3task Event Calendar: Recurring Events & iCal

3task Calendar is an event calendar for clubs, practices, schools and small businesses that want to publish dates without sending visitor data to third parties. Everything runs on your own WordPress: no external fonts, no CDN, no tracking, no account.

Dates can come straight from your posts. Set a date while you write, for example the cinema release of a film, a book release or a match day, and the post appears in the calendar by itself, with its title, link and image. A date you already keep in a custom field (Advanced Custom Fields, Meta Box or any other plugin) can be used without entering anything twice.

Live demo: 3task.de/en/calendar-demo/ shows all eleven designs with the same sample events, plus the paid add-on 3task Calendar Pro with sign-ups, opening hours and calendar import. A real site: watchguide.net/film-events/ runs the free plugin with more than 200 festival dates, partner highlighting and the event schema.

Visitors can add a single event to their own calendar or subscribe to the whole calendar (or one category) on their phone. Changes appear there automatically.

Key Features

• Unlimited Events: Create as many events as you need
• Dates from Posts: A date field in the post editor (block editor and classic editor) for posts, pages and custom post types; the calendar entry stays in sync with title, link, image and date
• Existing Date Fields: Use a date you already store in a custom field (ACF, Meta Box, any plugin) and apply it to all existing posts with one click
• Date Box in Posts: Block “Date of this post” or [threecal_post_date] shows the date with an “Add to my calendar” button, also automatically at the start or end of a post
• Poster View: Upcoming dates as large tiles with the post image, for example “This week at the cinema”
• Postponed Dates: When a published date moves, the calendar shows “Postponed, previously …” and subscribers get the new date
• Only the Month Known: For festivals and other dates of which only the month is set, the calendar shows “July 2027, date to be announced”; the month view lists them in a bar above the grid. Such dates stay out of the iCal feed and the event schema until the day is known
• CSV Import: Import events from a spreadsheet. A preview shows what happens before anything is saved, and importing the same file again updates the events instead of creating duplicates. Also available as WP-CLI command wp threecal import
• Recurring Events: Daily, weekly, every two weeks, monthly or yearly, with an end date; single dates can be cancelled, removed or changed on their own
• Cancelled Events: A cancelled date stays visible, crossed out, so nobody turns up in vain; subscribers and search engines get the cancellation too
• iCal Export and Subscription: “Add to my calendar” for every event and a subscription feed (all events or one category) for Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook and Thunderbird
• Translations Included: German (du and Sie) complete; Spanish, French and Italian for everything visitors see (calendar, lists, popup, calendar file, submission form)
• Unlimited Categories: Organize events with color-coded categories
• Month and List Views: Multi-day events appear on every day they cover
• Search and Day Filter: A search field in the calendar and in event lists finds events by title, description, location and city, with results grouped by day; a click on a day shows that day’s events under the month grid. No external service, nothing is stored
• Four Designs: Clear (light), Accent (bold color header), Night (dark) and Theme colors (takes colors and font from your theme, no own look), with your own accent color; events take their category color automatically
• Highlighted Categories: Mark a category, and its events get a frame in the category color and a badge with the category name, for partners, sponsors or your own events
• Links You Control: Links from events to other websites are nofollow and open in a new window; switch single categories or the whole calendar to follow
• Reminder Without an Account: The downloaded calendar file can carry a reminder (30 minutes to 2 days before); the visitor’s own calendar app shows it, your site stores nothing
• Print: One click prints the month on screen or the list, without controls, readable in black and white
• Visitors Submit Events: Shortcode [threecal_submit] shows a form; every submission is saved as a draft that only you can publish. Spam protection without external services, optional e-mail of the submitter for questions, no IP address stored
• JSON Feed for AI Search and Apps: /wp-json/threecal/v1/events lists the upcoming events with ISO dates and time zone, place, organizer, categories and calendar file; filter by category and date, calendar pages announce the feed, and the settings hand you a block for your llms.txt
• Schema Check: Settings show the next 20 events and tell you which ones get event markup, which of the five places they take and why one gets none, with a link to Google’s Rich Results Test
• Paste the Link, Get the Event: Enter the address of an event’s website and click “Fill in from this website”. Title, date, description, location and organizer are read from that page (schema.org event markup or Open Graph tags) into the empty fields
• Responsive: Adapts to small screens
• Gutenberg Block: Live preview in the editor, choose view, design and category
• Shortcodes: Flexible placement options
• Schema.org SEO: Event markup with ISO dates and time zone for events at a real place; office hours, holidays or release dates can be excluded per category, as Google requires. The organizer is set per event, a site that only lists events is never named as organizer
• Route Link: “Plan route” opens OpenStreetMap only when the visitor clicks it
• Accessible Popup: Dialog role, keyboard focus and Escape to close
• Mobile List: On small screens the calendar starts in list view
• GDPR Friendly: Made in Germany with privacy in mind

Easy to Use

1. Install and activate
2. Create your first event
3. Add the calendar to any page with shortcode or Gutenberg block
4. Done!

Shortcodes

Display Calendar:
[threecal]

Options: view (month, list), category, location, theme (default, accent, dark, site), show_filters, show_legend, show_subscribe, show_print, show_search, mobile_list (true/false).

With Options:
[threecal view=”month” category=”1″]

Event List:
[threecal_events limit=”10″]

Options: view (list, grid, compact, poster), category, location, limit (per page), columns, show_past, show_pagination, show_search, month (current, next or a month such as 2026-10), day (one day such as 2026-10-24), running (number of days).

Events of One Day:
[threecal_events day=”2026-10-24″]

A Whole Month, for Example “Releases in October”:
[threecal_events view=”poster” month=”2026-10″ category=”1″]

Now Showing (Started Within the Last 40 Days):
[threecal_events view=”poster” running=”40″ category=”1″]

Posters with Post Images:
[threecal_events view=”poster” category=”1″ columns=”4″]

Date of a Post (with “Add to my calendar”):
[threecal_post_date]

Upcoming Events:
[threecal_upcoming limit=”5″]

Mini Calendar (Perfect for Sidebars):
[threecal_mini]

Gutenberg Block

Simply search for “3task Calendar” in the block inserter to add a calendar to any page or post.

No feature locks

3task Calendar works completely on its own. Every feature in this plugin is unlocked.

External Services

3task Calendar does not connect to any external service by itself. The “Plan route” link of an event opens OpenStreetMap in a new tab only when a visitor clicks it; nothing is sent before that.

“Fill in from this website” in the event form (since 1.7.0): when you click the button, your server fetches the one address you entered in the “Event URL” field, reads the event markup or Open Graph tags on that page and fills in the empty fields. Nothing is fetched without the click, no other address is contacted, and nothing about your site is sent except the usual request (the user agent names the plugin and your site address so the website owner knows who asked).

Does the plugin ask for a review?

Once, at the earliest 14 days after you first opened the plugin and once ten dates are published, on the Dashboard and Events tabs of the plugin only, never as a notice elsewhere. “Maybe later” asks one more time after 90 days, “I already did” and the × close it for good. A review is not required for anything, and nothing changes in the plugin, whatever you choose.

Credits

Icons: Tabler Icons, MIT license, embedded as inline SVG (no icon font, no external request).

About 3task.de

3task Calendar is developed by 3task.de, specialists in WordPress plugin development. We create focused, lightweight tools that solve real problems.

Visit 3task.de

Support

• WordPress.org Support Forum
• Built-in Help tab in plugin settings

Contact 3task.de