Skip to main content
Stanford
Events Help Documentation for the Stanford Events Calendar

Which connection should we use?

To help you decide which connection to the Events Calendar makes the most sense for your use case, some pros and cons of each connection type are listed below.

Embeddable Widgets

Pros:

  • The Widget Builder allows you to easily select the types of events you want to display on your site by all filtering categories available on the Events Calendar website.
  • Embed code automatically generated to simply copy/paste to your website.
  • “Live” connection to the Events Calendar, so any time changes are made to events in the system the changes are updated on your site immediately.
  • No technical expertise necessary beyond an understanding of how to create content/pages on your website.
  • Various styles (templates) to choose from that all follow the Stanford brand identity.

Cons:

  • Links to event detail pages take users off your site to the Events Calendar site.
  • Event listings cannot be displayed alongside other event content you may create internally on your website.

RSS and Calendar Feeds

Pros:

  • Common format that is used by many website and content management system plugins/modules for importing data.

Cons:

  • Very limited data available through the hCalendar format used by Localist.

Drupal Importer Module

Pros:

  • Readily available for any site on the Stanford Sites platform.
  • Developed, supported, and documented by Stanford Web Services (SWS).
  • Allows you to easily select the types of events you want to display on your site by all filtering categories available on the Events Calendar website.
  • Creates event detail and listing pages on your own site from the data that is imported so all links are internal and users are not sent to the Events Calendar site for details.
  • Automatic content updates, pulled twice daily from the Events Calendar with a “Save & Import” button for times when you need to import updated content immediately.
  • Events imported from the Events Calendar are included with your internally-created event listings.

Cons:

  • A Drupal 9-specific module, not available for earlier versions of Drupal or other CMS’s such as WordPress, Adobe Experience Manager, Storyblok, etc.
  • The Events Calendar is the source of truth for all imported event information and event info is overwritten with each pull. If you change any information in Drupal, it will be overwritten when data is pulled. (It is recommended to make all edits to imported events within the Events Calendar.)

Localist API

Pros:

  • Full read-only access to all data in the Events Calendar system – events, places, departments, and groups – in standard JSON format.

Cons:

  • Requires advanced web development expertise to implement and manage.
  • Read only and cannot be used to send data from your site back to Localist.

CSV/XLS Import to Localist

Pros:

  • Can be set up to automatically push data from your website in to the Events Calendar on a once-daily basis.
  • Can also be used as a one-time bulk import of data to the Events Calendar.
  • Content management of events remains on your own website with added exposure through the Events Calendar.

Cons:

  • Can only be used to push data from your website to the Events Calendar. There is no .csv export connection from the Events Calendar to use for pulling Events Calendar content to your website.
  • Requires advanced technical expertise to generate a properly formatted .csv file with fields that match those available in the Events Calendar.