WordPress is used by a lot of people to build communities around their websites. These communities use WordPress to publish news, run online forums and organize meetup groups. Meetup.com is a place where like minded people can find and start their own meetup groups. In this article we will show you how to connect WordPress with a Meetup.com group.
Earlier we wrote about Google+ Hangout Events and adding Google Calendar in WordPress. Both are great ways to organize events and allow people to RSVP. However, Meetup.com Groups are online communities built specifically to organize meetups and bring like minded people closer. It has built in social media features which allow you and other group members to spread the word around their social circles easily. If you are running an online community on WordPress, as well as running a Meetup.com group then this is the way to do it. By connecting your site to your group, you will be able to automatically display upcoming events, and allow users to RSVP from your site.
Video Tutorial
If you don’t like the video or need more instructions, then continue reading.
To connect your WordPress site with Meetup.com Group, first you need to install and activate Meetup Widgets plugin. After activating the plugin, you need to enter your Meetup API, Oauth consumer, and Oauth secret keys under Settings » General.
You can obtain these keys by visiting Meetup API website. First click on the API Key link in the menu and it will show your API key, which you can copy and paste on plugin settings page. You still need OAuth consumer key and secret, to obtain them you need to click on OAuth Consumers link on Meetup.com API page.
You will be asked to provide some basic information for your app. First you need to enter a name for your app, this could be your website’s title or the title of your Meetup Group. Enter your website’s URL in all other fields and save changes.
Meetup.com will now create an OAuth Consumers account for your website and will show your consumer key and secret.
Copy and paste your consumer key and consumer secret on meetup widgets settings page and save your changes. You have now successfully connected your website with Meetup.com.
The next step is to add Meetup.com group events to your website. To do that, you need to go to Appearance » Widgets where you will notice two new widgets, Meetup List Event and Meetup Single Event widgets. As the names suggest the list event widget allows you to display a list of meetup events for your group and the single event widget allows you to add a single meetup event. You can drag and drop these widgets to your sidebar or any widget ready area on your site.
For Meetup Event List widget you will need to enter your group ID. Your group name in the URL slug can be used in the Group ID field. Just visit your group page on meetup.com and copy your group name from the URL. Example:
http://www.meetup.com/your-group/
To display a single event, drag and drop the Meetup Single Widget to your sidebar and enter the event ID. You can obtain your event ID by visiting the event page on your meetup.com group and the event ID will be the last part of the URL like this:
http://www.meetup.com/your-group/events/137056792/
That’s all, we hope this article helped you connect Meetup.com Group to your WordPress site. Let us know which tools you prefer to organize events and meetups on your website?
