Bots invaded my Events Calendar

[Mike]

I have installed capcha box to stop in the future but I have about 30,000 bogus events.

Deleting them even 100 at a time is a scary proposition and the move to trash process isn’t even going well with out timeouts.

Any work around to clean the calendar up?

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Mike and welcome back!

First off, I would like to apologize for the delay answering.
We are currently experiencing a higher level of requests than usual.

Please rest assured that we are working hard at correcting this situation.
We appreciate your patience while we try to normalize things.

Thank you for reaching out to us.

We are sorry to hear about bots spamming your calendar. Yikes!
I would love to help you with this topic.

My recommendation would be, after a database backup, to work directly in phpMyAdmin or SQLPro.

In other words working directly with the database as opposed to adding the extra WordPress layer.

You will find what you are looking for in the wp_posts table. You can filter by the tribe_events post type.

Let me know how that goes.

Best regards,
Geoff B.

[Mike]

I think that is above my pay grade, I assume I need a developer?

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Mike,

Thank you for taking the time to write back.

You do not necessarily need a developer to tackle this, but it is better to get a hold of somebody that is comfortable using phpMyAdmin at least.

With that in mind, if you still want to give it a shot, you need to:

1. Learn how to make a database backup using phpMyAdmin (that software should be included in your CPanel interface from your webhost).
2. Learn how to restore a database backup using phpMyAdmin. If you cannot get these 2 steps, I would definitely recommend getting a hand from a developer or a web person.
3. Find the wp_posts table still using phpMyAdmin
4. Try to filter or at least manually look for entries that are of the tribe_events post type. To do that you need to scroll to the right until you bump across the post_type column. It will look like the following screenshot
5. You can select the rows that contain that post_type in batch. This is a lot like what you do in WordPress, except it will be much faster to respond and refresh

All of these should be manageable after a few YouTube videos and you will probably find it is not that bad.

That being said, you might not have the time or the desire to do that.

Let me know how that goes.

Best regards,
Geoff B.

[Mike]

Thanks for getting back, I will get someone to tackle that way above my pay grade! I have another issue more pressing- when I share events rather than the normal title is just has my domain name , it seems like should be a simple setting but is really hurting my ability to promote some events?

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Mike,

I totally understand where you are coming from.

As for your second issue, would it be possible to get an example of what you are referring to ? Perhaps a screenshot.
Are you talking about what displays when you post the link on something like Facebook ?

Without knowing for sure, I believe the answer will be to tweak your usage of Yoast SEO with the Events Calendar.

This happens at 2 levels:

1. In your configuration of Yoast
2. In each event’s Yoast section

Hang in there!

Geoff B.

[Support Droid]

Hey there! This thread has been pretty quiet for the last three weeks, so we’re going to go ahead and close it to avoid confusion with other topics. If you’re still looking for help with this, please do open a new thread, reference this one and we’d be more than happy to continue the conversation over there.

Thanks so much!
The Events Calendar Support Team

[Author]

Posts