Can't Edit Recurring Series – Browser Crashes

[Justin Hall]

Whenever I try to edit a recurring series, the page loads until I finally get an error from the browser say the page is unresponsive. I’m not getting this on single events. I’ve tried…

• refreshing permalinks
• deleting the cache
• disabling all plugins
• changing the theme to a default theme (Twenty Fourteen)

None of that has worked. You can see where the page gets hung up in the attachment.

Wordpress: 4.8.2
The Events Calendar: 4.6
The Events Calendar PRO: 4.4.17

[Victor]

Hi Justin!

I’m sorry you are having that issue. Let me help you troubleshoot that.

Does it happen when trying to edit any recurring event or just one/some?

What happens if you create a recurring event from scratch, save it and then try to edit it? Do you get the same problem?

Also, please enable WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_LOG. This will create a debug.log file inside the /wp-content directory.

After that, try reproducing the issue a few times, so that in case there is an error, it will be saved into the debug.log file. Please share that log file with us so we can see if any problem from there.

Thanks,
Victor

[Justin Hall]

Victor,

It happens when trying to edit any existing recurring event.

I created a new recurring event, saved it and was able to go back and edit it.

I enabled WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_LOG and reproduced the issue a few times but it didn’t produce a log file.

Thanks,
Justin

[Victor]

Hi Justin!

Thanks for letting us know about that.

It might be that those old recurring events you are having problems with could be corrupted somehow. Could you please share a link to a couple of those recurring events in your site so we can have a look?

Did you start experiencing this issue after a plugin, theme or WordPress core update?

I know you say get the edit event page unresponsive, but could you please try inspecting the page and see if any console errors show up when editing the recurring event? Here’s a guide on how to do that > https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/using-google-chrome-developer-tools/

Thanks,
Victor

[Justin Hall]

Here are a couple of the events with the issue…
http://www.ymcashoals.org/event/muscle-works-leslieashley-2/2017-12-30/
http://www.ymcashoals.org/event/all-6-lanes-available-4/2017-12-30/

I was made aware of the issue a few days after the WordPress 4.8.2 update. None of the plugins or themes had been updated.

It appears this is continually getting logged to console as the edit event page loads…

load-scripts.php?c=0&load[]=jquery-core,jquery-migrate,utils,jquery-ui-core,plupload&ver=4.8.2:3 [Violation] Added non-passive event listener to a scroll-blocking ‘touchmove’ event. Consider marking event handler as ‘passive’ to make the page more responsive.

On the front-end, the calendar doesn’t always load completely. It may load through the 19th. Then you can refresh and it may load through the 21st. Then you can reload and the whole month may load.

[Victor]

Hi Justin,

Thanks for coming back with the links and info.

I had a closer inspection to your site and it seems that you are having some performance issues on the server side of things.

On the front-end, the calendar doesn’t always load completely. It may load through the 19th. Then you can refresh and it may load through the 21st. Then you can reload and the whole month may load.

This is because the server sometimes returns a 500 error message, which you can see by inspecting the page. When I load your main events page, the TTFB was about 29 seconds, and on some occasions longer than 30 seconds and returning the 500 error. This is probably because it is exceeding the max_execution_time of 30 seconds that is set for your PHP configuration, thus preventing to completely load all the calendar.

One thing you should note is the Month view events per day setting under Events > Settings > Display tab. As you have many events per day and this is something to consider when dealing with performance.

Let me point you to a great article that will get you started on Performance Considerations you should know about. After that, if you decide to implement a caching system then you can move to these articles: Caching: What, when and how and Caching month view HTML in transients

Finally, there is a good article George put up here that groups a set of developer plugins. It’s a bit more technical than the others but will definitely be of help if you are into development.

The recurring events problem might be related to the performance issue, so I suggest you first try to solve that and then see if you still experience the unresponsive page.

Let us know how that goes and if you have other questions.

Best,
Victor

[Justin Hall]

Hi Victor,

Thanks for the resources. I have the Caching month view HTML setting checked and I am using WP Super Cache for page caching.

