Cannot save event after an auto-save notice appears

[Tojo John]

Hi,

We really need your help urgently. As we’ve launched our site today with a rush of users going to the site.

I am not sure if this is just for recurring events but it happened multiple times so far in our QA and also today as we’ve launched our website on ‘recurring events’. It is possible the issue may not be for recurring events only.

The symptom:
when we go back to certain events for updating, there is a notice/message up top with a yellow left border that there is an auto-save of this post that’s newer. Once this notice appears, we cannot save any changes. Clicking on the ‘Update’ button simply doesn’t do anything – not event the spinning icon.

When we followed the link provided in the auto-save notice, the only option it provides is to restore. If we click on restore, it acts as if the post/revision was restored and goes back to the event page. But the notice is still there and we still cannot make any updates to those event.

Please help.

Miah

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Miah and welcome back!

We are sorry to hear about your issue with recurring events.
We will be happy to help you troubleshoot this issue.

This message sounds like something might be glitchy with the built-in autosave feature of WordPress which seems to “freeze” the site. If you haven’t already, I recommend reading the following 2 articles on that topic:

1. WordPress revisions
2. Mastering Autosave

Perhaps disabling the auto-save altogether (as recommended in article 2) might be a good temporary solution.

Also, a quick glance at your site with the Google Chrome inspector reveals that there seems to be some deprecated functions used in for interaction with your DB (although I cannot confirm if that is the cause of the issue you are experiencing).

modernizr_2.0.6.js:5 ‘webkitIndexedDB’ is deprecated. Please use ‘indexedDB’ instead.

In any case, I would consider correcting it and see if that helps.

Finally, there is the possibility that either your WordPress theme or one of your plugin is interfering / causing conflicts. To be extra sure, I would recommend going through our testing for conflicts Procedure.

Please let me know if any of these help.

Have a great day!

Geoff B.

 

[Tojo John]

We have updated the modernizr tool so it is no longer giving that warning. And we have already disabled auto save by increasing the auto save interval to a very long length of time (30 days) so it never fires. Hopefully this will solve the issue going forward.

However, the existing set of recurring events that we are unable update, remains as such. How do we get back to updating these events again?

Thanks,
Miah

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Miah,

Thank you for making these changes and I hope it truly helps solve the problem going forward.

However, the existing set of recurring events that we are unable update, remains as such. How do we get back to updating these events again?

This is a bit trickier.

Before you do anything, I would recommend making a backup of your database.

The simple but risky solution is to manually find the autosave revisions of the said events in your database and manually deleting them (probably through an interface such as PHPmyadmin).

If you are not confortable doing that, I would explore using a plugin that does that for you such as:

• Better delete revisions
• Thin out revisions

Let me know if that helps.

Have a great day!

Geoff B.

 

 

[Tojo John]

We actually did find the auto-save and deleted it from the DB (with backup before that of course). Strangely, that did not unlock the set of recurring events. Is it possible that the recurring events are linked to each other and removing the single auto-save we found in the DB is not enough to resolve this?

I am still scratching my head on this. Please let me know if you have ideas.

Thanks,
Miah

[Tojo John]

I just had a discussion with my editorial team. It looks like the issue is a lot worse than I originally thought.

They now have multiple events that behave the same way (as if locked) and not all of them are recurring events and there was no auto-save message. Also, this happened after we disables the auto-save feature.

This is becoming a great concern. We really need your help. Is there any way to connect with your team over the phone?

Thanks,
Miah

[Geoff B.]

Good afternoon Miah,

I am sorry that the issue appears to be getting bigger than originally thought.
I understand how frustrating this can be.

Hopefully we can get to the bottom of this as fast as possible, so hang in there.
We appreciate your patience.

Is it possible that the recurring events are linked to each other and removing the single auto-save we found in the DB is not enough to resolve this?

Yes, actually they are linked together. To simplify, there is one “parent” event and every recurring event is a “child” of that parent event.

They now have multiple events that behave the same way (as if locked) and not all of them are recurring events and there was no auto-save message. Also, this happened after we disables the auto-save feature.

You did not confirm yet, but I am assuming the faulty events are all recurring events, correct ?

I did my due diligence and researched out database for any similar issues reported previously.
The closest thread I could find is the following one.

To summarize, it looks like there might be corruption regarding the link between the parent events and the child events.

This could result from a server hiccup during event creation or perhaps if the recurring events were created using the functionality from your “Duplicate Post” plugin (which I would advise against).

Finally, it could be that there is a conflict with either your WordPress theme or one of the plugins you are using.

Could you also please go through our testing for conflicts procedure (preferably in a staging/dev environment or local install of your WordPress website) and let us know what you find out.

We really need your help. Is there any way to connect with your team over the phone?

Unfortunately, we cannot provide phone or email support based on our terms and conditions.
That being said, we will stay with you until resolution as we understand how important this is.

Have a great day!

Geoff B.

 

[Tojo John]

Geoff,

We went through a massive amount of testing on our staging website and finally figured this out with a multi-step process.

1. We manually deleted ALL auto-save and ALL revisions – not something we were too inclined to do
2. We manually connected all child events to their parents

It seems now the events are updating as expected (not locked anymore). FYI – these locked events included some events that were not recurring – jus stand long single events.

Thank you for all of your responses.

Miah

[Geoff B.]

Good afternoon Miah!

Wow! I am super impressed by all the hard work and dedication your team has put in.
Congratulations on fixing everything!

I am happy my advice was useful in accomplishing resolution.

Thank you for sharing your steps with us and for letting us know that this was also affecting non-recurring events. It seems like whatever hiccup happened created a snowball effect.

You are always welcome back if there is anything else.

Have a great day!

Geoff B.

[Author]

Posts