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Adding Custom Calendar Items to the Cvent Agenda (Without Forcing Registration)

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You want to show your attendees that “Breakfast,” “Shuttles Depart,” and “Networking Mixers” are happening at specific times. But if you use Cvent’s default Agenda widget, you have to create these as official “Sessions.” This clutters up the registration form, confuses attendees who think they need to “reserve a seat” for the shuttle, and ruins your reporting.

If you want to display items on your event website’s agenda without forcing attendees to actively register for them, here are the three best ways to configure your setup.

1. The "Included in Admission" Method (Highly Recommended)

The cleanest way to handle mandatory, all-attendee schedule blocks (like meals or keynotes) is to ensure they are automatically tied to the attendee’s ticket. It will appear on the website agenda and automatically sync to their personal calendar without requiring a click.

Because Cvent locks a session’s “Type” once it is created, you have two ways to do this depending on where you are in the build process:

Option A: Creating a New Session If you have not built the session yet, you must configure it during the initial setup:

  1. Navigate to Agenda > Session List and click Create Session.

  2. Enter the basic details (Name, Date, Time, Location).

  3. Scroll down to the Availability section.

  4. Crucial Step: Change the Type dropdown from Optional to Included.

  5. Click Finish. This item will now apply to everyone by default.

Session Availability | Attendeegain

Option B: Associating an Existing Session If you already created the session and it is locked as “Optional,” you can bypass the checkout flow by tying it directly to your admission ticket:

  1. Navigate to Registration > Admission Items.

  2. Click on the name of your primary admission ticket.

  3. Go to the Advanced Settings tab and click Edit.

  4. Scroll down to the Session Association section.

  5. Check the box next to your locked optional session (e.g., “Networking Lunch”).

  6. Click Save. Now, whenever someone selects this ticket, the session is silently included.

2. The "Hide from Registration" Method

What if the item is not included for everyone, but you still want it on the main website agenda for visibility? (For example: A private VIP dinner that you want the general public to see on the website, but not interact with). You can manipulate the display settings to hide it from the form.

How to Set It Up:

  1. Go to Agenda > Sessions and create your session.

  2. Go to the Details tab of the session and click Edit.

  3. Scroll down to the Display Options section.

  4. Ensure Display on website is set to Yes.

  5. Now, go to Registration > Registration Process and open the Site Designer.

  6. Navigate to the Session Selection page of your registration flow.

  7. Click on the Session widget. In the right-hand menu, use the Filters or Session Display settings to manually exclude this specific session from rendering on the form.

3. The Native "Agenda at a Glance" Widget (Website Only)

If you refuse to create backend sessions for things like “Lunch” or “Shuttles” to keep your session reports completely clean, you can use a native widget to build a visual schedule that is entirely disconnected from your registration database.

How to Set It Up:

  1. Open the Site Designer (Registration > Registration Process > Customize).

  2. Go to your Agenda or Schedule page.

  3. In the right-hand Build menu, search for and drag the Agenda at a Glance widget onto the canvas (Do not use the standard “Agenda” widget, which pulls from your backend database).

  4. In the widget settings, create a Section Header (e.g., “Day 1: Tuesday, October 4th”).

  5. Click on the hamburger menu (three dots/lines) next to your newly created section header and select Edit.

  6. You will now see the option to manually type in your Agenda Items (e.g., 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM: Networking Lunch).

  7. Note: Because this is a static website widget, these items will look beautiful on the webpage but will not sync to the Cvent Attendee Hub or mobile app schedule.

Agenda at a glance | Attendeegain

Agency Pro-Tip: If you are using the Cvent Attendee Hub (Mobile App) and want to keep your session database clean, rely on the Schedule Items feature specifically designed for the Attendee Hub. It allows you to push non-registrable schedule blocks directly to attendee phones without attaching them to the Event Management registration paths.

Key Takeaways

  • Bypass the checkout flow: Use the “Included” type or tie optional sessions to an Admission Item to keep meals and breaks on the agenda without forcing attendees to select them.

  • Separate website from registration: A session can be set to visible on your public website while being completely filtered out of the actual registration form.

  • Use the right widget: If you just want a visual schedule on your website without touching the backend database, use the static “Agenda at a Glance” widget, not the dynamic “Agenda” widget.

  • Leverage the Attendee Hub: If your primary concern is the mobile app experience, use Attendee Hub “Schedule Items” to manage non-registrable blocks.

