One essential feature of any church web site is the ability to manage events in some way. Many simply use Google Calendar which is also a great way of sharing the same data with other poeple and applications, while others crave a more integrated way of handling events within WordPress itself.
The first time I blogged about such a need was way back in 2008 and while many of those plugins are still going strong, there are now a number of other more sophisticated and premium options available.
Some of these plugins have Premium versions, which means like with so-called Premium Themes you get some extra features and most importantly a commitment to some support and ongoing development.
What to Look for
Any event plugin must, for me at least, tick the following boxes:
- be easy to use (I hate plugins with pages and pages of options)
- work with any theme
- provide different display options (lists and calendar views to suite different tastes)
- be well written and be hookabkle by a developer
So here are the new crop of plugins we have come across lately.
The Plugins
The Events Calendar Plugin
The Events Calendar Plugin is easy to use, has list or calendar view options, widgets and a refreshingly simple options page. The Pro version gives you some extras like recurring events, more display options and the ability to import your calendar into Google Calendar.
Score: 8/10
Events Manager Plugin
The Events Manager Plugin probably has a few more features including support for BuddyPress and Booking Management. The Pro version takes this further adding payment gateway for taking bookings. The free version has recurring events and iCal output, but the theme options page has way too many options, making it rather daunting to the average church admin. Some of the options should really have been left as hooks available to develop with.
Score: 7/10
Event Espresso
The emphasis with Event Espresso is on managing event registration, which may suit some churches with larger congregations, though the other plugins also offer some functionality in this area. It probably is not so useful as a straight event calendar. The Pro version adds support and extras like recurring events.
Score: 6/10
BuddyPress Group Calendar
A different slant maybe, but if you were thinking of using BuddyPress, the BuddyPress Group Calendar offers a tidy solution for manageing events in BuddyPress Groups. There are also widgets that allow you to pull the events into you theme somewhere for display of upcoming events etc.
Score: 6/10
Eventify TM(!?!?)
You would think that with a name that is apparently trademarked, it would be good? Well no – there is little to say about this other than it isn’t worth bothering with. All the events are managed inside the settings page for the plugin! No “event” menu or custom post type as you expect in a modern plugin. Really poor user interface. Maybe the front end would be ok, but it failed my first test – ease of use.
Score: 4/10
In Summary
When you look through the WordPress pluigin repository there are quite a number of event plugins. The plugin market, like with themes, has given rise to so-called premium plugins. These offer a greater level of support with a few extra features.
The ultimate Event Plugin is still yet to emerge, but some of the plugins above offer good solutions. The pick of the bunch for me is probably The Events Calendar plugin, for its ease of use, clean code, and useful features.
What are you using?
We really like Google Calendar Events which uses Google Calendar but displays it more in our style. Their site is http://www.rhanney.co.uk/plugins/google-calendar-events/ and ours is http://northstarfamily.org if you are curious. It lets us use Google Calendar (since the staff uses Google Apps for email already) but shows it more nicely for us.
We really like Google Calendar Events which uses Google Calendar but displays it more in our style. Their site is http://www.rhanney.co.uk/plugins/google-calendar-events/ and ours is http://northstarfamily.org if you are curious. It lets us use Google Calendar (since the staff uses Google Apps for email already) but shows it more nicely for us.
Thanks Andrew, useful plugin and great example of a WordPress Driven church site.
Thanks Andrew, useful plugin and great example of a WordPress Driven church site.
All-In-One Events Calendar. We love it!
Yes that looks quite good, though it is a bit over-styled for my liking – not good for fitting with the design of all themes.
For example, I think it works well on your site tucked away on its own page. It would ruin your very nice design anywhere else.
Yes, it does come fairly pre-styled. It has a pretty good settings panel, but not a lot of style options. It is great for people like me who are not developers, but are trying to work on the front end.
It does have a widget that allows for us to keep it in the sidebar (Not something we are using at this point) so you wouldn’t have to have the full calendar on many pages.
I’m using The Events Calendar Plugin with the pro upgrade thanks to this blog post! I had the All In One Calendar before but was not liking it’s setup. A little too overcomplicated on the frontend.
It took a good bit of PHP and some CSS modification on the individual events pages to get it to work with a sidebar and get it where it’s at now. Still working on some other ideas for the calendar though. I want to clean up the Individual event pages a little more and try to get it to work better with our Responsive site.
You can check it out here:
http://centralchristianocala.org/events/