This post will show how to embed a Google Calendar in Joomla powered websites. In the past I’ve used Joomla’s excellent event management calendars like JEvents, EventList and JCal Pro. These are great for replicating the functionality that one would be used to in MS Outlook, e.g. multiple events, with attachments, notes, attendees, recurrence and colour coded based on category and a plethora of modules. There was one problem however. While these offer alot of functionality many customers just want a quick event display it in a calendar module and forget about it. In fact, why not use their existing Google Calendar?Pretty easy to do as it turns out. That’s where GCalendar comes into it’s own. Basically one just adds a public calendar to a Google account (either your own or a new one for your website) and configure the extension (component and module) to show it on your website. Simples! So here are the steps:
- Go to the Joomla Extensions Directory
- Search for GCalendar and click on the link. The following page will be displayed
- Click on the download button to go to their website
- Download the extension (get both the component and the module by downloading the “GCalendar Suite”)
- Extract the file on your local drive
- Go to Extensions | Extensions Manager in your administrator panel
- Select the component installer, com_gcalendar.zip and click the “upload and install” button
- The component should now be installed
- Select the module installer, mod_gcalendar.zip and click the “upload and install” button
- Follow the same steps to install any of the other optional modules/plugins — I rarely install these
- Before configuring you should go to your Google Calendar in your browser and have a look at the calendar settings. Make sure the calendar has been given public view access!
- Copy the calendar ID to your clipboard
- Now go back to the administrator and go to Components | GCalendar
- Click on Manage Calendars
- Click “New” and enter the name and Calendar ID in the appropriate locations
- Click Save
- The last step is to display this calendar on the frontend of the website. We will do this using a module (though you can use the component in the normal manner)
- Go to Extensions | Module Manager
- Find the GCalendar module, rename it and select the appropriate location, menu items and the name you gave your calendar
- Publish it in the appropriate location
- Done
Simples! You’ve just learned how to embed a Google Calendar in Joomla!