Google Calendar for Online Events

You can create a free calendar at www.google.com/calendar containing events or daily updates of your choosing. Once your calendar is setup, you can display it on your website or blog for everyone to see. By making the calendar public, you also include your calendar on Google’s public events search.

How to setup your calendar

1. Get a free Google account
2. Go to www.google.com/calendar and sign in
3. Add Calendar, give it a name, description, timezone etc
4. Click on Create Event button (top right)
5. Add event title, dates, times, details, web address etc
6. Make the event public and Save
7. Repeat for every new event
8. Go to calendar settings at top right
9. Under Share this calendar, tick Make this calendar public
10. Under Embed this Calendar, click on customise
11. Change width and height to suit your website layout (calendar below is 400 x 400)
12. Update html and copy the code
13. Paste into your website or blog where you want the calendar to appear.

Other Features
Google Calendar also has a weather feature whereby you can display a clickable weather icon on each day of your calendar and a series of other public calendars such as New Zealand Holidays, Lunar charts, stars birthdays etc which you can add to your calendar. You need to tick these when you get the embed code for your calendar to make sure they are included on the one you display.

Some people use Google Calendar as a personal organiser as it includes options to have the entire calendar private or only visible to people who are invited to view it. You also have the ability to set reminders for events or things you need to do. People viewing your public calendar can choose to add your event to their calendar with the click of a button.

Updating your calendar
This is so easy. Everytime you want to add an event or update to your calendar, you simply sign in to Google and add a new event. Your website calendar will update automatically.

Other Online Calendars
If you have a website or blog created using WordPress, there is a great plugin called Events Calendar which allows you to display a calendar or list of events in your sidebar. This is updated in the WordPress administration. Websites using this plugin are:

• www.schoolschoralfestival.co.nz/
• www.thekitchengarden.co.nz/
• www.southcityauctions.co.nz
• http://www.christiecoaching.co.nz (the large calendar display)