Your web designer asks a reasonable question: “Can you send me the embed code for the Altru calendar?” You go looking for a snippet you can paste into WordPress, Squarespace, or Drupal, and there isn’t an obvious one. That’s normal. Altru’s online sales pages were designed as standalone pages you link to, not as widgets you drop into your own site.
That doesn’t mean you’re stuck. There are four realistic ways to put upcoming programs and timed tickets on your website, each with real tradeoffs. This guide covers what each one involves, where it tends to break, and how to choose.
First, be clear about what “calendar” means to you
Before you pick an approach, decide which of these you actually need:
- A listing of events: lectures, camps, member nights, with dates, descriptions, and a “Buy tickets” button.
- A date picker for timed admission: visitors choose a day and see which entry times still have space.
- Both, often on different pages.
A static event listing is easy to maintain by hand. A timed-ticket picker is not, because availability changes every time someone buys. That difference drives almost every decision below.
Option 1: Link to your Altru online sales pages
The simplest route, and the one most organizations start with. Build your events and ticket programs in Altru as usual, publish them to your online sales web forms, and add links or buttons from your own site’s event pages.
Good for: small event calendars, teams without developer help, anything you want running this week.
Watch out for:
- Visitors leave your site and land on a page that looks different. Apply whatever styling options your Altru web forms allow so the handoff isn’t jarring.
- Links break when an event is rebuilt or a URL changes. Keep a simple list of which website pages point to which Altru pages, and check it when you set up a new season.
- There’s no live availability on your own site. “Sold out” only shows up after the click.
Option 2: Put the Altru page in an iframe
This is what most people mean when they ask for “embed code.” In principle you wrap the online sales URL in an <iframe> tag and place it in a custom HTML block on your page.
We’d treat this as something to test carefully rather than count on. Whether a hosted checkout page can be framed by another site depends on the security headers the host sends, and those can change. Even when framing works, you’ll often run into fixed heights that cut off content or cause double scroll bars on phones, payment steps that behave differently inside a frame, and browsers that restrict cookies inside frames from another domain.
If you want to try it, test on a staging page with a real purchase on both iPhone and Android before you publish. If you’re unsure whether framing is supported for your Altru site, ask Blackbaud support directly before your designer builds around it.
Option 3: Maintain a calendar on your website and link each event to Altru
Many WordPress sites use an events calendar plugin to show programs in month, list, or day views, with each event’s button pointing to the matching Altru purchase page. Other CMS platforms have their own equivalents.
Good for: organizations that care about how the calendar looks and how search engines index each event page.
The catch: you’re entering every event twice, once in Altru and once in the CMS. Dates, times, and prices drift. Someone changes a start time in Altru and forgets the website, and visitors show up at the wrong hour. If you choose this path, make one person responsible for both, and add “update website calendar” to your event setup checklist.
This approach also doesn’t fit timed admission well. You can’t realistically hand-maintain remaining capacity for every entry slot.
Option 4: Use a tool that reads availability from Altru
The last option is a calendar that pulls dates, times, and remaining capacity from Altru and renders them on your site, so there’s nothing to re-enter. You can build this yourself if you have developers and can get data access to your Altru instance. Ask Blackbaud what integration options are available for your account before scoping that work. Or you can use an add-on built for it.
How to choose
- Fewer than a dozen events a season, no timed entry: Option 1 or Option 3. Simple and cheap.
- A design-heavy site where events drive search traffic: Option 3, with a disciplined update process.
- Timed admission, or programs that sell out: you need live availability, which means Option 4.
- Anything involving an iframe: test it end to end before you promise it to anyone.
Practical tips whatever you pick
- Use the same event names in Altru and on your website, so staff and visitors don’t have to translate between the two.
- Put the date, time, and price on the website listing itself. People decide before they click.
- Run a test purchase from your website on a phone every time you launch a new season. Most visitors will see it that way.
- Decide what a sold-out event should look like on your site, and who updates it.
Where Social Good fits
For timed tickets and events that need live availability, Calendar Builder creates embeddable website calendars that show real-time availability from Altru. Your designer gets a calendar to place on the page, and Altru stays where your events and tickets are managed.
Quick answers
Does Altru come with a WordPress calendar plugin?
Not that we’re aware of. Most Altru sites either link to their online sales pages or use a separate calendar on the website. If you’ve heard otherwise, confirm with Blackbaud for your specific setup.
Can I just copy the URL into an iframe?
Sometimes, but it depends on how the page is served and how it behaves on mobile and during payment. Test a full purchase before relying on it.
