WordPress Calendar Plugins and Event Registration Plugins

Angela | 27 February 2009 | Plugins | 12 Comments

I’m searching today for a good WordPress calendar plugin and came across this great post:

http://wordpressgarage.com/plugins/wordpress-calendar-plugins/

Be sure to read further down in the comments about the GigPress plugin’s ability to link to Posts:

http://gigpress.com/download/

There was also a good comment about the Viva7 WordPress theme that has a great built in calendar:

http://blogthemesplus.com/viva7/

Also, this event calendar plugin looks interesting:

http://meandmymac.net/plugins/events/ – The admin interface is great! I’m playing with the styling of the sidebar text and how the event details show. Will provide link soon, so you can see this in action. I think this may be the one I use, as it’s straight-forward, has several admin fields and lots of control with styling.

I have used Event Calendar 3 on many sites:

http://wpcal.firetree.net/ – it provides a widget to show upcoming events and works with posts, so you simply need to write a post and assign an Event Calendar date to it, and it automatically is placed in the event category you specify.

Be sure to read my longer post about WordPress Event Registration plugins for more!

  • TFI

    Hello! Were you able to get the Event Registration engine to play nicely with any of the calendar options you were evaluating? We’re in the same situation and ideally we’d like to use a single, integrated solution if possible!

  • mpmchugh

    I’ve been using Event Calendar 3 on a couple sites, which is very nice.

    Just trying out Event Registration.

    Would be great if they worked together!

    -mpm

  • Dizyart

    Nope, it doesn’t work together nicely (I’m trying Events together with Event Registration). The event registration’s “registration form” setup page doesn’t even work on my 2.7.1 WP setup and yes, it doesn’t recognize separate events (though it’s not a surprise).

    If someone knows about/finds a integrated solution, please share! Otherwise, I’m quite compelled to make one.

  • admin

    I am using Event Registration plugin with WordPress 2.7 just fine. You have to set the preferences of the Event Registration plugin to display all of the events on the event page rather than just the “current” event. You also have to create a page and insert the event registration code on that page. (Read the readme file.)

    I am using the Event Calendar plugin by Alex Tingle to manage the “calendar of events.” To do this, I create a Post and the Event Calendar plugin allows you to create an event date and automatically adds that event to a specified category, tracks the events by date hierarchy, removes old events, and displays them in a sidebar widget.

    In each of the posts above, I’ve added a manual hyperlink to a “Registration” page that shows all the events as I’ve entered them into the Event Registration plugin admin interface. This is basically a duplication of effort, but does then allow people to register for the event.

    My critique of the Event Registration plugin is that:

    1) the interface is a rough around the edges and all formatting has to be done in HTML. would be better if it were tied into the POST functionality than it’s own admin interface.

    2) there is no way to sign up multiple people for an event (e.g. buy 2 tickets)

    3) there is no way for different prices to be used for an event.

    4) it doesn’t display the event details unless you click on the register button for the event — ideally, I could get away with NOT using the Event Calendar plugin if the Event Registration plugin displayed events details for all events on a page (or selected details), then had a button to click through to the register form.

    5) it doesn’t remove past events, nor does it organize events by date.

    What I like about the Event Registration plugin is:

    1) it has an auto generated response email when people register

    2) it has a convenient admin interface to quickly see how many people have registered for each event and the contact details for each registrant

    3) you can email all event registrants easily by exporting their contact info

    If it weren’t for the above features, I would have preferred to use the Shopp plugin to manage the payment info, because then people could purchase multiple tickets, multiple events, and select a variation (such as senior pricing).

    Ideally, integrating an Event Calendar with the Event Registration would be ideal! Adding some sort of shopping cart like features would be a dream come true. I think a good working plugin doing all of that could generate a lot of donations as it would be highly sought after.

  • http://www.eventbrite.com Ricky

    If you want to just go around installing plugin’s, Eventbrite is a good option.

    http://www.eventbrite.com/t/how-to-use-ticket-widget

    Drop a few lines of HTML and you can add a widget, and then manage your entire event with Eventbrite. I think it’s really simple and convenient, give it a shot, it has a lot more features than plug-in’s.

  • http://www.trimartialarts.com/ Ryan

    Thanks for compiling this list for us!

    I will be using one of those for my calendar solution on our martial art website!

    Thanks again!

  • Brian

    I have a question. Is there an event manager plugin that is even more basic? One that has an event, and a member of the site can just click a “register me” button after they are logged in and they don’t have to fill anything else out? No forms, just 1 click and they’re on the list, as long as they’re a member of the site. I run an stand up comedy open mic, and I have an event registration plugin on Geeklog that does this. I want to switch this site over to WordPress and have this same functionality for the users. Seems like all the event manager plugins make users fill out a big form to register. I need a simpler one since they sign up for these events weekly and they’re all used to just clicking “register me” and being done.

    Thanks!
    Brian

  • http://www.shoultes.net Seth Shoultes

    I have created a plugin that provides a way to take online registrations for events such as conference and seminars that are held live. The plugin uses the PayPal IPN to record payments to a database. It allows you to capture the registering persons contact information to the WordPress database as well as provides the ability to send the registrar to your PayPal payment site for online collection of event fees. PayPal payments are captured to the database using the PayPal Standard IPN.

    The pro version of the plugin integrates nicely with the ‘Calendar’ plugin developed by Kieran O’Shea. So you can each of the events created by the Advanced Events Registration plugin to a calendar displayed on a WordPress web page.

    Download the free from WordPress:
    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/advanced-events-registration/

    You can find more info on the Pro version here:
    http://shoultes.net/upgrade-to-pro-version/

    Hope this helps some of you :)

    Seth

  • http://www.tacogirl.com tacogirl

    Glad I found what you wrote today as it has proved useful in my calendar search – thanks.

  • Sarah

    Thanks so much for putting this together! Great list!

  • cre8tvnrg

    I have a need for a simple grid style month by month calendar (one month at a time showing in full size webpage format) where a square shows a title of a workshop and a ‘register me’ link that a user can click on and register for that workshop. Does anyone know of such a thing? Thanks in advance!

  • Pingback: Event and Event Management, Registration Plugins for WordPress | Moon Goose Designs | WordPress Website Design and Development | Boulder, Colorado