Embedding a Calendar Widget

Customize Your Site!

A calendar widget is an online tool directed to student's personal calendar the helps serve variety of purposes: manage appointments, keep track of events, and much more. The purpose of this file is to input student's personal calendar in their Penn State blogs as a widget.  A widget is a tool that helps customize a website. In this file, it specifically refers to embedding the calendar in the bottom right corner at the homepage. In order to complete the task, a Google account and a blog website are needed. It takes approximately 3 minutes to complete this task.

 

The screencast below will provide detailed steps used in this process. Beneath the video tutorial is a list of steps to follow along. The screencast tutorial will provide a visual aid to each task used in embedding a calendar widget.  



Screencast Tutorial

 


View the full screen video version here.


Acquiring a Calendar Code

1.    Log into Gmail account.

2.    At the top left side, click on Calendar.

Note: A giant calendar will open up. On the left hand margin of the window, a couple of boxes including My Calendars and Other Calendars should appear.

3. Under My Calendars, click on the small blue link called Settings.

4.    On the new window titled "calendar settings", click on the gmail address in blue (english202cjn@gmail.com for example).

Note:  A new page titled with personal email details should appear. At the bottom of the page, there is a section called Embed This Calendar where there is a picture of a calendar. At the right side of the calendar picture, there is a white box with a long code.

 5.    Highlight and copy the code in the white box.


Creating a Calendar Widget

1.    Log into Penn State Blogs

2.    After logging in, at the top of the window there is a tab called Design. Click on the drop box and click on the middle tab called Widgets. A new page titled "widgets" containing widget sets and widget templates should appear.

3.    At the middle of the page there is a link called Widget Template. Click on the small blue link underneath it that is called Create widget template.

4. This will open a new window called "create widget" with a blank document. In the giant white box, paste the code that was copied from the Gmail window calendar in step 6.

NOTE: It is possible to view the display of the calendar at this point. To do this, there are two A buttons (<A>׀<A>) at the top right corner above the white bow where the code was pasted.

5. Click the right A that is black (not the first A that is orange). The display of the calendar should appear.

6. Now, click on the left A (the orange one) and continue the next steps.

 Note: In the code that was copied in step 6 and pasted in the blank document, there is a part that says width="800" height="600".

7. Change the width from 800 to 300, and the height from 600 to 400. This will resize your calendar widget, making it small enough to view on the blog widget.

NOTE: Skipping this step will result in a large calendar that will be too big for the main sidebar of your blog! Make sure the width and height are changed to 300 and 400, respectively.

8. After changing the code, type Calendar in the rectangular box above the drop box where it says insert. This titles the widget.

9. Click on Save at the bottom of the page.

Note: Completion of the creation of the Calendar Widget is verified with a box that says 'Your template changes have been saved. There will be a green check in this box.

Now that widget was successfully created, the final step is to place this widget in the sidebar.


Inserting a Calendar Widget into the Blog Sidebar

1.  Click the Design tab on the top of the window and click the link titled Widgets.

2. Now under widget sets, click Main Sidebar (third link down).

Note: The new window will feature two columns; one is titled Installed Widgets and the other is called Available Widgets. The boxes under the installed widgets are the ones featured under the main side bar of the Penn State blog.

3. To add the newly created widget, simply drag the calendar tab from the available widgets column over to the installed widgets and scroll it to the bottom of the window and then click save change.

4. To verify this addition to your sidebar and save your change, click the publish icon on the top of the window. The icon looks like two arrow forming a circle, and is located next to the tools icon.

publish.JPG


 Note: A small new window will pop up asking to publish or cancel your change.

6. Publish to verify the successful addition of the widget.


Mission accomplished! To view the calendar widget, go to the personal Penn State blog. The calendar widget should be at to the bottom right side!  


DSC_3694.JPG

 

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