I changed the Month view events per day to 5 and that seems to clear things up on the front-end.

The issue with not being able to edit previously entered recurring event remains. I can edit new recurring events. It seems like these events could be corrupt but the odd thing is that they all load properly on the front end.

How do I know that they are corrupt? If they are, are there any options for fixing them?

Thanks,
Justin

[Victor]

Hi Justin!

Thanks for following up with this.

It’s good to know you could solve the front-end loading issue for the calendar.

The Month Caching or the WP Super Cache does not improve the wp-admin performance, so I suspect the recurring events could be fine and editing them could be hitting the max_execution_time again. Specially if you say those recurring events show fine in the frontend (which indicates they are not broken).

One thing you could try is recreating exactly one of those recurring events you are having the issue with, and see if you can edit it after. I know recurring events that have many exclusions require more resources to be loaded.

If you can’t edit that new recurring event, then I’m mostly sure it’s performance related, so I would recommend you first get in touch with your hosting provider to let them know about your issue and ask them if they can provide a report for your site’s resources consumption.

 

Another thing you could ask them is to switch to a higher version of PHP. We recommend PHP version 7.0, because it is much more efficient in terms of performance.

Let me know how that goes.

Thanks,
Victor

[Justin Hall]

I changed to PHP 7 several days ago after reading the Performance Considerations article that you recommended.

When I try to edit an existing recurring event, the page seems to freeze up while it is loading rather than time out. I often get a “Page unresponsive” dialog error.

When I create a new recurring event with similar recurring settings and exclusions, I can go back and edit it. The edit page usually loads in about 4 or 5 seconds.

I tried loading the edit page for an existing page with javascript disabled and it loaded. I saved it and it saved without the recurring setting and exclusions since javascript was disabled.

I enabled javascript and tried to edit the event that I just saved and it loaded fine. I set up the recurring settings and exclusions and saved and now I can go back and edit that event.

It seems like the events are corrupt and re-saving them would fix the issue but I can’t get them to load without going through the process above. There are a lot of recurring events, all with exclusions so this would be a lot of work. I am hoping to not have to ask the client to do this. Any thoughts?

Thanks!

[Victor]

Hi Justin,

Thanks for following up with this.

It looks like you are doing a great job solving the performance issues.

Regarding the recurring events issue, could you please see if you get any console errors when the page freezes or even when creating a new event from scratch?

Also, please check again if there are any errors logged in the debug.log file and share them with us.

Finally, please send us a link to one of those recurring events link for your site so we can see if we spot anything strange.

Thanks,
Victor

[Justin Hall]

I ended up stumbling upon the answer to my problem. I tried to load the edit page for a recurring event with Developer Tools open. It never timed out and I just let it keep load and after about 10 minutes, it loaded and the event had a ton of exclusions going back 18 months. Apparently, all the exclusions where keeping the page from loading. So, after doing some searching with this knowledge I found the threads below.

https://theeventscalendar.com/support/forums/topic/event-exclusion-error/

https://theeventscalendar.com/support/forums/topic/past-recurring-events-listing-as-exclusions/

The Cleanup Recurring Event Exclusions plugin did the trick.

[Victor]

Hi Justin!

Great catch! I’m super glad you could solve the issue by using that tool.

It seems the number of exclusions in the recurring settings is definitely a factor for the unresponsive page. I have just checked those threads you shared and I could relate this issue to an open ticket we have to improve how the number of exclusions affect the performance.

I will link this thread to the report to flag this issue and we’ll let you know once this is addressed in one of our future maintenance releases of our plugins.

Thanks for your cooperation and patience while we worked on this.

Do let me know if you have any other questions.

Best,
Victor

[Nico]

Hi there,

Just wanted to share with you that a new maintenance release is out, including a fix for this issue. We are aware there’s more room for improvement around this area, but hopefully these initial improvements will alleviate the situation for now.

Find out more about this release → https://theeventscalendar.com/maintenance-release-for-the-week-of-12-feburary-2018/

Update the plugins and let us know if the fix works for your site,
Cheers,
Nico

[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]

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