Adding Custom Calendar Items to the Cvent Agenda (Without Forcing Registration) Read More »

Fixing Chrome’s Autofill Turning Registration Text Black on a Dark-Themed Site on Cvent

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If you’ve built a dark-themed registration site in Cvent and started getting reports that form fields look broken or unreadable — specifically text that’s dark-on-dark right after Chrome autofills a name, email, or address — you haven’t misconfigured your theme. This is a well-documented, long-standing behavior in Chrome (and other Chromium-based browsers like Edge, Brave, and Opera) that affects any website with a dark color scheme, not something specific to how your Cvent site was built.

Why this happens (it's not a Cvent bug)

When Chrome autofills a form field, it applies its own hardcoded background and text styling to that field — overriding the page’s own CSS by design. This is standard behavior across the web, not unique to Cvent, and it’s been reported against dark-themed sites built on all kinds of platforms and frameworks for years. The practical result: your carefully set light text on a dark input field gets swapped out for Chrome’s default autofill look the moment a registrant’s browser fills it in, which often reads as unreadable black or near-black text on a dark background.

Because this override happens at the browser level, adjusting your Site Designer → Theme → Colors settings in Cvent won’t touch it — those settings control your page’s own CSS, and Chrome’s autofill styling sits on top of that, outside of Cvent’s normal styling reach. This lines up with what other Cvent users have run into when trying to override specific field text colors through the widget “customize” panel — Site Designer’s built-in color controls only go so far, and autofill styling is a case where they can’t reach at all.

Chrome Normal Field Colour | Attendeegain
Chrome autofill overriding dark theme text color on a Cvent registration form | Attendeegain

The real fix: a targeted CSS override

The standard, widely-used fix is a specific CSS rule that targets Chrome’s autofill state directly, rather than trying to override it through normal color settings. It works by using an inset box-shadow trick to force the field’s background, paired with a property that controls autofilled text color specifically:

@keyframes onAutoFillStart {
from { }
to { }
}

input:-webkit-autofill {
animation-name: onAutoFillStart;
animation-duration: 0.001s;
-webkit-text-fill-color: #ffffff !important;
-webkit-box-shadow: 0 0 0 1000px YOUR_BG_COLOR inset !important;
box-shadow: 0 0 0 1000px YOUR_BG_COLOR inset !important;
caret-color: #ffffff !important;

Replace #1a1a1a with your site’s actual dark background color, and #ffffff with your actual light text color, so the autofilled field matches the rest of your form exactly rather than just “some dark color.”

How to apply this in Cvent

Cvent’s Theme/Color panel has no field for this. Go to the Website Editor -> Theme -> CSS Classes and paste this code snippet, replacing the background colour with your desired colour and publish it.

If you want this to be applied to only some specific section, you can add the styles to a specific class and apply that class to the section through the site editor.

Adding a custom CSS autofill fix through Cvent's Theme Settings | Attendeegain

Testing it correctly

This bug only shows up under specific conditions, so test carefully:

  1. Use actual saved autofill data in Chrome — typing text manually into a field won’t trigger the issue. You need Chrome to actually autofill from a saved profile (name, address, payment info) for the override to matter.
  2. Test in an actual Chrome (or Chromium-based) browser — this is a WebKit/Chromium-specific behavior. Firefox and Safari handle autofill styling differently, so a fix that works in Chrome won’t necessarily need duplicating elsewhere, but it’s worth spot-checking your form in at least one other browser too.
  3. Clear the page cache after adding the CSS — if you’re testing right after publishing the fix, a stale cached version of the page can make it look like the fix didn’t work when it actually did.

Common issues and how to fix them

The fix works in Chrome but the issue still shows up in Edge or Brave. Expected in some cases — apply the same CSS rule, since Edge and Brave are also Chromium-based and share this autofill behavior. The rule above already covers them since it targets the underlying -webkit-autofill state, not Chrome specifically by name.

You don’t see a Code widget option in Site Designer. This depends on your Cvent plan/site configuration. If it’s not available, this fix needs to be handled by Cvent support or a developer with direct access to your site’s CSS, since the standard visual editor doesn’t expose this level of control.

The override isn’t taking effect at all. Double-check the CSS was actually saved and published (not left in a draft state), and clear your browser cache — cached autofill styling or a cached version of the page is a common false negative when testing.

The takeaway

This is a real, common browser behavior — not a flaw in how your Cvent site was designed — and it affects dark-themed forms across the entire web, not just Cvent sites. Cvent’s built-in Theme and Color settings can’t reach it because it’s a browser-level override, so the fix has to go in as targeted custom CSS through a Code widget (or with help from Cvent support/a developer if that’s not available on your account). Test with real saved autofill data in an actual Chrome session, not by typing into the field manually, or you won’t see whether the fix actually worked.

Fixing Chrome’s Autofill Turning Registration Text Black on a Dark-Themed Site on Cvent Read More »

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