Is PCOWidget affiliated with Planning Center?
No... PCOWidget is an independent product built by
Comp Edge Solutions. We use Planning Center's public API with your own PCO credentials. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Planning Center Online.
Does it work on Squarespace?
Yes... and it was specifically designed with Squarespace in mind. The event detail popover is mounted directly on the page body, which means it escapes Squarespace's container overflow restrictions. The CSS uses scoped class names that won't conflict with your Squarespace theme. Paste the script tag in a Code Block and you're done.
What happens when I change an event in Planning Center?
The change appears on your website immediately. PCOWidget fetches live data directly from the Planning Center API on every page load... there's no cache delay, no nightly sync, no "changes appear within 24 hours." The moment you save in PCO, it's live.
Do I have to remove events from the website after they happen?
No, and for a lot of churches this is the whole reason they switch. Keeping a website's events current used to be an ongoing chore: pull the finished retreat off the homepage, add the new study to the women's page, notice three weeks later that a spring event is still sitting on the youth page. PCOWidget reads Planning Center on every page load, so a finished event stops appearing on its own and whatever is next moves up to take its place. Your staff keeps doing what they already do in PCO, and every ministry page on the site stays current without anyone opening the website editor. If you want an archive of what has already happened, that is what data-include-past="true" is for, on that one page.
Will event times show correctly for my church?New
Yes, and there is nothing for you to set. Planning Center already knows what timezone your organization is in, and PCOWidget reads that setting and shows every event in your own local time. A church on Central, Mountain, Pacific, Alaska, or Hawaii time sees its own service times, not Eastern times with an offset note bolted on. We re-check the setting against Planning Center periodically, so if you ever correct it in PCO the widget follows on its own. There is no timezone attribute to add to your embed code, and no support ticket to file.
Do I need a developer to set this up?
No. You copy one script tag and paste it into your website. On Squarespace, that means adding a Code Block. On WordPress, it means pasting into a Custom HTML block. On Wix, it means using their HTML embed element. If you can copy and paste, you can set up PCOWidget.
What's a "widget load" and will I ever hit a limit?
A widget load is counted each time the script fetches fresh data from our server — roughly once per visitor per page view. On the free tier there is a fair-use daily cap that covers virtually any church website. On Pro there is no limit. Either way, the widget is never hard-cut off mid-service — if you approach your cap we’ll email you well in advance so you can decide whether to upgrade.
Can I put multiple widgets on the same page?
Yes. You can embed multiple instances with different layouts and filters on the same page. For example... a "Simple" tile widget showing this week's services at the top, and a full monthly grid further down. Each counts as a separate widget load.
What can I configure without touching my website code again?
Quite a bit... all through data-* attributes right on the script tag. Choose from six layouts: simple service tiles, image tiles, event cards, list view, monthly grid, or week strip. Filter to a specific PCO ministry tag. Show only featured events. Set 1 to 8 columns, and cap how many rows the widget renders so a busy month never runs long down the page. Pick a shadow color (blue, burgundy, or standard). Override the section heading. Enable week navigation with prev/next buttons. Mount the widget into any existing element on your page. Choose which tag chips stay visible. Write your own wording for when nothing is scheduled, or have the widget skip ahead to the next month that has events. Point a staff-only page at the events you have not published yet. You can even run multiple widgets on the same page with completely different settings... no dashboard login required to change any of it.
Is my PCO data secure?
Your Planning Center credentials (App ID and Personal Access Token) are stored encrypted using AES-256-CBC encryption. They are only decrypted server-side when making API calls to PCO. Your credentials are never exposed in the JavaScript that runs in visitors' browsers... they see only the rendered event data.
Why is one of my Planning Center events not showing on the widget?New
The widget shows only events that are approved in Planning Center and published to Church Center. If an event is missing, open it in PCO Calendar and check both. Either one will keep it off your website, which is deliberate: it is what stops tentative bookings, room holds, staff meetings, and anything still waiting on approval from appearing in front of your congregation. If your church does not use PCO's approval workflow at all, only the publish setting matters. To see what is being held back, put a second widget on a staff-only page with data-visibility="pending".
Can I preview an event on my site before it goes public?New
Yes. data-visibility lets a second widget on a staff-only or password-protected page show the levels underneath what the public sees: approved adds events you have not published yet, pending adds events awaiting approval, and rejected shows your entire calendar. Your team can check exactly how an event will look, with its real image, tags, and times, before anyone else can see it. Your public page keeps its default of published events only. Do not put anything other than the default on a page visitors can reach.
My events have a lot of Planning Center tags. Can I hide some of them?New
Yes. An event carrying six or eight tags turns a card into a wall of chips and pushes the title and details down the page. data-show-tags is a whitelist for what stays visible. It matches a Planning Center tag group or an individual tag name, so data-show-tags="Campus" keeps your campus chip and hides everything else, and a campus you add next year appears on its own with no change to your embed code. Use data-show-tags="0" to hide tag chips entirely. This is display only: it never changes which events appear. To filter the events themselves, use data-tag.
What does the widget show when there are no events this month?New
You have three choices. By default it shows a short "no upcoming events" message, and you can replace that wording with data-empty-message. data-hide-if-empty removes the widget entirely, leaving no box and no blank space. Or data-auto-advance="2" skips ahead to the next month that does have events, up to two months out, with the heading following the jump. That last one solves the late-in-the-month problem: it is the 28th, your next event is nine days away, and instead of an empty box a visitor sees what is actually coming up.
What is the Image Tiles layout, and what happens to events with no photo?New
data-layout="tiles" renders your events as a compact photo grid: artwork on top, the event name on up to two lines, then the date and time. Each tile is about a third the height of a full card, so a whole month fits where a handful of cards used to go. It shows four across by default, dropping to three on a small laptop and two on a tablet or phone. Resting the pointer on a tile opens the full event card in the center of the screen after a brief pause, so sweeping the mouse across the grid does not flash a card at you; clicking or tapping opens it right away, and data-hover-preview="0" turns the hover behavior off entirely. Plenty of church calendars have artwork on only a handful of events, so that case is handled properly rather than treated as a mistake: an event with no image gets a colored panel drawn from its own name plus a calendar glyph, and the grid stays even.
We have a very busy calendar. Will the widget show all of it?New
Yes. There is no cap on how many events a month can show. If your church puts ninety events on August, the widget renders ninety, and you will never find out later that visitors were quietly seeing the first fifty. If you want something shorter, that is your call to make: data-limit caps the number of events from 1 to 250, and data-rows caps how many rows the widget renders in the list, cards, tiles, and simple layouts, which is usually the better control because it fixes how far the widget runs down the page. The monthly grid and week strip ignore data-rows, since their rows are calendar weeks and trimming those would blank out days.
How does this compare to Display.Church, PCO Embed, or the built-in Church Center embed?
All four tools do the core job well. What sets PCOWidget apart is a handful of things nobody else offers: automatic sermon titles on recurring events, a “This Week’s Services” mode, full control over an empty month (skip ahead to the next month with events, show your own message, or hide the widget entirely), draft-event preview for staff pages, and every setting living right on the embed tag as a data-* attribute, so there’s no dashboard to log into. Add live sync on every page load, no monthly view limits, and a free tier with every feature included, and PCOWidget is the strongest fit for a church that lives in Planning Center. Display.Church shines when you need calendar sources beyond PCO, and PCO Embed also covers groups and sermons.
Randy Holdeman
Director of Worship and Connection Groups, Emmanuel Lutheran Church
