Game Calendar WP Registry grade A. No security issues foundWP RegistryNo security issues foundOpen the reportA

A WordPress plugin for gaming sites. Track game releases and gaming events on an interactive calendar, with IGDB integration to auto-fill game metadata.

Built for Gamekast.

Features

• Game Releases — title, release date, developer, publisher, genre, platforms, cover art, URL
• Gaming Events — title, start/end datetime, URL (conferences, showcases, streams)
• IGDB integration — search and auto-fill game data including cover art directly from the add modal
• Admin calendar — click a date to add an entry, click an entry to edit or delete it, all without leaving the calendar
• Public calendar — embed anywhere with a shortcode; month, week, day and agenda views
• Dark gaming theme — styled to match a gaming site aesthetic out of the box
• Cover art in calendar cards — game covers render directly on the calendar tile
• Hover tooltips — rich tooltip on hover showing cover, date, developer, platforms
• Click-to-detail modal — click any event to see full details; visit page button if a URL is set
• Type filters — toggle game releases and gaming events independently
• Discord notifications — push releases, events and DLC to a Discord channel via webhook, with instant, daily, countdown and weekly-digest triggers, rich embeds, optional @everyone/role pings, and per-entry overrides
• Import logs — a Logs page recording everything that entered the calendar, automatically (scheduled IGDB import) or manually (quick-add), plus auto-import runs, cancellations and deletions; filter by source and jump to any entry
• Auto-updates — updates delivered via GitHub Releases, installable from the WP admin

Requirements

• WordPress 6.0+
• PHP 8.0+
• IGDB API credentials (free — requires a Twitch account)
• (optional) A Discord channel webhook, for community notifications

Installation

1. Download the latest game-calendar.zip from Releases
2. WP Admin → Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin → install and activate
3. Go to Settings → Permalinks → Save Changes (flushes rewrite rules)
4. Go to Game Calendar → Settings → enter your IGDB Client ID and Client Secret

IGDB Setup

IGDB uses Twitch OAuth2. To get credentials:

1. Sign in at dev.twitch.tv
2. Click Register Your Application
3. Name: anything (e.g. My Game Calendar)
4. OAuth Redirect URL: http://localhost
5. Category: Application Integration
6. Copy the Client ID and generate a Client Secret
7. Paste both into Game Calendar → Settings → Test Connection to verify

Discord Notifications

Push calendar updates to a Discord community channel via an incoming webhook. No bot or OAuth required.

1. Create a webhook in Discord

1. Open the target channel → Edit Channel (gear icon) → Integrations → Webhooks → New Webhook
2. Give it a name and avatar — these appear on every message; the plugin doesn't override them
3. Click Copy Webhook URL

2. Connect it in WordPress

Go to Game Calendar → Settings → Discord Notifications:

1. Paste the Webhook URL
2. Click Send Test Message — a sample embed should land in your channel within a second (you can test before saving)
3. Pick your triggers, entry types, mention and schedule, then Save Settings

Triggers

Each toggles independently. Entry types (game releases, gaming events, DLC) control what's eligible across all triggers.

When the Instant trigger is on, the calendar quick-add modal shows an Announce on Discord checkbox (ticked by default). Untick it to add an entry silently — the instant alert is skipped, but the entry still appears in the scheduled daily, countdown and weekly digests. To suppress an entry across every trigger, use the per-entry Don't announce this entry on Discord option instead (see below).

Mentions (pings)

Leave Mention blank for no ping, or enter:

• @everyone or @here
• a role mention <@&ROLE_ID> — turn on User Settings → Advanced → Developer Mode in Discord, then Server Settings → Roles → ⋯ → Copy Role ID

The plugin sends the matching allowed_mentions, so the ping actually notifies members (Discord suppresses pings otherwise).

Schedule & timezone

Daily, countdown and weekly times use your site's timezone (Settings → General). Changing them re-arms the schedule automatically when you save.

