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How to Add Google Calendar in WordPress – 3 Easy Methods

If you are looking for a way to add Google Calendar to WordPress, you've come to the right place. The ultimate guide to teaching you how to add and make public your Google Calendar.

Google Calendar is emerging at a quick pace as the go-to calendar option for everyone. It’s no wonder why the tool has seen such an immersive utility as it provides exceptional functionality, it is easy to use, and it perfectly integrates with other Google services.

If you are running a WordPress website where you handle webinars, virtual retreats, online streams, online classes, and more, you will most definitely need our guide on how to add Google calendar to WordPress websites as this makes it easy for every novice to do it themselves and present upcoming events without a hassle.Luckily, WordPress has many of these plugins to choose from, as well as a few approaches on how to embed a Google calendar in WordPress.

That’s why we love it! Calendars are so important for staying productive and getting to meetings and appointments on time, also to remind your users of upcoming events, webinars, or other important occasions.

Google Calendar provides you with a powerful tool to stay organized and keep track of any events you’re hosting (or wish to attend). Since WordPress does not provide a default integration with the tool, we will show you a step-by-step tutorial on how to add Google calendar to WordPress.

Why Add Google Calendar to WordPress?

Google Calendar is one of the most widely used free Google Tools. If you add Google Calendar to WordPress, you can easily display upcoming events to your visitors. Using an online calendar solution, as opposed to a traditional paper planner, is beneficial for many reasons.

This is especially true in regards to those that own a website and possibly run an online business. By embedding Google calendar to your WordPress website, you can notify your users and visitors about upcoming events, virtual meetings, and important occasions. Being both free and commonly used, Google Calendar is the gold standard of online scheduling tools.

One of the best features to add Google Calendar to WordPress, especially for websites and businesses that want to have an appointment calendar that updates in real-time, is that you can make changes to your Google calendar, include or exclude events, and this be updated automatically on your website without extra work on your end. Google Calendar is a prime tool but for the sake of argument we will be sharing a few of the best and essential features of this wondrous tool

With Google Calendar you can invite other Google users to share a calendar with you. This way everyone that has access to a particular calendar can be aware at all times of the events on each day.
Using Google Calendar on your mobile device is useful because you can schedule customized reminders so you don’t miss a thing.
Google Calendar integrates easily with other Google services, such as Gmail and Google Docs.
You can easily create multiple calendars with Google Calendar, this way you can organize and sort out different time stands on either your personal or business life. Everything is color-coded, so you can keep everything organized.
You can add Google calendar to WordPress or embed it on other platforms all for free, this is what gives grandiose to the tool
You can easily upload public calendars to always be in the loop with the yearly holidays or different occasions

How to Add Google Calendar to WordPress Website using a Plugin?

We all know that the easiest way in WordPress is the plugin way, this is why for this article we will be showing you how to add Google calendar to WordPress using a plugin. For the sake of this article, we will be using the Simple Calendar – Google Calendar plugin as it is one of the best free solutions to to add Google calendar to WordPress websites and also comes rich in features, which we will show later on this article. What you need to do first is install the plugin and activate it, for more guidance, please refer to our article on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once the plugin is installed and activated, the plugin should be visible on your WordPress dashboard, you need to go to Calendars » Settings to set up the plugin. From that screen, you will need to click on the ‘Google Developers Console’ link that’s just below the “Google API Key” box.

The link will redirect you to Google Calendar’s platform from where you need to generate your API key. This will also be presented to you step by step. The first step is to click on the “Create project” button, like so in the image below.

Then you will be redirected to a different screen where you will be asked to provide a name for your project and choose the ‘Organization’ and ‘Location’. You can get creative with these names, we’d recommend you select and identify your projects. For the other two fields, you can simply enter the URL for your website. Once you are done with everything here, click on the Create button.

After that, you’ll be redirected to your project dashboard. Here, you need to click the ‘Enable APIs and Services’ option.

