Add an Availability Calendar to WordPress

By Brian Duffy on March 4, 2012 - 4:41 pm in Blog, Wordpress, WordPress Plugins / 4 comments

Do you want a simple calendar to let visitors know when your product/service is available? If your website aims to rent out a product for example then the WP Simple Booking Calendar plugin could be for you.

This short post steps you through adding an availability calendar to WordPress.

There are quite a few calendar plugnins available for WordPress. Some allow you to accept online bookings, some allow you to add complex entries to your calendar – most people however want a simple way to show when something is available or not.

Two simple plugins that allow you to setup a basic calendar are:

• Availability Calendar
• WP Simple Booking Calendar

 

Adding the Calendar to WordPress

Step 1. Search for and intall the WP Simple Booking Calendar plugin.

Step 2. Take note of the new menu option along the left hand menu of your admin screen. It is from here that you configure the plugins settings

 

Step 3. Create a new calendar – This plugin allows you to manage multiple calendars. When you install this plugin however you have no calendars created. You must first create a calendar by selecting “add new”

 

Step 4: Edit your Calendar – Once you have a calendar created you can select the Calendar from the list (by clicking on its name) to add bookings.

As you can see from the below picture; for each date you can select whether your product is free or booked.

 

Add the calendar to a page or post – adding the calendar to a page or post is very straightforward. Beneath the text editor (when editing the page/post) you will see a new option which allows you to “send the calendar token to the editor”.

When you send the token a special shortcode is added to your page which loads the calendar and display it in the page/post.

 

Add the calendar to the sidebar – You can also add the calendar as a widget to one of your sidebars. Simply go to the widget screen and drag the new widget to the desired position on your chosen sidebar.

 

You can use the calendar as:

• Availability calendar for a holiday house
• Availability calendar for a Bed & Breakfast
• Reservation scheme for an object
• Availability of employees
• Whatever you like!

See http://www.simplebookingcalendar.comfor more info!