For the host redating a live session
Moving a date asks your registrants for the same favour twice — once to accept it, once to turn up on the new evening. Here is the note, and what has to change around it.
A cancellation closes the matter. A postponement keeps a promise alive but changes the terms of it, and the terms are the only reason anybody registered. The person who cleared Thursday evening for a session about planning applications does not automatically want the Tuesday fortnight later; they want to know it is still the same hour, the same content, and worth the second diary entry.
There is also a quiet mechanical problem most hosts do not think about: whoever put the original date in their calendar still has that entry. A calendar file in a mailbox does not move itself, so the new date has to be said in a way that reaches people who never reread the old email.
Both move the session; the second moves it far enough to need a little more.
Quick change for the session on the ninth. We have moved it to Thursday 23 January, still 19:00 Central European Time, still fifty minutes, still the same material. Your access link still works — it points at the meeting, and the reminder emails will carry the new date. The diary entry you made for the ninth is the one thing you will need to change.
We are postponing the workshop until 14 March, at 18:00 Central European Time rather than the original evening. That is a long enough gap that some of you will have moved jobs, seasons or time zones, so please say so: reply to this note and we will keep your place for a later run instead. Nothing else changes, including the agenda and the hour's length.
Five edits, and the note goes in the middle rather than at the end.
Change the hour first, then the day, then check the label beside it still reads correctly. Anyone who comes back to the page should see the new date and nothing else.
If your chapter titles carry clock times rather than durations, they need rewriting with the date. Durations survive a postponement; absolute times do not.
Same words to everyone, sent as soon as the new date is genuinely fixed rather than probable. A second change of date costs more credibility than a day's delay.
The original social posts and emails still hold the old evening. Edit or follow them up in the same window, because a new registrant from an old post will arrive on the wrong night.
The three emails fire relative to the start time you set, so once the date is corrected they follow automatically. Nothing needs re-sending by hand.
The part people get wrong, in four points.
The wording that keeps a postponed room full is a straightforward apology plus a clear out. Apologise once for the change, not three times, and give people an easy way to say the new date does not work. "Reply if the Tuesday does not suit and we will hold your place for the following run" costs nothing and converts a silent no-show into a name you know.
Then send one more note four or five days before the new date, even if the reminders are covering it. A postponed session is a weaker memory than an original one, and a short line saying "still on for the twenty-third, same hour, your access link is in your first email" is worth more than the length you think it needs.
How it works
The published page should read correctly by the time the note lands, so anyone who checks rather than trusts sees the new date.
Everyone who registered gets the same sentence, plus the waitlist. Include the reason, the new hour with its zone, and a way out.
The 24-hour, one-hour and 15-minute emails follow the corrected start time, so they become the second telling automatically.
Withdrawals open seats for waitlisted names, and the list — with your own attended and no-show marks — is what tells you how much the move cost.
Questions
The calendar file and Google link arrive in the confirmation email, built from the time set when someone registered. If their entry points at the old evening, the note has to carry the correction; a diary entry does not update itself.
Yes, they stay on the waitlist for the same session. If the new date lets you enlarge the room, promote names from it; if it does not, they are told a spot opening means an email, as before.
As soon as the new date is real. A change sent a week ahead with a firm replacement is an inconvenience; the same change sent two days ahead, with no firm date, reads as a session that might not happen at all.
No. A page holds one session and there is no series feature, so a second date is a second page. If both dates are running, keep the original list for the original evening and build the new page fresh.
Get Started
Correct the page, send one honest note, give people a way out, and let the reminders repeat it. A postponed session can still fill — it just needs telling twice.
