You can extract AChurchNearYou.com event information in iCal format.
At the moment it is not possible to import event information into AChurchNearYou.com from another website or church administration system.
We also have an API developers can use, contact us to enquire about the API.
How to access the iCal calendar feed
We have a calendar feed. If you open any church’s services and events page on a desktop (not mobile) and switch to the calendar tab, you will see a ‘Calendar feeds’ button. If you click that, you see ‘Download calendar feed for this church’ and ‘Download calendar feed for this diocese’. By clicking one of these options, you can download an iCal file containing a snapshot in time of that church’s events calendar or the event calendar for all churches in the associated diocese.
Once the file is downloaded, double click it and you will get an option to import this iCal file into a calendar programme but if you do this it is just a snapshot in time, it does not automatically update when events on AChurchNearYou.com are updated.
You can also right click on the ‘Download calendar feed for this church’ or ‘Download calendar feed for this diocese’ button to get a link to the feed, to use in other ways.
For example, using this link, developers with coding knowledge can write a script that gets data from the AChurchNearYou.com calendar feed and then presents it on a separate church website. In this case the script indicating that the feed should be checked at regular intervals to get the latest version. You would need to talk to your website developer if you are interested in this for your own church.
Example of a church that has done this what's on (stphilip.co.uk) drawing on the information on their AChurchNearYou.com calendar Events - Chaddesden: St Philip - A Church Near You.
Your suggestions
We have heard from editors that they would like other ways to be able to display AChurchNearYou.com event information easily elsewhere. Would you be interested in a widget for a WordPress website for example, that would automatically pull your AChurchNearYou.com calendar into a WordPress site page? Let us know on the suggestions form.
We also know that some editors would like to be able to import event data into AChurchNearYou.com from other websites or church administration systems so we are looking at that as part of our longer term plans for the site, considering what systems we could work with and how we would still be able to have AChurchNearYou.com event tagging. Again, if you have suggestions let us know.