One of Zap Calendar's unique features is the ability to automatically post upcoming events to Facebook.  For example, an upcoming event in your calendar could be posted automatically 2 days prior to the event on your Facebook page. Over the years this feature has been accomplished through several services that have since come and gone.  Twitter Feed is the latest service to shut down that was used to push Zap Calendar events to Facebook. Fortunately, there is a new service that can also push events to Facebook and this service appears to be much more popular due to the multiple connected sources it supports.  Zapier (No relationship to Zap Calendar ;-) connects applications and automates workflows using "Zaps" (really, there is not relationship between us and them), and works very nicely with posting events from your Zap Calendar site to Facebook. This article describes how to configure Zapier and Zap Calendar to enable posting of events to Facebook. This feature is available with all versions of Zap Calendar, including the Lite version.

There are two steps for setting automatic posting to Facebook: The Zap Calendar back-end setup and the Zapier setup.

The Zap Calendar Back-End Setup

Zapier works with Zap Calendar's RSS feature to decide what upcoming events to publish and when to publish them.  Through the Zap Calendar back-end setup, you control the timing of the when the event is posted to Facebook.  From the Zap Calendar back-end, select the calendar section (view section in Zap Calendar 3). Edit a calendar or create a new one, and edit the following RSS settings:

• RSS Feed for this calendar: Yes
• Use publishDate Tag in RSS Feed: Yes
• URL Home Page for RSS Feed: {use URL of your web site home page}
• Event format in RSS feed: Default
• RSS publish mode: Daily
• Weekly Mode - publish day: {not used}
• Daily Mode - # of upcoming days: {Set to # of days prior to event to publish:1 for today's events, 2 for tomorrow's events, 7 for events 1 week away, etc.}

You should also ensure you have the time zone set in the Joomla global settings so the event is forward when you expect it.

The Facebook post will include an event image if one is available.  The category icon image or the first image in the event description will be used if available.  Just in case neither of these images are available, you can set a default category icon in the Zap Calendar global settings (new in version 4.0.9).  This image will be used if the others are not available.

A setting in the calendar you may wish to update is the date format field, located in the calendar's event tab.  This option is used to format the event date in the event title.  For example if you wish to display just the month and day in the event title (no day of week or year), use "%B %d".

From the calendar manager screen, click the RSS icon to obtain the RSS URL.  Copy this URL, which will be used in the Twitter Feed setup.

Zapier Setup

Zapier's free service allows RSS posting of articles from RSS feeds to Facebook and other sites.

To configure, go to Zapier.com and create a free account. From the explore section, select the Facebook and RSS icon. You can use the search feature to make finding the icons easier.

Once RSS and Facebook icons are selected, the box, "Share new RSS feed items to Facebook" will appear.  Click the "Use this Zap" button to continue.

To set up the RSS item, enter the RSS feed URL from Zap Calendar. You will find this in the calendar manager and clicking the RSS icon for the appropriate calendar.  You will need at least one RSS item in the feed to continue, so if you do not currently have any items in the feed, increase the # of upcoming days in the calendar settings (see above) until you get at least one event.  Once the setup is complete, you can revert back to the original # of upcoming days.

You should see a "Test Succesful!" prompt if everything is working so far.  Click the "Continue" button to configure the Facebook setup.

Connect to your Facebook account.  If you are posting to a Facebook group that you manage, select "Public" access (selecting the Facebook group for postings will be chosen in the next screen).

The "Set up Facebook Pages" page maps the RSS fields to the appropriate Facebook field. Here are suggested field settings:

Summary

Posting events to Facebook is a great way to publicize your Zap Calendar events outside of your web site.  Using Zap Calendar and Zapier, the posting process is very easy since it is done automatically on your behalf.  You don't have to worry about forgetting to post your events to Facebook, since Zap Calendar and Zapier will take care of it for you.

Notes

Facebook keeps a cache of events posted when sharing.  So if, for example, you change the title or perhaps the image to an event, Facebook may not see the change without clearing the cache.  To clear Facebook's cache, use Facebook's linter tool, located at

https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug

Enter the URL of the event (from the RSS feed) to clear the cache.

Facebook notes that it recommends images at least 300 x 300 pixels in size.  If you do not see your image displayed in the Facebook post, try an image at least this size.  You may need to use the Facebook linter tool to clear the old image from the cache.