If you are still using the legacy calendar views when you update to The Events Calendar 6.0, your site will automatically switch to our upgraded views. This article walks you through how to prepare and test your site to make the transition as smooth as possible.
These steps only apply to sites that are still using a 5.x version of The Events Calendar.
Read more about the legacy views removal
How do I know if my site is on V1 or V2?
Open the WordPress dashboard and go to Events > Settings > Display. The fourth option on the page is Use updated calendar designs. If that setting is enabled (checked), you are using the V2 views, and this update will not impact your site. If that setting is not enabled (unchecked) then you are still on the legacy views and should follow this tutorial to prepare your site.
If you or a developer have customized your site, it’s also possible that you have V2 de-activated manually via a WordPress function–even if the Use updated calendar designs setting is enabled. If you’re not sure, go to your calendar. If you see a Today button, your site is running V2, and you’re good to go.
Step One: Update on a staging site
If you do not yet have a staging site to test with, you’ll first need to create one. We’ve got a separate article here all about the importance of staging sites and how to make one. We’d recommend that you also activate WP Debug on your staging site. Make sure your staging site is set up properly and current with your live site so that your testing is accurate.
Next, update The Events Calendar to the latest version. If you have Events Calendar Pro, Event Tickets, or any of our other plugins, you’ll want to update those as well.
Once you update, you’ll be prompted to check out your calendar views and make sure you like how things look. Doing that review on a staging site means you can take your time and address any issues before they impact your live site.
Note: You’ll also be prompted to migrate your events to the new event data storage system, which is a major change in The Events Calendar 6.0. For the purposes of testing views, you can ignore this. Once you’ve completed the views testing, you can go through the migration on your test site as an additional check before updating and migrating on your live site. Read more about the migration.
Step Two: Troubleshoot any issues
Now you are ready to start testing and troubleshooting any issues you see on your staging site. The idea is to find any errors, broken functionality, or styling issues now so that you can mitigate them before they can impact your live site.
Errors & Broken Functionality
If your staging site is showing errors or not working as you’d expect, you can systematically review your extensions, plugins, and customizations to determine what’s causing the conflict. Start by deactivating any other plugins on your site, one at a time. After each one, check again for the error or problem you saw. If the issue disappears, you can then confirm that the last plugin you deactivated was causing a conflict.
If you find an issue with one of our extensions, it’s possible you just need a new version–many of our extensions have been updated recently to work with the V2 system. Unlike regular plugins, new versions of the extensions don’t appear in your WordPress admin, so you’ll need to check the extension library and see if an update is available. If the issue is with a third-party plugin, you can reach out to the developer and explain what’s happening so that they can add compatibility with the updated V2 views.
You can follow a similar process to review any customizations you’ve made to your site that could be causing errors. Remove your customizations one at a time and use that to narrow down which is causing warnings or other issues when used with V2. If you run into an issue with a snippet provided by The Events Calendar team, check out our knowledgebase. As with the extensions, we’ve updated many of our knowledgebase articles to include solutions for the V2 views. If the culprit is one of your own modifications, the knowledgebase is also a great place to start looking for a way to adjust it to work within the V2 views.
Styling Issues
The V2 views have a new modern design and you’ll see the difference right away on the front end. Depending on your theme and any customizations, you may also see some unexpected or unwanted changes.
Just as you did with plugins, one of the best troubleshooting steps is to look for a theme conflict. Try switching to a WordPress default theme (e.g. Twenty Twenty or Twenty Twenty-One) and see if the issue(s) you’re experiencing persist. If the issue is resolved, you know that it has to do with a theme conflict. We recommend reaching out to the theme developer–it’s possible they need to make some changes to be compatible with the updated views.
If you had made customizations to the legacy view templates, those customizations will not impact the site once it’s running V2. The new system has a completely different set of templates. However, the new templates are designed specifically to make customizing easier. We’ve got a whole set of articles to help you get started with customizing the new views. Here are a few links to get you started:
- Customizing CSS
- How to Customize Template Files
- Custom templates for the updated calendar views
- Using template Filters & Actions
- List of The Events Calendar template files
One of the new features available for sites running the updated views is a whole new set of options in the WordPress Customizer. Any settings you had in the Customizer for V1 will no longer apply, but you can open the Customizer to reset those and check out the new options available.
Need help? Premium users can open a ticket with our support team to assist in upgrading from legacy to V2 views. However, please note that we are limited to providing resources and helping point you in the right direction if you have extensive customizations. You will need to work through any necessary changes yourself or hire an outside developer to assist you.
Step Three: Prepare your live site
Once you’ve completed your staging site testing, you are ready to prepare your live site for the upcoming 6.0 release.
If you went through the testing steps and didn’t encounter any issues, congratulations! You can go ahead and move your live site to the upgraded views by going to Events > Settings > Display and enabling the Use updated calendar designs option. You can also choose to take no action on your live site, and it will automatically change to the upgraded views when you update to The Events Calendar 6.0.
If you tested on your staging site and ran into some errors or issues, the next step is to fix them. As described above, this may include updating plugins and customizations. You can make the changes on your staging site until you’re happy with the results. Then you can duplicate those same changes on your live site and switch to the upgraded views with confidence.
If you choose not to upgrade your views and do not plan to in the future, you need to make sure to configure your live site to prevent updates. To avoid being automatically upgraded to the views when 6.0 is released, you’ll need to essentially freeze your site in its current state. Please keep in mind that we do not recommend doing this.
Be sure to turn off all automatic updates on your site’s Plugins admin page. If you do not take this step, The Events Calendar will automatically update when 6.0 comes out and your views will be upgraded. To avoid future incompatibilities, you’ll also need to avoid updating third-party plugins, your theme, and WordPress itself.
If you accidentally update to 6.0 and need to switch back, you can downgrade your plugins.
To disable the notices for legacy views V1 deprecation use the code below.
<?php
add_filter( 'tec_events_views_v1_should_display_deprecated_notice', '__return_false' );