some good thinking put into what you want displayed on the site versus what needs to stay private. It might not be the best idea to list Suzy and Johnny’s Wedding on the church web site if Johnny’s formerly jilted girlfriends go Googling his name and decide to crash the party. You want to make sure people can see your calendar, and not only see it, but know if you are doing something. If you don’t get the settings right, it will show an event but the event will be listed as “BUSY” when you are not logged in . . . hardly informative for someone looking at the calendar on a web site. Clicking on the specific calendar (“Public Events”) Shared: Edit Settings link allows us to fix that. You want to “Make this calendar public” and select the “See all event details”. When you click on the Calendar Details you can get the link to embed a calendar. Clicking on the “Customize the color, size, and other options” link brings up a great little helper. You can customize a wide variety of things to make the calendar match your site needs. You can also select multiple calendars to display on one master page. You can then use the copy and paste code to put the calendar into your web site via an iframe (inline frame). Here’s an example of ours: The beauty of this becomes even more apparent as you use the ever changing landscape of connected devices like tablets and smart phones to subscribe to your events via RSS (really simple syndication) or iCal feeds. Suddenly a change can be known to your leadership teams and scheduling conflicts can be minimized. Allowing everyone to knowing what is going on is a huge step forward in comChristian Computing® Magazine
munication. To allow people to request days on the calendar, I would recommend building a Google Form (which is a fancy interface to the Google Spreadsheets and worthy of another article in the future) that allows people to request the resource and day they need. Then your facility planner can simply look at the requests and schedule accordingly. I like what it says in Psalm 39 about numbering our days. What we have here is literally not even a blip compared with the infinite time we will spend with our Lord. I pray that through researching your own calendaring solutions you can be the best stewards of both time and resources to further God’s kingdom among all those who are lost. Psalm 39:4-5 (NIV 2011) “Show me, LORD, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Everyone is but a breath, even those who seem secure.
March 2011
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