Calendar feed of u3a Events

Since mid-April 2026 SiteWorks has made u3a Events available in iCalendar format; an industry standard that can be loaded onto your smartphone for example. Every SiteWorks site has a URL that yields calendar entries for all u3a Events on the site. By using a 3rd party calendar plugin (try out on Local WP first), calendars can be presented on SiteWorks sites fed directly from events. No need to maintain the calendar separately.

u3a Events can be associated with interest Groups. As groups tend to meet at regular times and venues there is a facility to generate repeat events based on a single event. For example, if Archaeology meet on the 1st Thursday of the month, then u3a Events for future months can be cloned in seconds. Beacon users will be familiar with this capability.

To create repeats start with the Dashboard and select u3a Events > All Events to locate the event to clone. You can filter by Group and/or Category to home in on the events. Hover over the event to reveal a menu. Click on Repeat Event, The User Guide has more detail here: siteworks.u3a.org.uk/docs/event-pages/#6-toc-title

The use of repeat events will generate a significant number of u3a Events that, over time, become historic past events. The ‘How tos’ article ‘Bulk delete u3a Events’ explains how up to 20 older u3a Events can be Binned in one action..

Display a calendar with the ICS Calendar plugin

The u3a Events feed can be used by any plugin that reads iCalendar format. The SiteWorks developers tested the feed using the plugin ICS iCalendar. Note ICS iCalendar is not supported by the SiteWorks team, but we will share our experience and make best endeavours to help.

These notes get you started – do try out everything in Local WP first.

  1. Add the ICS iCalendar plugin to your site – searching for ICS brings it up. Activate it.
  2. Edit or create the page you wish the calender(s) to appear. It can have other content such as a paragraph to introduce the calendar.
  3. Insert a Shortcode block – typing /s in an empty block is a quick way to do this
  4. In the block enter:
    [ics_calendar url=”https://anytown.u3asite.uk/uploads/event_calendars/u3a_event_calendar.ics”]
    Replace anytown with your u3a subdomain.

You can select specific u3a Event Categories by using the parameter ‘category=’. For example (with a partial URL to aid clarity).:

[ics_calendar url="https://anytown.u3asite.uk/.......calendar.ics" category="Social"]

You can use category=”Social|Study Day” to filter on more than one Category. Separate them with a vertical bar |

The ICS Calendar User Guide has much more, On the Dashboard click ICS Calendar and click the blue ‘Quick Start Guide’ button.