One of the many plugin types used to extend a WordPress site are calendar ones. Many free and premium ones are available in the repository and elsewhere with a whole set of functionality from displaying simple dates to client booking for example. XO Event Calendar is a free plugin on the simpler side of the spectrum.
After a normal plugin installation the Events menu is added in the WordPress backend. XO Event Calendar adds its own custom post type and taxonomy (category). Each category can have its own background color on the calendar. In a similar way any number of holidays can be created and assigned background colors with ‘day-off’, ‘morning-off’ and ‘afternoon-off’ presets available. Add new events by entering a title, description and optionally an excerpt. Pick a start and end date and choose or create its category on the fly. The event title will be displayed on the calendar and linked to the detail page.
To display the calendar on a page or post use the [xo_event_calendar] shortcode. The shortcode includes the option for displaying holidays, somewhat surprisingly showing holidays are not “true” by default. Other options include showing previous and next month arrows and ability to limit the number of months one can move to, for example previous=”1″ and next=”6″ will only display the previous month’s and the next six months’ dates. It is possible to include only certain categories by naming which to display using categories=”slug”. One can also display different versions of the calendar using the id option (“xo-event-calendar-2”, “xo-event-calendar-3”, etc.), this requires a different page for each calendar displayed.
All in all XO Event Calendar is a clean and minimalist calendar for WordPress, it is relatively new on the scene.
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