Adding an Events Calendar to WordPress

There’s no question that there are dozens of events calendar plugins for WordPress. I’d guess that we’ve probably installed at least five different calendaring plugins on websites we’ve built over the past few years. Normally once we find a plugin we like, we stick with it and use it on all of our sites. But with events calendars, we never really found one that became our ‘holy grail’ for managing events. Finally, it appears we’ve got that plugin!

Firstly, what makes a plugin so good that we’ll stick with it for all of our sites? There’s three key factors:

1. Simplicity. I want to be able to install and activate the plugin and have it work exactly as I expect right out of the box. No fumbling with complex code to make it work and I really shouldn’t have to visit the developer’s website to figure out how to use it. It should just work right out of the box.

2. Design. Either the plugin has to make use of common coding practices (such as using list elements for sidebar entries) so that it fits perfectly into the theme of the site, or the developer should be using high quality designs of their own. Any less than that and I’m not pleased.

3. Functionality. I don’t expect every plugin to have every single feature I can imagine, but I do expect some core functionality out of everything. For example, I need to be able to add/edit events and set recurring schedules.
I also need to be able to use a widget with either a list or calendar view or both as well as have a full calendar page with bare-minimum, a month view. A week/agenda view would be great, but not required. The same goes for other plugins, with their own set of attributes.

The Events Calendar

Formerly known as Tribe Events Calendar, the Events Calendar integrates beautifully with any design and has incredibly powerful extensions to enable everything from ticket sales to RSVP limiting to visitor event submissions.

The All-in-One Event Calendar

The All-in-One Event Calendar is not just a fully featured calendaring solution, it’s well designed and works immediately out of the box.

The last events plugin I used required me to edit template files just to fit it properly in with my design! Not this one. Immediately after creating the calendar page (which it did for me – bonus!) it was working and fit in perfectly with my design.
The back-end adding of events is just as you’d expect; choose Events > Add New. It’s got recurring functionality, Google Maps embedding for the venue and a built in way of showing the price for the event. Awesome.

So, if you’re looking for a great events calendar for your WordPress powered website, check out All-in-One Event Calendar!