Note: Scheduled triggers run on WP-Cron, which fires on site traffic — so on a quiet site the 09:00 digest goes out on the first visit after 09:00. For exact timing, disable WP-Cron and point a real server cron at wp-cron.php. Sends that hit Discord's rate limit are retried once; the daily/countdown reminders that fail are re-tried on the next run rather than dropped.

Per-entry overrides

Each release/event/DLC edit screen has a Discord box that overrides the global settings for that entry:

• Don't announce this entry — skip it on every trigger
• Mention override — ping a different role (e.g. @everyone for a big launch)
• Countdown days — a custom lead time for that one entry

Link back to your calendar

Set Calendar page URL to the page where you placed the [game_calendar] shortcode, and every embed gains a 📅 View the full calendar link — a one-click path from Discord back to the site. Leave it blank to omit the link entirely.

Branding

The message name and avatar come from the webhook (step 1). The optional Footer text adds a small line at the bottom of each embed (defaults to the site name).

Usage

Shortcode

Embed the calendar on any page or post:

[game_calendar]

Optional height parameter (default 650px):

[game_calendar height="800px"]

Adding entries

In the WP admin, go to Game Calendar. Either:

• Click any date on the calendar to open the quick-add modal
• Click the Add Release or Event button in the toolbar

For game releases, type in the IGDB search box to auto-fill all fields from the IGDB database.

Editing entries

Click any event on the admin calendar → click Edit in the popover. The modal opens pre-filled — no WP post edit screen required.

Development

Requires wp-env.

npm install -g @wordpress/env
cd game-calendar
wp-env start

WordPress runs at http://localhost:8888 WP Admin at http://localhost:8888/wp-admin (admin / password)

Seed test data

wp-env run cli wp eval-file wp-content/plugins/game-calendar/seed.php

Inserts 10 game releases and 4 gaming events spread across the current period.

Restart environment after changes

wp-env stop && wp-env start

Releasing an update

1. Make your changes
2. Bump the version in game-calendar.php (e.g. 1.0.0 → 1.1.0) in both places: the Version: plugin header and the GC_VERSION constant — they must match
3. Rebuild the zip:

   cd .. && zip -r game-calendar.zip game-calendar \
     --exclude "game-calendar/.wp-env.json" \
     --exclude "game-calendar/.wp-env.php.ini" \
     --exclude "game-calendar/seed.php" \
     --exclude "game-calendar/.git/*"

4. Push to GitHub
5. Create a new release: tag v1.1.0, attach the zip
6. Any site running the plugin will see "Update available" in WP Admin → Plugins

Plugin structure

game-calendar/
├── game-calendar.php              # Bootstrap, autoloader, updater
├── includes/
│   ├── class-post-types.php       # CPT + taxonomy registration
│   ├── class-meta-boxes.php       # Admin meta boxes
│   ├── class-igdb-api.php         # IGDB OAuth + search
│   ├── class-calendar-query.php   # REST endpoint + shortcode
│   ├── class-admin-calendar.php   # Admin calendar page + AJAX
│   ├── class-settings.php         # Settings page
│   ├── class-discord-notifier.php # Discord webhook notifications + cron
│   ├── class-igdb-importer.php    # Scheduled IGDB auto-import + date sync
│   ├── class-import-log.php       # Import/activity log store + backfill
│   └── lib/
│       └── plugin-update-checker/ # Auto-updater library
├── admin/
│   ├── js/admin-calendar.js       # Admin calendar + modal JS
│   ├── js/igdb-search.js          # IGDB search on post edit screens
│   ├── css/admin-calendar.css     # Admin calendar styles
│   └── css/admin.css              # Post edit screen styles
├── public/
│   ├── js/calendar.js             # Public calendar JS
│   └── css/calendar.css           # Public calendar styles
└── templates/
    └── calendar.php               # Shortcode template

License

GPL v2 or later

Credits

• FullCalendar — calendar UI
• IGDB API — game metadata
• Plugin Update Checker — auto-updates