With school starting for many students this month, We thought this would be a great time to give you 6 reasons why Zap Calendar may just be the best Joomla calendar application for school web sites.

1. Calendars can be defined by school year or calendar year

Zap Calendar was initially developed for a school to post school and sports team events, even a lunch calendar, so many of the features were developed with schools in mind. One of these features was the ability to display a school calendar year from July 1 to June 30.  This is set in the calendar settings under the "Yearly" tab.  When this is set, the yearly calendar as well as the month header plugin display starts with July instead of January.

2. Athletic teams using another calendar? Import those events into Zap Calendar

There are several web services that cater to school athletic programs.  They provide schedule and calendar features that appeal to a coach or athletic director, but unfortunately they are usually managed by someone other than the web master.  This is not a problem with Zap Calendar, since Zap Calendar can import iCalendar formatted events.   Also, Zap Calendar is flexible in how the teams are defined.  By creating a category for each team, the athletic calendar can display teams by season or gender or you can combine all teams into one calendar.  Using the iCal Sync plugin (available in the Pro version), schedule changes from the external web service will automatically be updated in Zap Calendar. Otherwise, re-import events manually when schedule changes occur.

3. Keep parents up to date on upcoming events with automatic weekly e-mails

Parents can subscribe to an e-mail list that sends weekly e-mails of upcoming school events.  An automatic e-mail is be sent once a week (typically Saturday or Sunday) containing events for the upcoming week.  If you have a sports calendar, you can create a separate e-mail list for that or combine it into one e-mail for all school and athletic events.  Information on how to configure this can be found by clicking here.

4. Post your events automatically to your school's Facebook page

You can use Zap Calendar to automatically post events to your Facebook wall.  Sure, you can do it manually, but if you have a lot of events this can be a significant time saver for your Facebook page admin.  You can post all upcoming events or just events from selected categories.  You can also select how far in advance to post the event (1 day prior, 1 week prior, etc.).  Information on how to configure this can be found by clicking here.

5. Show weather information on your school calendar

Weather is an important factor in determining school delays and cancellations, and a topic of high importance to teachers, parents and students .  Zap Calendar is integrated with Zap Weather, a free open-source product from Z Content that provides USA weather forecasts and alerts for Joomla web sites.  Combined with Zap Weather, Zap Calendar can display the upcoming weather forecast alongside your events for that day.  Students can see the forecast for upcoming days directly on the school calendar, and perhaps plan on putting their pajamas on inside out and backwards or other snow day rituals .  Zap Weather can also be configured to display weather alerts issued by the National Weather Service on your Joomla site.

6. Discounts available for schools and other non-profit organizations

Schools and other non-profit organizations can purchase Zap Calendar at a 20% discount, which means you can purchase Zap Calendar for your school or non-profit starting at less than $25.  This is an extremely agressive price for the number of features you get with a product that has been in development for 8 years.  To receive the non-profit discount, please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for details prior to ordering.