BUG / FEATURE: Cannot use an existing organizer name???

[Frederick W. Chapman]

Dear Modern Tribe:

I took great pains to create a themed organizer profile in my client’s Eventbrite account. I then tried to publish a draft event to Eventbrite from the WordPress edit screen for the event, and I got this error message:

The following Eventbrite error has occurred: The organizer name already exists. Please enter a different organizer name and try again. Note that your event was not registered with Eventbrite as a result.

I want to use the existing organizer name, for which I already created a profile in Eventbrite. Why am I not allowed to do this?

I consider this a bug. If this is intended as a feature, I must ask you to please consider changing the design. I should be able to reuse existing organizers. Isn’t that the whole point of creating an organizer profile?

The workaround is to use a different organizer name, as instructed. This gets around the problem, but it is not how I want the plugin to behave. This is not the design I would choose if it were up to me.

Can you please either change the plugin to remove this restriction or help me understand why this restriction is necessary?

Thank you so much,

Fred Chapman

[Frederick W. Chapman]

P.S. After I created a new Eventbrite organizer from the WordPress side, I transferred all of the profile information from the old organizer to the new one, deleted the old organizer, and renamed the new organizer with the old name. I get to use my carefully crafted profile, and no more error message! All’s well that ends well, but can we agree that I shouldn’t have to jump through these silly hoops?

[Barry]

Hi Frederick, I absolutely agree you shouldn’t have to jump through any hoops in the way you’ve described. However I wonder if you could give a little more information so that we can try to replicate this?

Here’s what I have already tried:

• Created an organizer on Eventbrite called Tom Thumb
• Created an event from within WordPress/The Events Calendar
• Selected Use New Organizer and provided the name Tom Thumb
• This was published with no issues and showed up on Eventbrite as expected

Is there anything I would have to do differently here to replicate this? What version of our plugin are you using?

[Frederick W. Chapman]

Hi Barry,
Thanks so much for your speedy reply and for looking in to my problem! I appreciate that very much.
I’m using Eventbrite Tickets 1.0.3 and The Events Calendar 2.0.9. I never saw the Use New Organizer option, which may be due to the unusual sequence of events at my end. Here’s what I did from the very beginning:

Installed The Events Calendar in WordPress.
Created new upcoming events in WordPress.
Opened new account in Eventbrite.
Created organizer profile in Eventbrite.
Installed Eventbrite Tickets in WordPress.
Tried to publish existing WordPress event to Eventbrite.

I get the same error message whenever I try to publish an existing WordPress event to Eventbrite. Can you replicate the error with an existing event created before the Eventbrite Tickets plugin was installed?
I will try to create a new WordPress event and then publish it to Eventbrite to see if I will be offered the Use New Organizer option. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Thanks again,
Fred

[Frederick W. Chapman]

Barry, even with a new event, I never see the Use New Organizer option in WordPress. Here’s what happens. If I enter an existing organizer name in WordPress, the field is surrounded with a red border as soon as I move to the next field. If I change the organizer name in WordPress to a new name, the border color changes to green. For some reason, WordPress is flagging existing organizer names before I even try to publish the event to Eventbrite. It’s beginning to look like I will have to enter a new organizer name for every event I create on the WordPress side. That’s a definite inconvenience. Is there a workaround for this? -Fred

[Frederick W. Chapman]

Barry, I found a workaround of sorts. I enter a temporary organizer name to get around the error in WordPress and publish the event to Eventbrite. Then I edit the event in Eventbrite to change the organizer back to the one I really want. I also edit the event in WordPress to change the organizer name there too, which generates another error message, but that error can be ignored since the event is already published to Eventbrite.

It’s not ideal, but it allows me to do what I want. I wouldn’t ask my clients to do this, however. It’s too confusing and too much extra work! -Fred

[Barry]

Hi Fred, can I just check two things with you: first, you said that you never see the Use New Organizer option – what you should see is something like this http://imgur.com/yemYZ … can you confirm that isn’t present?

Secondly, if you select a pre-existing organizer (this screenshot http://imgur.com/CRcQ3 shows what I mean) is there still a problem? Or is that dropdown not visible for you?

I’m just trying to get a full picture of this 🙂

[Frederick W. Chapman]

Barry, thanks for the quick follow up. I’m using the FREE version of The Events Calendar. If I’m not mistaken, saved organizers are a feature of the PRO version, which explains why the organizer drop-down menu is not visible to me. Perhaps the error I’ve encountered is a quirk of the FREE version.

[Barry]

OK – that’s a possibility I will look into. Are you in a position to activate Events Calendar PRO/is there a reason you have not done so?

[Frederick W. Chapman]

Barry, we haven’t purchased the PRO upgrade. The free version and Eventbrite Tickets together do everything we need. -Fred

[Barry]

Yep no problem – let me see if I can replicate this and I’ll get back to you.

[Barry]

OK, so using just The Events Calendar and Eventbrite Tickets I can see that the organizer name is indeed outlined with a red box (if I use the name of an existing organizer) however it does not prevent me from submitting the event.

I agree this is confusing and will report this as a bug – however can I ask you to confirm that, if you ignore the red outlining of these fields, you can still publish the event and push it to Eventbrite, or do you see a new error at this point?

[Frederick W. Chapman]

With a new WordPress event, if I ignore the red border around an existing organizer and try to publish the event anyway, I get the same error message I reported in my original post (which was for an existing WordPress event that had not yet been published to Eventbrite). The error prevents WordPress from pushing the event to Eventbrite. The only way around it is to enter a new organizer name and then fix it up afterwards in both Eventbrite and WordPress.

Thanks for all your time and effort, Barry! I really appreciate your help.

Fred

[Barry]

Unfortunately I’m still unable to replicate this. Before we go any further can I ask you to run through these standard troubleshooting steps:

• Ensure that all of your Modern Tribe plugins are up-to-date
• Deactivate all other plugins
• Switch to a default, unmodified theme such as Twenty Eleven
• Try to replicate this behaviour
• If this resolves the problem, reactivate everything one-at-a-time, retesting at each point to see if the issue returns

That may help identify a conflict with some other code running on your installation. Are you able to run through those steps and let me know how you get on?

[Frederick W. Chapman]

Hi Barry,

I did everything you asked. My Modern Tribe plugins are current: Eventbrite Tickets 1.0.3 and The Events Calendar 2.0.9. I deactivated all other plugins and tried both the Twenty Twelve and Twenty Eleven themes. Unfortunately, I had exactly the same problem I reported in my original post. Here’s the site in question:

http://www.nazarethinvestments.com/

Is there anything else you need from me?

Fred

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