WordPress Designers and Developers in Minneapolis, MN

A Fresh Look at a Calendar Plugin in WordPress

July 25th, 2011 — Blog Post, plugin, Thoughts

I have been completely unsatisfied with all of the calendar plugins that I have tried.  None do a good job on the usability front.

So, I will be building my own calendar plugin.  It’ll be a fresh look at calendaring in WordPress.

I need your thoughts and ideas.  I would like this to be the most easy-to-use plugin you have seen.  I want you to say, “Wow.  That was fun to use.”  As such, I will be focusing on usability with the initial release.  The core plugin will create a calendar entry with the following 5 pieces of data:

  • Title
  • Time
  • Location
  • Description
  • Links
Is the above a good starting point for the plugin?  Did I miss anything?
What basic features do you need in a calendar plugin?

2 thoughts on “A Fresh Look at a Calendar Plugin in WordPress”

  1. Erica on said:

    The biggest struggle I had when I was last looking for a calendar plugin was one that had both decent features and a dead-simple-to-use interface on the admin side. There weren’t many that had both.

    The missing features I was looking for were 1) the ability to list both past and upcoming events and in ascending/descending order, and 2) the ability to list events by category.

  2. toby on said:

    Thanks for the thoughts, Erica!

    I am with you 100% on the ease-of-use issue. Calendar plugins seem to be full of features that I never use, yet those unused features clog and confuse the interface.

    My plan is to create a basic and awesome plugin with an API and add-ons, similar to how Gravity Forms manages their workflow.