Church Admin Plugin

Import iCal

✓ Free ⭐ Premium

The Import iCal screen lets you pull events from an external calendar into Church Admin by entering an iCal feed URL. Any calendar that publishes an iCal feed — Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, Planning Center, and many others — can be imported. Events are fetched and added to your Church Admin calendar automatically on a schedule.

Go to Church Admin → Calendar → Import iCal.

Adding an iCal feed

iCal URL

Paste the iCal feed URL from your external calendar. This is a web address ending in .ics that the external calendar provides for subscription. How to find it depends on the source:

  • Google Calendar — open the calendar settings, scroll to Integrate calendar, and copy the Secret address in iCal format link
  • Apple Calendar / iCloud — right-click the calendar, choose Get Sharing Link, and change webcal:// to https://
  • Outlook — go to calendar settings and find the Publish calendar option, then copy the ICS link
  • Other sources — look for an Export, Subscribe, or iCal option in the calendar’s settings

Calendar name

Give the feed a name — for example Google Calendar or Hall Bookings. This name is used to identify the feed in the list of imported feeds and helps distinguish events imported from this source from others on your calendar.

Category

Select which Church Admin calendar category the imported events should be assigned to. All events from this feed will be given this category — useful for colour-coding imported events so they are visually distinct from events entered directly in Church Admin.

How often to update

Choose how frequently Church Admin should check the feed for new or updated events:

  • Hourly — checks for updates every hour. Use this if the source calendar changes frequently and you need changes to appear quickly.
  • Daily — checks once a day. Suitable for most church calendars where events are planned days or weeks ahead.
  • Weekly — checks once a week. Use this for slow-changing calendars or to reduce server load.

How many months ahead to import

Set how far ahead Church Admin should import events from the feed — 1, 3, 6, or 12 months. Events beyond this horizon are not imported until they fall within the window. This keeps your calendar from being flooded with events far in the future from an active external calendar.

Show on public calendar

Tick this to make imported events visible on the public-facing calendar shortcode on your website. Leave unticked to keep imported events visible only in the admin dashboard — useful for internal calendars you don’t want to publish.

Saving and first import

Click Save. Church Admin immediately fetches the feed and imports events within the configured horizon. Subsequent updates happen automatically on the configured schedule, triggered by WordPress Cron on the first website visit after the scheduled interval.

Managing existing feeds

Saved feeds appear in a list below the form showing the feed name, URL, category, update frequency, and last updated time. From here you can:

  • Edit — update the category, frequency, horizon, or public visibility settings
  • Refresh now — force an immediate fetch of the feed outside the normal schedule, useful when you know the source calendar has been updated and don’t want to wait
  • Delete — removes the feed and all events imported from it from your Church Admin calendar

If events aren’t appearing

  • Check the URL is correct — paste it into a browser to confirm it returns a file rather than an error page. It should prompt a download of an .ics file or display iCal data.
  • Check the events are within the import horizon — events further ahead than your configured months ahead setting won’t appear yet
  • Check the category is visible — if the category is set to hidden on the public calendar, events in that category won’t appear on the website even if Show on public calendar is ticked
  • Use Refresh now — if you just saved the feed and events haven’t appeared yet, click Refresh now to trigger an immediate fetch rather than waiting for the cron schedule

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