The addition of an event calendar can add a lot of value to your website or blog. This is especially true for those real estate agents who maintain a community based site.
Posting information on events such as farmers’ markets, garage sales, club meetings and city recreation programs to a calendar makes your website community resource. A resource worth bookmarking, Twittering or sharing on Facebook.
Best of all, updating a calendar is easier than writing an entire blog post.
Here are 4 ways to add an event calendar to your WordPress website or blog:
1. Calendar
Calendar is a WordPress plugin developed by Kieran O’Shea that looked like it was going to be abandoned. Fortunately, Kieran has picked up where he left off and just released an update.
This plugin creates an AJAX enabled calendar that is highly customizable. Events are managed directly from the WordPress admin. Color coded categories can be used to differentiate types of events.
A sidebar widget allows for upcoming events to be displayed throughout your site. With a little CSS know-how, the calendar colors can be changed to match your website.
Go to PeninsulaHub.com to see this plugin in action.
2. Events Calendar
Another WordPress plugin that adds a calendar page using a short code. Similar to the Calendar plugin with a few differences.
Events Calendar doesn’t offer event categories, but adds the ability to create a post or page from a calendar event. This can come in handy for those events that need a bit more promotion than a simple calendar entry.
The widget for this plugin not only allows for upcoming events to be listed, but gives an option for an AJAX enabled mini calendar to be displayed.
3. Events Manager
Events Manager WordPress plugin takes a very different approach to an event calendar. This solution is much more interactive, making for a richer visitor experience.
Offering features such as Google map integration, RSVP management and an RSS feed, this plugin is loaded with functionality.
Events Manager is a great solution for posting real estate office meetings and trainings. However, the layout isn’t as conducive to community calendars with a lot of events to display.
4. EasyPHPCalendar
Sometimes you need more control and functionality than a simple WordPress plugin can offer. Such was the case for a recently released MTO Sites project, Tribes.com. For that site, we looked outside of the WordPress community and found EasyPHPCalendar.
EasyPHPCalendar is a PHP script that is extremely customizable. Events can be displayed on a full page calendar with mouse-over text, on mini calendars, listed on the page, or a combination of the three.
Color coded event categories can be created. A legend of the categories can be added to your site and a dropdown filter allows for only events in that category to be shown.
Images, links and text formatting of event postings is possible after installing the free WYSIWYG editor.
Although EasyPHPCalendar is a separate script from WordPress, it integrates beautifully. Once installed and configured, PHP code can be added directly to your WordPress template. This makes your calendar feel like part of the entire site to your visitors.
This script must to purchased ($19.95 to $49.90 depending on level of branding) and requires professional installation, but the functionality is worth the expense. When you consider the time you will invest in maintaining your community event calendar, this expense is nominal.
MyTechOpinion
Site visitors expect more from community websites than the occasional blog post. Adding an event calendar can add value without forcing you to spend an exorbitant amount of time writing content.
For assistance with this or any other WordPress website related issue or need, contact MyTechOpinion and our MTO Sites design team.
[...] 4 Ways To Add An Event Calendar To Your WordPress Blog — get a calendar up and running on WordPress [...]
[...] In: WordPress plugins 4 Jul 2009 Go to Source [...]
[...] Real Estate Brokerage Intranet – Share news, make documents and forms available for download, and post company meetings and events on the calendar (using one of our recommended WordPress calendar solutions). [...]
Damn, that sound's so easy if you think about it.
This is very useful for those running events, be they community or religious. I have seen the need for this many times.
The visualizable model of a submarine contains millions of polygons. ,
Great post! Exactly what I was looking for. The Easy PHP Calendar looks like the way to go for me since my blog's only part of my site.
Thank you!
I quite like the look of event calendar 3 (Alex Pingle?) although the popup could do with a bit more CSS work. Tried the easyphp calendar but you need to use the default permalinks for it to work properly (which most people do not use). They say it was not designed for WP and users should be grateful it even works… not worth $20.
