Google Calendar Schedule

A small WordPress plugin that renders an upcoming-events schedule from a public Google Calendar as a styled, compact agenda widget — recurring weekly things (classes, meetings, a touring/rotating schedule, office hours, whatever), not a full month-grid calendar.

Screenshots

Front-end widget (compact, month-grouped, "Show more" fold for anything beyond the first month):

Settings → Calendar Schedule:

Why not just embed Google Calendar?

Google's own embed/widget code is functional but generic-looking and hard to restyle to match a theme. This plugin fetches the same public calendar feed (.ics URL) server-side, parses it, and renders it with the site's own markup and CSS — while still linking out to the calendar so visitors can subscribe in their own calendar app.

Features

• Renders from any public Google Calendar .ics feed — no Google API key, no OAuth.
• Server-side cached (wp_transient) so the feed isn't fetched on every page load; falls back to the last successful fetch if Google is unreachable.
• Compact, month-grouped agenda layout with a native <details>/<summary> "Show more" fold — no JavaScript required.
• De-duplicates the address line when consecutive events share the same location (useful when a schedule rotates through the same few venues).
• Configurable accent colors, an optional second-language month label (e.g. "Září · September"), a configurable event noun (so "Next Event" can become "Next Class", "Next Meeting", etc.), and an optional heading — and a [calendar_schedule] shortcode that can be dropped anywhere.
• Self-updates via GitHub Releases — see DEVELOPMENT.md.

Installation

1. Download the latest release zip from the Releases page, or clone/download this repo.
2. In wp-admin: Plugins → Add New Plugin → Upload Plugin, choose the zip, install, and activate. (Or upload the folder to wp-content/plugins/ via FTP/SFTP and activate from the Plugins list.)
3. Go to Settings → Calendar Schedule and paste your calendar's public .ics URL. In Google Calendar: Settings and sharing → Integrate calendar → "Public address in iCal format" (the calendar must be set to public first, under Access permissions).
4. Add [calendar_schedule] to any page or post.

Usage

[calendar_schedule]

Shortcode attributes (all optional — each falls back to the matching Settings → Calendar Schedule value):

Attribute	Default	Description
title	Settings → Heading text	Widget heading. Pass title="" to render with no heading at all.
months	Settings → Months to fetch ahead	How many months out to fetch/consider.
limit	Settings → Max dates to show	Hard cap on events rendered, across all fetched months.
initial_months	Settings → Months shown before "Show more"	Month buckets rendered expanded by default.
ics_url	Settings → Google Calendar ICS URL	Show a different calendar than the site default — lets one page display two schedules. Must be a calendar.google.com URL.

Example, showing a second calendar further down the same page:

[calendar_schedule title="Downtown location" ics_url="https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/xyz/public/basic.ics"]

Configuration

All of this lives under Settings → Calendar Schedule:

• Google Calendar ICS URL — the feed to read from. Required; the widget shows a "not configured" notice (visible to admins only) until this is set.
• Heading text — the widget's title. Leave blank to render with no heading.
• Event noun (singular/plural) — drives the "Next ..." flag and "Show 3 more ..." toggle. Defaults to "Event"/"Events"; set to whatever the calendar actually is ("Class"/"Classes", "Meeting"/"Meetings", ...), or blank the singular to hide the "Next ..." flag entirely.
• Second language for month names — None / Czech / Spanish / Polish / Vietnamese. Renders month dividers like "Září · September" instead of just "September".
• Font — a fixed list of system/web-safe fonts (no external font files to load). Applies to all text in the widget.
• Text color — event titles and addresses. A muted secondary tone is derived automatically for less prominent text (month labels, addresses).
• Accent color / Heading color — restyle without touching CSS. The pale "wash" background behind the time pill is derived automatically from the accent color.
• Months shown before "Show more" — the schedule starts collapsed to this many month-groups; the rest fold behind a <details> toggle.
• Months to fetch ahead, Max dates to show — bounds on how far out and how much gets pulled from the feed at all.
• Cache duration (hours) — how long a successful fetch is cached before the feed is checked again. A Refresh now button forces an immediate re-fetch of the default calendar.

Deeper customization (extra colors, a different date/time format, a new second-language month set) is meant to happen via the filters described in DEVELOPMENT.md or by overriding the CSS custom properties on .wcal-schedule — not by growing the settings screen further.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later. See LICENSE.