Blocks4CS is a plugin providing blocks that enable display of event and small group data from ChurchSuite in various ways.
Blocks For ChurchSuite allows you to display certain data from ChurchSuite
on your WordPress website without resorting to embedding iframes. This
plugin provides Blocks that are easy to drop into any page or post. Each
block will, behind the scenes, request data from your ChurchSuite feed,
and will display the data returned in a similar way to the usual
ChurchSuite iframes, but natively to your website. Many aspects of the
display can be modified in your theme to make the display match your
website theme. The blocks allow you to use a range of attributes so that
you can display just the information you want for each part of your
website.
Current features include:
- block to return events as ‘cards’ with the event image and details
- block to return events in a ‘list’ group by date
- block to return a full month calendar, for the current month or a date
- block to return groups as ‘cards’ with the group image and details
- All API requests are cached with a 4 hour cache to ensure fast performance
A little Technical information
For the technical among you: This block works on the ‘server side’,
building the response which is delivered to your browser from churchsuite.
Support
If you have a problem or a feature request, please send a message to the author.
Demo
Currently there is no demo site, but you can view examples on a church website:
Contributions
This plugin relies on information provided by ChurchSuite using their
’embed’ JSON feed. Details of this JSON feed can be found here:
https://github.com/ChurchSuite/churchsuite-api/blob/master/modules/embed.md
Usage
-
For the Event Cards block, place the block into a page or post. Set
the name of your ChurchSuite feed in the Church Name attribute (ie.
the name that is at the start of your churchsuite url e.g.
https://mychurch.churchsuite.com – the name is ‘mychurch’).
You should see the block populate with events in the
editor straightaway
You can ude the various parameters in the side bar to refine your
search for events – see below for the many options
Because your calendar will have many events, we can limit the number
of events which are returned using the Number Of Events attribute
combined with the Days Ahead attribute. This latter attribute sets
how many days ahead you will look over to find a set of events from.
If this is set too large and you have a lot of events, the data
request from ChurchSuite will take too long to return. So just
experiment until you get the number of events over the time period
you want.
Other attributes allow you to refine the events returned as follows:
- Start Date – the starting date to look for events
- Days Ahead – the number of days ahead from the start date to look
- Number of Results – the number of events to display from those returned
- Featured – whether to show only events marked as ‘Featured’
And, in the ‘Advanced’ group you can do further refinements:
- Categories – only look for events in the categories whose category
numbers are given
- Event Names – Only list events where the string given is in the
event title (e.g. ‘service’ to return all services)
- Sites – if you have a multi-site church, only look for events
for the sites whose site numbers are given
- Events – Only look for events in the list of event numbers
(Useful if you want to highlight a few particular events)
- Merge – List only the first event or all events in a sequence
- Sequence – Only list events in a given sequence number
Details of these attributes and their values can be found here:
https://github.com/ChurchSuite/churchsuite-api/blob/master/modules/embed.md
-
For the Event List block, place the block into a page or post. Set
the name of your ChurchSuite feed in the Church Name attribute (ie.
the name that is at the start of your churchsuite url e.g.
https://mychurch.churchsuite.com – the name is ‘mychurch’).
You should see the block populate with events in the
editor straightaway
The comments above about attributes you can set also apply to this
block. By default only a maximum of 5 days events are returned, but
this can be overridden using the attributes.
-
For the Calendar block , place the block into a page or post. Set
the name of your ChurchSuite feed in the Church Name attribute (ie.
the name that is at the start of your churchsuite url e.g.
https://mychurch.churchsuite.com – the name is ‘mychurch’).
You should see the calendar block populate with events in the
editor straightaway.
Fewer customization parameters are available for this block because
only a subset of the parameters listed above make sense for a monthly
calendar.
-
For the Smallgroups block,, place the block into a page or post. Set
the name of your ChurchSuite feed in the Church Name attribute (ie.
the name that is at the start of your churchsuite url e.g.
https://mychurch.churchsuite.com – the name is ‘mychurch’).
You should see the block populate with groups in the
editor straightaway.
The only parameter for SmallGroup lists that ChurchSuite supports is
the sites parameter, which you will find under the ‘Advanced’ section.
License
The plugin itself is released under the GNU General Public License. A
copy of this license can be found at the license homepage or in the top
comment within the blocks4cs.php file.
FAQ
The block produces no output
The default behaviour when there is an error is to give no output
rather than produce error messages all over your website. Check
that you have supplied the correct churchname, or test it with the
churchname ‘demo’ to see if that is the problem. Check that you can
actually get to your ChurchSuite JSON api url – try entering the
following URL in a browser with your church name instead of mychurch:
https://mychurch.churchsuite.com/embed/calendar/json?num_results=3
How do I add my church so that I get the JSON feed for my church?
You must use the block Church Name attribute to enter the name of
your church which appears at the start of the churchsuite URL for
your church.
