If you keep an events calendar for a library, a town, a parks department or a Main Street, thank you. It is steady, quiet work that a lot of people rely on, and it is often done alongside another job.
Here are some small changes that help everyone who reads your calendar: visitors to your own website, people who subscribe to it in Google, Apple or Outlook, and sites like ours that list your events. Most are a single setting. Pick whichever ones are easy; none of them is required.
Check your own feed ↓Change these once and every event benefits from then on.
Why it helps: When someone subscribes to your calendar, its name is what they see in their calendar app, beside every event. Without one, apps show the name of the software that made the feed instead.
How: Most calendar software has a calendar name or title in its settings. On a WordPress site it is often the site's title.
Why it helps: Without a time zone, calendar apps show the time as if it were in the reader's own zone, so anyone in a different one sees the wrong hour.
How: Set your calendar's time zone in its settings. Most software then includes it with every event.
Why it helps: A link to the event's own page puts the details, directions and any sign-up one tap away. A link to the calendar's front page leaves people searching for it.
How: Most calendar software links each event to its own page automatically. If yours doesn't, look for a website or link field on the event.
A few words as you add an event. They do the most for people deciding whether to go.
Why it helps: A place is how people decide whether they can go, and how an event shows up on a map or in a search near where someone lives.
How: Fill in the location or venue on each event. If most of your events happen in the same few places, many calendars let you save each one as a venue and pick it from a list.
Why it helps: A title like “Open Studio” doesn't tell someone who has never been what to expect. A sentence or two does.
How: Add a sentence about what happens, and anything someone should know before they come.
Why it helps: People can tell at a glance whether an event is meant for them, which saves them guessing and saves you the questions.
How: A few words in the description are enough: “all ages”, “ages 3 to 5”, “teens”, “adults”. Saying an event is for adults helps just as much as saying it's for children.
Smaller things, worth a look when you next have the settings open.
Why it helps: A building or room name is all a regular needs. A street or a town lets everyone else find it too.
How: Add the street address to each venue once. Many calendars then include it on every event held there.
Why it helps: Some feeds carry web formatting, like <p> or &, that calendar apps print as plain text in the middle of a description.
How: Look for a setting that exports plain text. Text pasted in from a web page or a word processor is the usual source.
Why it helps: A deleted event simply vanishes from subscribers' calendars, so anyone who planned to go may not notice. Marked as cancelled, it stays long enough for calendars and sites like ours to say so.
How: If your software has a cancelled status, use it instead of deleting the event.
Why it helps: If the feed has nothing upcoming, subscribers stop seeing anything new, even while your website shows plenty.
How: Open the feed in a browser and look at the dates. If they're old, the export may be pointing at an archive or a past-events view.
Why it helps: Some calendar software exports only a set number of events. Once a calendar is busier than that, later events never reach subscribers.
How: If your feed always holds the same round number of events, check your software's export settings. The Events Calendar exports the next 30 events by default. Their guide to changing it.
Why it helps: Every event carries a hidden ID that calendar apps use to tell an updated event from a new one. When IDs are missing or shared, a change can show up as a second copy, or an event can disappear.
How: This one is usually up to your calendar software rather than you. If it applies to your feed, it's worth mentioning to the software's support team.
See which of these your calendar already does, and where a small change would help.
Your calendar is read by your browser and is never sent to us.
Open your calendar's feed link (often labelled iCal, ICS, Subscribe or Export) in your browser. It usually downloads a file ending in .ics. Choose that file below, or open it and paste in what it contains.
We read the public calendars we list from, so we sometimes notice one of these. We never publish what a calendar is missing, and we will only mention it if we think it would genuinely help you.
Questions, or would you like us to look at your feed with you? We are glad to help.
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