Create a Dynamic Events Calendar on your Website

One of the great things about what they call Web 2.0 is the way that communications tools are always evolving and becoming easier and easier for ordinary people to use - and all for free.

By mashing up various free online tools you can create an dynamic Events Calendar for your speaking engagements or other activitites for your website or blog. In the old days, if you wanted to update your website with new events, you had to contact your web guy and get him to update the Events page of your website or fiddle around yourself with HTML. It all took a lot of time and effort. Now, after some initial time spent setting things up, you can easily update an online calendar with your event and it will automatically appear on your website or blog.

Take a look at the new Events page I’ve created (click on Events at the top of this ZenGuide page) and you’ll see a list of events involving me and/ or my friends. Click on any of the events listed and you will be taken to a more detailed page with a brief description of where and what it’s all about.

If you want to create a similar Events Calendar for your blog, this is what you need to do:

1. Sign up for a Google Calendar
2. Create a public calendar
3. Enter your event(s) in the calendar
4. In Settings, you will find the URL for the calendar under “Calendar Address”.

5. Sign up for a Feedburner account
6. Create a Feedburner feed for your calendar by copying and pasting the Calendar URL (item 4 above)
7. In the “Optimize” tab, go to Event Feed and create and event feed
8. In the “Publicize” tab, go to BuzzBoost and activate the event feed
9. Copy and paste the code from BuzzBoost and place it on your website or blog

10. Update your Google calendar from time to time with new events and they will automatically appear on your website/ blog where you pasted the code.