I want to limit the number of events in the block
You can use the Number of Events block attribute to show a
particular number of events.
The block is not showing any results
By default the Events List only looks ahead 5 days and Events Cards
only 20 days. If your future events are beyond that nothing will
show, or if you are only looking for featured events or events
within a particular category or with a particular name, none may be
within the number of days being searched. So just adjust the Days
Ahead attribute or the search parameters.
I’ve changed a search attribute but the seems to be no change to the results
All search attributes are ‘sanitized’ to legal values before they are
used, and if a sane legal value cannot be found the attribute is
discarded. So, for example, a date like 2025-02-40 would be ignored.
The block doesn’t change what you have entered into the attributes so
as not to confuse you. So, just try some different attribute values
until you get something legal. If in doubt, remove the block and add
a new block – this will start with ‘sane’ default values, and you
can test on the ‘demo’ site ChurchSuite provides to see what it
returns. Alternatively, use the Church Name ‘cambray’ to test – it
has a busy programme of events and so most queries will return a
result if legal search values are given.
I want to change how the output looks:
In general the blocks don’t seek to set fonts and only use relative
text sizes. So, by setting fonts or text size in surrounding
blocks you will see changes in the blocks themselves. You can also
use the font size attributes in the style tab to set the base font
size.
In addition to the text size, the background, margins and padding of
the containing box, and whether it is displayed in normal, wide or
full width can be adjusted from the block attributes in the sidebar
style tab.
For things like line or background color within the block, all block
output is formatted via css – just override the default css rules
in your theme. All the CSS rules begin with ‘b4cs-‘ and so these
are easy to find in your browser’s inspector panes. Once overridden
in your theme css file you can make them fit well with your theme.
I want a list of events which looks very different to those you provide
Because there are css rules for every part of the block, there is a
lot you can do just in css. For example, the dramatic change in
format of the calendar from a monthly grid to an events list when
it is displayed on a narrow screen is all accomplished by css rules.
So, you may be able to achieve what you want via css rule changes.
If your idea is dramatically different, however, please use the
support forum to put in a request for a new feature. We will do
what we can to provide anything which might also be useful to others.
ChangeLog
1.0.5
2026-04-15
* Version bump to 1.0.5 to ensure plugins are updated for new features
1.0.4
2026-04-14
* Added a distinct ChurchSuite icon for each block, and added a new block
category to group the ChurchSuite blocks within.
* Further minor change to CSS for Event Lists to make the shadow more subtle.
2026-04-13
* Added image pickers for the default image for Event Cards and Small
Groups so that the provided default image can be overridden.
* Minor css fixes to space the Event List text better.
* Version bump to 1.0.4
1.0.3
2026-03-27
* Minor changes to add readme.md file and to change comments from github
to gitlab after moving the development repository.
2026-02-26
* Refactored the Locale code to use the wordpress site locale rather than
the server locale, and to use the wordpress admin settings for full
date or time output. This means the time and date output should always
be sympathetic with the WordPress site settings. Also moved all the
time and date string creation to a new module so it can be easily
modified without having to update many files.
* Version bump to 1.0.3
1.0.2
2026-02-23
* Added ability to render the various views which have dates using the Locale
to render them in local style and language.
* Version bump to 1.0.2
1.0.1
2025-12-08
* Bump for WordPress 6.9. Updated ‘Tested up to:’ in readme.txt, and to
version 1.0.1 as the stable tag in blocks-for-churchsuite.php. Checked
that all block.json files were on API_VERSION 3 … they were. Updates
all blocks to version 1.0.1 in their block.json files.
1.0.0
2025-11-03
* Final approval from WordPress Plugin Directory given. Last tidy ups to
bring the plugin name in line with the one the Plugin Directory allocated.
2025-09-29
* Added all ChurchSuite attributes to each block that were not previously
present. Added the santizers for all the permitted attributes. Added
i18n support to the blocks for potential future translators. Tidied up
code where needed. Removed now unused js scripts and html includes for
the old Alpine.js support. Removed duplicated css and moved non-shared
styles into each block. Fixed an error in the display of calendar, and
made sure we remove days with no events from the small screen event list
rendering of the calendar. Edited the readme.txt to reflect these changes.
2025-09-27
* Added some block attributes to allow background setting for the whole
block, permit left, right alignment of the block or wide or full spread
for the block, and add adjustment to block padding and margins.
2025-09-26
* Working version available and ready for testing prior to submission
to the WordPress Plugin
0.1.0
2025-09-09
* Initial release – Everything is tested and working, but only a subset
of the attributes which could be used are provided.
**2025-04-26
* Working version with all blocks using Alpine.js. But back-end would
not use Alpine.js. So needed to refactor it all to use PHP only.
**2025-04-02
* First attempt to move the Shortcode plugin cs-js-integration to a block
