There are dozens of Event Calendar plugins out there for WordPress. I’ve installed and tried a majority of them, mostly with disappointing results. Here are my top 3 recommendations for nonprofit organizations looking to get a free but powerful event calendar up and running on their website…this is assuming you have WordPress running.
- Events (link: http://meandmymac.net/plugins/events/ ) This is a powerful plug-ins around and is very flexible assuming you know some basic WordPress scripting. The benefit of this plug-in is that you can break out events per page, per their category. Here is a site we recently launched utilizing this plug-in: http://www.asmconline.org/educationtraining/classroom-training/ . The downside of this plugin is that you cannot easily view the events Calendar Style.
- Events Calendar (link: http://www.wp-eventscalendar.com/ ). This is a simple plugin that makes it easy to add events to your new calendar. Here is an example of an installation we performed: http://northcoastalpreventioncoalition.org/newsite/calendar/ . The downside is that you cannot add recurring events.
- Google Calendar (link: http://www.google.com/calendar). This is not a WordPress plugin, however is the calendar that I more often than not, recommend to clients. It is extremely powerful, allows for recurring events, email reminders and integrates with Outlook. You an easily embed the Calendar into your website with a line of code, given by Google. The cons is that you cannot add events to your calendar while inside WordPress…you must be logged into your google account.
Basically, if you are looking for a simple calendar to add events here and there, go with Events Calendar. If you have some WordPress knowledge go with Events. If you need a robust calendar that can keep your entire organization on the same page, go with Google Calendar.