In all fairness should have qualified that by saying "not worth 20 dollars if you are using seo/non default permalinks". For those using the default permalinks the product is quite flexible (although not plug and play) and probably worth it.
Thanks! I have been using the O'Shea calendar but now need something for a client that creates a calendar RSS feed. Looks like Event Manager will do the trick!
I'd like to shill my own plugin for wordpress events calendar.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/the-events-ca…
It has a lot of really useful features, including a full set of templates out of the box, google map support. translations and it even has a sister plugin which adds EventBrite support
I'm working on a new site that will need a calendar function. What do you think will be the best plugin to do the following: Create a weekly calendar that shows "release dates". An upcoming movie or book release calendar would be a good analogy to what I want, where viewers could click the week in a sidebar widget and see a list of releases for that week. Ideally it would also have a way to upload data in large batches instead of item by item.
Any advice is greatly appreciated
jc
for a full page event calendar widget that shows text for the day boxes for every day in a calendar month you can just use google's calendar widget (http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/gdcalendar.html)
Another one that's similar to Google's but shows images rather than text representations of events is the eventorb calendar widget http://www.eventorb.com/calendar . It's a doozy though, so you'll need enough space on your website to embed it.
But what about adding a Google Calendar to your WordPress? Any advice there? I cannot find a good solution. Ideally there is a widget like Events Manager that can pull events from a Google Calendar.
[...] “4 Ways To Add An Event Calendar To Your WordPress Blog“, we looked at options for adding an event calendar to your WordPress website. The solutions [...]
Just to update this thread we have released a stand alone event calendar plugin for WordPress. If you're interested in checking it out then you can find more information about the Kino Events Calendar here: http://www.kinocreative.co.uk/wordpress-plugins/k…
Can you use an rss feed that I have to pull updates to a calendar at my website? For example: I’m going to place a page on my site that is the city’s calendar for upcoming invites.
Thank you
[...] “4 Ways To Add An Event Calendar To Your WordPress Blog“, we looked at options for adding an event calendar to your WordPress website. The solutions [...]
Hi,
There's one more I'd like to recommend: My Calendar by Joe Dolson. It is easy to use and constantly updated. Also, it is free. There is a paid version coming out in January that will have some functions the free version doesn't.
Here is the URL:
http://www.joedolson.com/articles/my-calendar/
Debbie
The calendar is a valueable tool.
Here is a brand new plugin for WordPress: WP Facebook Events
http://codecanyon.net/item/wp-facebook-events/165…
Event Espresso offers event categories, custom registration forms, accept payment, recurring events, and soon to offer multi-event registration where people can register for more than one event at a time.
We also offer a free test drive: http://eventespresso.com/download/test-drive-even…
Hey webmaster! thanks for the info!
[...] or blog. This is especially true for those real estate agents who maintain a community based site.http://www.mytechopinion.com/2 ..WordPress ? Event Calendar 3 « WordPress PluginsEvent Calendar 3. Manage future events as an [...]
Nice, but not complete list of WordPress blogs. Do you want to update your list?
oh calendar is a great widget to add to a WP account. I will try to install event manager plugin and see how i can use it effectively.
Events Calendar sounds very interesting. Exactly what I need for a friend who teaches yoga and wants to have a dynamic website that lists the events. That plus the fact that the plugin allows the creation of a post for each event is a real plus to me !
Thanks for this very interesting article !
Very clear article and helpful to me.
Thanks for sharing with us.
This site was… how do you say it? Relevant!! Finally I have found something which helped me. Thank you!
well written. Thank You!
The idea of creating a survey is really helpful. The registration form, when customized, can really come in handy. Thanks a ton for the idea.
[...] While browsing online, I found a nice blog post titled 25 Extremely Useful WordPress Plug-ins for Musicians. Near the bottom of the page it features three further events management plug-ins, these look very useful for what I’m wanting to accomplish! And one more for good measure, 4 Ways To Add An Event Calendar To Your WordPress Blog [...]