Now you will be redirected to a page where you can see all your API Keys You need to select the ‘Google Calendar API’ in the ‘Google Workspace’ section to continue.

Click on the Enable button to continue further, and you are half wy on your process to add Google Calendar to WordPress.

You will be redirected to the page from where you can manage your APIs, click on the Credentials option on the left, and from there click the ‘Create Credentials’ button. From the dropdown list, select API Key.

Next up you will be presented with a popup that contains your API key, copy it, and paste it into a text editor, for you will need it later.

After that, head back to the plugin settings screen in your WordPress dashboard and enter your API key.

Don’t forget to click on the Save Changes button. Now you have successfully connected your WordPress website with Google Calendar, and are ready to add your calendar to your website.

Make your Google Calendar Public

To share your Google Calendar, and then, later on, be able to embed it on your WordPress website, first of all, you will need to change the calendar settings to make it public. To do so, you will first need to open the Google Calendar you wish to make public. At the top of the page, you will see a gear icon, and click on Settings from the drop-down list.

After that, click on the name of the calendar you want to share in the ‘Settings for my calendars’ section. This will open the calendar settings on another tab. From there make sure to check the ‘Make available to public’ box in the ‘Access permissions for events’ section.

Click on “Okay” from the window that popups. Once you’ve done that, scroll down to the ‘Integrate calendar’ section. From this screen, you will need to copy the “Calendar ID” and make sure you paste it onto a text editor to save it because you will need it later.

Add Google Calendar to Your WordPress Website

Now it’s when you make use of the Simple Calendar plugin to create a new calendar that you will, later on, use it to embed on your WordPress website. We will show you how to first create and add Google Calendar to WordPress, in a few easy steps. From your WordPress dashboard, simply go to Calendars » Add New to bring up the calendar editor.

From that screen, make sure you place a title for the calendar. You should see that in the text are the plugin has already pre-populated it with shortcodes. We would suggest you leave them as they are. Now, scroll down to the ‘Calendar Settings’ box below the text editor. Next up, click on the ‘Google Calendar’ tab. Remember the Calendar ID code that you copied earlier? Now it’s time we make use of it and paste it onto the designated field.

To gain power over how your Calendar will look on your WordPress website, check out the other tabs and their customization options. When you are done with the tweaking, click on Publish and you are almost ready to go. We have one more step to make.

Display Google Calendar to WordPress

We’ve gone through all the steps needed to add Google calendar to WordPress, we installed the Simple Calendar plugin, we make our calendar public, we added our calendar to WordPress, no all there is left to do is to display the said calendar to our WordPress website and add it to a post or page. This is also quite simple and requires just a few easy steps.

To add your calendar to a page, simply go to Pages » Add New, and give your page a name. Then, click the ‘Plus’ icon to bring up the blocks menu and select the ‘Shortcode’ option.

Once you are done with that you will need to enter the shortcode of your calendar. You can find this by going to Calendars » All Calendars and finding the associated shortcode.

Once you’re done making changes to your calendar page, simply click the ‘Publish’ button. You can add this shortcode to any area of your website, including widgets, to simply display your new calendar. Your new calendar will be displayed and added to your WordPress website for all your users and visitors to see and engage with it.

Final Thoughts

This concludes our article and our comprehensive guide on how to add Google Calendar to WordPress and we hope by the end of it you are left with valuable knowledge on the process and our best tips and tricks to present all your events on your WordPress website with the utmost ease and flexibility.

Adding Google Calendar to your WordPress website will add value to your website, you can present upcoming events and important occasions that your users should know about, and also gives you a chance to outrun your competitors.

We’ve seen 3 different methods to embed Calendar on your site:

With the Simple Calendar plugin
Using the WordPress block editor
Via HTML

These methods are beginner-friendly and they’re all very effective so choose the one that best suits your needs. Read our guide below to learn more about each method and give you a comprehensive overview on every approach.