This Week in the Learning Center: Calendars for Your Website

This week, we decided to revisit an older article, Free, Easy Ways to Add a Calendar to Your Website. This is one of TechSoup's most popular articles (thanks in no small part to Google), but some parts had gotten a little dated and it was well in need of an update.

The most obvious change is that far more nonprofits are using web CMSes and using them more intelligently than we were three years ago. Idealware's excellent report on the big four open-source CMSes (Drupal, Plone, Wordpress, and Joomla) noted that only Plone offers a calendar function out-of-the-box, but the other three support additional calendar modules. While researching the article, I found some great examples of nonprofits using these modules to incorporate upcoming events seamlessly throughout their sites, not just on a single calendar page.

The other big change is that more nonprofits are using social networking sites. If your nonprofit has a Facebook page but you don't use it to invite fans to upcoming events, then you should definitely think about it. As we mention in the article, there's even a new application that automatically converts events from any iCalendar-compatible calendar into Facebook events.

While we're on the subject of calendars, the Human Calendar (one of my favorite web doohickeys) is looking for someone in the Portland area to volunteer as the face of 2010! "Prefer someone that is out of the age 25-35 and/or caucasian demographic, but anyone is welcome."

Photo: Rashida Coleman-Hale, CC license

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Does your nonprofit's website have a calendar? What are the important features to look for? Share your tips with others in this Open Source and Free Software forum discussion.