Using Weebly with Google Calendar

I learnt something today about using Google Calendar with the website solution, Weebly, while setting up a simple website which was preventing a key page from being visible to the sites visitors.

The website is for an apartment in England which is let out for private rental for people wishing to rent in Somerset, in the west of the UK. A vital part of any property rental website is the page showing its availability to visitors. The beauty of Weebly is that it lets you integrate a Google Calendar into the pages by simply copying and pasting some HTML from the Google app into the page through the straightforward content management system in the package.

Of course, that is simple to do, but the problem was that visitors to the Weebly based website could not see the Google Calendar which prevented them booking. No Google calendar, no revenue.

Ad-Blockers?

At first I thought my web browser was preventing it because an ad-blocking application was preventing it. But, this was not the case. I checked the Weebly help forums and contacted the help desk, but their response was not very precise and I still could not work out why I could not see the Google Calendar.

Permissions

I eventually tracked it down and it came down to two little check boxes in Google Calendar which dealt with the 'permissions' of who could view it. In the 'Calendar Settings', you need to click the 'Share this Calendar' tab. Then, click the 'Make this calendar public' check box. Finally make sure you un-check the 'Share only my free/busy information (Hide details)' box.

These two little ticks made the Google Calendar in Weebly available to everyone who visits the site. This page is the second most visited page on the website.