Have you ever thought about how you will inform the visitors of your site about some upcoming events or manifestations? In this tutorial, we show you how to add a calendar to WordPress websites. No matter what type of event it is, your visitors need to know about it as well as the date it starts. Whether it is a school that will present school events or you are a musician who wants to share upcoming concerts with your audience, you are wondering how to most effectively present a lot of information in one place? The logical solution is to use one of the top calendar plugins for WordPress. There are a lot of calendar plugins that are available on the WordPress repository. That being said, how will you know that you have chosen the right calendar plugin? Continue reading, because in this article we will describe The Events Calendar WordPress plugin, one of the best available calendars for WordPress sites.
The Events Calendar WordPress plugin is a great tool to display any event on your WordPress pages. To fully integrate it into your existing pages you are able to choose whether to display month view, day view or list view. If you use the PRO version of the plugin then you can additionally select week view, photo view, map view and summary view. Of course, there is the possibility of displaying photos along with the events so your visitors have as much information as possible about the upcoming event. This plugin is very easy to use, and there are many extensions to expand its capabilities.
Fast and responsive
If you need to display many events on your pages then you need to make sure that the content loads fast. The Events Calendar plugin is structured and designed in that way that it does not overload your server resources and regardless of the number of events they will all load very quickly. This plugin is fully responsive and will work great on any device. By using JSON-LD for structured data, you can be sure that your content is SEO optimized and that users will find your events on search engines very easily.
Easy add events in no-time
Adding an event is very easy. As we have already pointed out, this plugin is very easy to use and is great for absolute beginners as well. After installation, the “Events” menu will appear in the left side of the dashboard. Click on “Add new” and you have started the process of adding events.
It is important to fill in the basic fields, which are event name, event description and start/end date. In just a few clicks your job is done. Once you have created a test event, when you visit your event page you will have the option to add the event to your calendar within Google calendar, iCalendar, Outlook365 and Outlook Live.
The Events Calendar PRO
The free version of this plugin comes with limited features. You still have the option to make a great event calendar for your site, but if you want to expand the capabilities of this plugin then you need to use some premium add-ons and services. The first step is to install The Events Calendar PRO which comes with some extensions:
– Recurring events – you can set events to repeat on a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis;
– Week view – events view by the week;
– Photo view – the ability to add images to events;
– Location search – the ability to search for events depending on the location;
– Map view – map on which will be marked the place of the event
– Advanced widgets – many widgets to manage your calendar;
– Additional custom fields – create additional fields to display more information about the event.
Premium add-ons and services*
If you want to further expand the capabilities of this very popular events calendar plugin then you will need to use some of its premium add-ons.
Some of the premium add-ons and services for The Events Calendar WordPress plugin are:
– Virtual events – an extension that adds the ability to create virtual events, and with this you will get Zoom integration, embed livestreams and videos, virtual event labels;
– Event Aggregator – the ability to automatically import for your calendar. This extension works with Google Calendar, Meetup and many other platforms, it is very customizable, you can refine by date, location or keyword, schedule automated imports;
– Event tickets (FREE) – free extension for ticketing management;
– Event tickets plus – a great way to make money from your events. Create custom registration fields, the ability to scan tickets using a mobile app, the extension is compatible with WooCommerce;
– Promoter – Great extension for promotion and email marketing with many templates and capabilities to automate marketing actions and processes;
– Filter Bar – the ability to filter in order to find the right event. It is possible to filter by category, price, date and many other characteristics;
– Community events – allow your visitors to add events to your calendars;
– Community tickets – great for events marketplace where users add their events and sell tickets, and you can split commission with users.
– Image Widget Plus – a great extension for extended view photos.
Great and fast support
You’ll be glad to know that The Events Calendar plugin has great customer support. If you have questions about the free version of this plugin you can get help directly on the WordPress.org plugins repository. The authors strive to check user queries on the forum at least once a week to help with basic configuration and troubleshooting bugs. If you buy the PRO version of the plugin you will get access to a new user primer designed to introduce plugin to the new users. Here you can learn many useful things for quickly creating events, and some useful tricks to create and adjust your event calendars. As for PRO support, you can contact the authors by phone or e-mail. The response from the author usually does not last longer than 24 hours.
Excellent knowledgebase and extensive documentation
The authors of this amazing plugin have made a great effort to provide excellent documentation and materials in order to acquaint you better with the plugin and its options. There are many tutorials, help videos, forums, known issues sheet, a release schedule and notes and extensive documentation.
This plugin is used by more than 800,000 web sites. If you need to create a basic calendar then the free version of the plugin will suffice. However, if you want to make an events site from which you will make money then you should consider using the PRO version which brings many extensions. Since the license for 1 site is only USD 99 (updates and support for 1 year) we think that this plugin is not expensive because it brings a lot of useful options. For additional information on prices and membership packages for this plugin, you can visit the plugin’s official site.
Conclusion
We have already mentioned how important it is to display a calendar of events on your site. From the many plugins within the WordPress repository we have chosen The Events Calendar. The plugin offers the best value for money and is full of great options for events. It is very fast, stable, responsive and SEO optimized and is certainly one of the best in this category. Since there is a free version we definitely think it is worth a try.