merges new dots is serialized so the map stays consistent. Your radius steers where the pipeline looks; it isn’t a fence, so a real event found just outside the circle still lands on the map.

Pro tip: searches run live web research, so they take a few minutes — but the results are permanent. Old events are never removed; every search just grows the map.

1. You don’t have to wait. The search runs in the background on the server. Look around the map, come back later — even close the tab. New events appear as soon as it finishes, and on the browser that started the search the fresh dots literally fall from the sky into view. While the research is in flight, the browser tab’s icon swaps to a small magnifier, and back to the pin when it’s done.
2. Watch it work. The search card keeps a live progress row — one circle per research stage: Blue places, Violet terms, Red search, Orange fetch, Yellow extract, Green compile. A filled circle means that stage finished, a pulsing ring means it’s running now, grey means it’s waiting. Under it, live counters show how far the research has gone (e.g. “14 locations · 23 queries · 41 fetches”) and the names of the places being covered.
3. Want it in your inbox? Right after you submit, the search card offers to email the results when the search finishes — drop in your address and walk away. You’ll get the events (and a little map) by email, or a friendly note if nothing was found.
4. Watch the panel. Every search shows live progress as it runs — places found, pages read, events extracted — and searches run in parallel, so yours isn’t stuck behind anyone else’s. If a search fails, the map is untouched and you’ll see why.

Category chips above the list (Music, Food, Family, Sports & fitness, and more) filter the events in the current view — the dots on the map and the list update together. On phones, tap Filters in the sheet header to expand the chip panel, and the color legend is right there too. Past events are always skipped on the map (but kept in the data — nothing is ever thrown away).

1. Open an event and hit Pin it (in the details box, or the detail card on your phone).
2. It gets a white box around its dot on the map and joins your Pinned Favorites list at the top of the sidebar — an independent scrollable list of events to remember, newest first. Click an entry to fly to its dot.
3. Pins follow you. They live in your browser, and when you log in they merge into your account — so pins made on another device show up too. Un-pin any time.

Pro tip: subscribe to the Map Digest and your pinned events get a ★ golden highlight in the weekly email.

1. Register with an email and password in the Account panel — it takes ten seconds. Activating an account requires a $5.00 top-up (paid with PayPal; the fee is deducted, the rest is credited).
2. Each search costs a flat $0.20 — or, with focused-bulk pricing for 300+ event sweeps, per event — charged from your balance when the search is created and settled when it finishes (failed searches are refunded automatically). The balance panel shows your money, your usage, and the ledger.
3. Changed your mind? Unused credits can be refunded back to the PayPal account that paid for them — PayPal’s fee isn’t returned, but everything else comes home.
4. Your searches are saved to your account automatically — that’s what powers the Map Digest below. You can also cancel a search you started while it’s still queued or running.

Your saved searches are only doing half their job. You searched your area once, found some great events — and then stopped looking, because looking is work and life happens. The venues you cared about kept posting, and the events you’d have loved went on without you. The Map Digest fixes that: it does the looking for you.

For people who want the map to keep working for them, the Map Digest re-runs up to 3 of your saved searches every week during off-peak hours (2–5am UTC, when the internet is asleep) and emails you the new events — with a map, the time-color dots, and your pinned events highlighted in gold. It rolls your date windows forward every run, so it’s always hunting the week ahead: you hear about events while there’s still time — time for tickets, a babysitter, a brave friend. One glance a week, and your weekend plans itself. A single event you’d have gone to is worth more than $4.99; less than a coffee a month, it’s the difference between “I wish I’d known” and “I’m going.”

The “Repeat this search weekly” box appears on your searches while the subscription is active. The first digest lands right after you subscribe, so you see exactly what you’re paying for.

Billed $4.99/month through PayPal (recurring) until you cancel — cancel anytime from the Account panel; both you and PayPal get a confirmation, and a just-paid month keeps running out its weeklies. A failed card charge pauses the digest until a later payment succeeds. No phone calls, no guilt trip. (We’ll be sad, but we’ll understand.)

1. Every event has its own page. Click a dot and the event’s box opens over the map — and the address bar now shows the event’s own URL, /event/<id>. Paste it anywhere: it reopens the exact event, on the map, with its box and highlight, for anyone. City and event pages open in List view — the sidebar widened, events front and center — and the Map | List toggle in the top bar brings the map back.
2. The Event website button goes straight to the show. When a listing points at a calendar or ticket wall, we resolve it to the event’s own page — the specific concert, the individual show — so the button takes you to the thing, not the “upcoming events” list.
3. Share the map with the Share button in the top bar — X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, LinkedIn, Reddit, email, or a copy-paste link. Share your pinned events from the account panel: you get a link that renders exactly like the digest email — header, map, golden Pinned cards — ready to paste anywhere.

Pro tip: open an event, copy the /event/<id> URL straight from the address bar, and send it — it’s the cleanest possible way to point someone at a specific thing to do.

The site turns into a Google-Maps-style app under 820px wide: the map fills the screen, a slim bottom bar shows the event count for the current view, and tapping it opens the bottom sheet — drag the grabber to snap between half and full height. The + New search and locate buttons sit in the bottom corners; tapping a dot or a list entry swaps the sheet for an event detail card (swipe it down to dismiss — the selection ends with it). Everything else — filters, pins, searches, account — works the same as on desktop.

One dot per real event. When a tour comes through town, the same concert gets posted on five sites with five different names. Our dedupe engine merges listings that share the same date, a fuzzy match on venue, and a similar name — transitively — so you see one dot, not five. If three dots share a venue on one day, there really are three events.

Event details come from city and venue calendars, ticketing sites, and local listings — always confirm with the organizer before you go, and trust the venue’s own page for times and tickets (the Event website button gets you there). Dates can change; the map shows what the sources said when they were read.

Organize an event? Guarantee your listing with a verified badge on the listing page, and manage it any time. Admins have a console at /admin.