The only thing I find frustrating when working with WordPress is when I need a certain plugin, but get pointed in a 100 directions without finding what I really need. While searching for a suitable calendar for one of my projects this was exactly the situation I was facing. Moreover the calendars I was looking at all had similar names and I got confused on which is which. Anyway my research has led me to 3 leading WordPress Calendar plugins, as follows:

Calendar by Kieran O’Shea

No of downloads to date: 63,427

This is my calendar of choice at the moment. A new version is also about to be released soon which should add even more features. I think this plugin is very cleanly designed and the only two features which I would add are the ability to display a sidebar calendar widget, and the ability to automatically create a new post associated with a new event. A full calendar can be easily displayed in a page/post of your choice by using the tag {CALENDAR} someplace in the post or page using the editor. This tag will be replaced with an instance of Calendar when the page is viewed. The facility to assign colour coded categories of events is also useful. The only downside for me is that it doesn’t have the option to display a small calendar as a widget in the sidebar. However for me the ‘Upcoming Events’ and ‘Today’s Events’ widgets are actually enough for the sidebar, and a mini-calendar would arguably be unnecessary

• Monthly view of events
• Mouse-over details for each event
• Events can have a timestamp (optional)
• Events can display their author (optional)
• Events can span more than one day
• Multiple events per day possible
• Events can repeat on a weekly, monthly or yearly basis
• Repeats can occur indefinitely or a limited number of times
• Easy to use events manager in admin dashboard
• Sidebar function/Widget to show todays events
• Sidebar function/Widget to show upcoming events
• Lists of todays events can be displayed in posts or pages
• Lists of upcoming events can be displayed in posts or pages
• Comprehensive options panel for admin
• Modifiable CSS using the options panel
• Optional drop down boxes to quickly change month and year
• User groups other than admin can be permitted to manage events
• Events can be placed into categories
• A calendar of events for just one of more categories can be displayed
• Categories system can be switched on or off
• Pop up javascript calendars help the choosing of dates
• Events can be links pointing to a location of your choice
• Full internationalisation is possible
• Comaptible with WordPress MU

The Calendar administration panel from where you can add new events and assign categories

The sidebar widget displaying Upcoming Events

The full calendar view in a post/page

No of downloads to date: 111,653

I really liked this plugin for the simple reason that it allows me to work directly from Posts when creating new calendar events. Although the current stable version does not have the functionality to display a full size calendar in a post/page, this feature has been implemented in the current beta version. Sadly this plugin has not been updated for a number of months now and I’m not sure whether the stable version will eventually be released. It would be a pity if development on this is discontinued as it is very close to being an ideal calendar plugin for WordPress with all the necessary features and very easy to use.

The Event Editor details box that gets added to your posts and pages with this plugin.

The mini-calendar widget and Upcoming Events showing in the sidebar

No of downloads to date: 201,855

This seems to be the most actively developed calendar, it has a whole team behind it and is undergoing a total revamp, culminating in the release of version 7 in the near future. It has a good number of features and is a solid bet if you need to have a small calendar widget in your sidebar. WP Events Calendar lets you display a sidebar widget calendar OR upcoming events (would prefer if you could display both at the same time), and also a full calendar on a post/page of your choice.

It is however quite tedious to insert new events as the date has to be entered manually by hand (no date picker here). Also you only get the calendar view in the admin section, there is no list of events available, so if you entered an event but forgot which date you set it at, it will be quite a hassle to go through each month until you find it. These two features have actually put me off using this plugin, but I have high hopes that the new release will make it much easier to use on the admin side, as well as giving us the option to display both a sidebar calendar and Upcoming events widgets.

Admin view for adding new events in the calendar

The full calendar view on the blog

The widget mini-calendar view

WP Calendar by Fabian von Allmen

This looks very promising but is still under development (RC3) as of this date. Check it out though, it should be released quite soon.

WPListCal by Jonathan Kern

Another recently released plugins which differs from the other ones reviewed in that it is specialized to provide clean list or table based output for you to style or reparse any way you’d like. Other calendar plugins force you to use a gregorian calendar view which may be inappropriate for many applications.

Easy PHP Calendar by Jessica Yazbek

Adds the Easy PHP Calendar events administration and setup administration to the WordPress admin area.
NOTE: This plugin does NOT add a calendar to your WordPress installation. It is only for use with Easy PHP Calendar, a piece of software that costs $20 and is available from http://www.easyphpcalendar.com/.

Event Calendar / Schedular by DHTMLX LTD

Also check out this post which has some other interesting calendar solutions for WordPress:

http://chasesagum.com/7-wordpress-calendar-plugins

Event Calendar / Scheduler

Have  you used other calendar plugins? Let me know in the comments section!