Clean install doesn’t wipe DB

[cityparksfoundation]

Hello – I have Events Calendar Pro running as desired on our QA site:

http://qa-cityparksfoundation.flywheelsites.com/events/

However, when I copied it over with the CSV import to the live site I got some pretty bad errors. For one, all of our events are listed as recurring, and they are not. Also, we had to redo the recurring events since they were installed three-fold upon import. Here is the list:

http://cityparksfoundation.org/events/

As you can see all events are listed as recurring. Click on the third one down (Partnerships Academy Workshop: Creating a Marketing Plan for Community Park Groups) and you’ll see it is NOT a recurring event, and it is not checked as one in the admin.

I tried doing a clean install on the live site, but my settings and all events weren’t wiped. What I’d like to do is wipe the DB and import our events and settings from the QA site. Where can I find that to get rid of it?

I’m running latest version of everything. The QA site is a mirror of the live site so there aren’t any conflicts that aren’t already in QA.

Thanks!
Stephanie

[Barry]

Hi Stephanie,

I’m sorry you’ve hit up against some difficulties.

I’d like to start by getting a better sense of how you managed the export and import process: you noted using the CSV importer to pull the events into your live site … can you confirm how/what tools you used to export the data from the test site?

Would you also be able to share a sample of the CSV data you imported (though you cannot upload files directly to the forum, if you upload it to your own WordPress site, or a service like Dropbox, you can of course share the URL in here – via private reply if you prefer)?

I tried doing a clean install on the live site, but my settings and all events weren’t wiped. What I’d like to do is wipe the DB and import our events and settings from the QA site. Where can I find that to get rid of it?

The events and settings are contained in the database, so you’d really need to wipe the database, switch to a fresh database or else selectively delete items from the existing database.

Let’s stop and look at the import/export process first of all, though, then we can revisit this if needed 🙂

[cityparksfoundation]

Hi, Barry –

Thanks for your reply. My apologies, I misled you with erroneous terminology. I used the WP native export tool to get the *XML file to import. Unfortunately the client didn’t have the proper DNS package to handle it and the server timed out during the import. I believe this is what has caused the data to become corrupt. I *might have tried to do the import again after the timeout as well, resulting in another timeout.

The XML import file is fine, it’s just the DNS issue, which has since been upgraded to a level that can handle the import. I can send you an example in next message I will mark as private.

Thanks!

[cityparksfoundation]

This reply is private.

[cityparksfoundation]

Shoot – I just realized I pasted the wrong XML file into dropbox. Please stand by while I retrieve the correct one. I had to import to live piecemeal so I have several files.

[cityparksfoundation]

This reply is private.

[cityparksfoundation]

This reply is private.

[Barry]

Hi Stephanie,

I do appreciate it’s not an ideal solution but please understand we can’t guarantee being able to respond more quickly than within 24hrs of a reply being made (and that’s within the working week). We do try to exceed that where possible, of course, but there are no guarantees we can do so consistently 🙂

In this case I think you may be hitting up against a known bug that can occur when recurring events have been created, broken out of their sequence into individual events, and are then exported by WordPress as an XML file.

With that in mind, can I ask you to review and try adding the suggested fix in the following reply from a different topic?

theeventscalendar.com/support/forums/topic/import-creates-blank-database-references-with-shared-ids

It would necessitate removing your existing event data, adding the snippet and then re-importing, but it might provide you with a working solution.

Does that help here?

[cityparksfoundation]

Thanks so much for the reply. I realize you guys are busy and the world doesn’t center around me, but apparently it does around my anxious client. 🙂

We’re actually having an issue with the events listing page. It’s timing out before we can get to the list so we can’t delete the events we currently have. I think this is due to the 4000+ events that the plugin thinks there are due to the corrupted data (in actuality there were only about 20 events to import, but many were recurring daily over a long period of time). So deleting events isn’t possible at this point.

Can I add the snippet to functions and try an import, or do we need to delete the events first? Problem is, deleting 4000 events is a bit daunting as well even if we could get to the listing page. This is why I think we need to wipe the DB of events and start fresh, now with the snippet.

Thanks!
Stephanie

[cityparksfoundation]

To clarify, by events listing page, I meant the one in WP admin, not on the site.

[Barry]

OK, that’s certainly a bit of a problem.

Are you comfortable working with SQL? Though I’d caution you should make a full backup first of all (and understand the process for restoring that backup) you can remove all existing events quite easily with a query like this:

DELETE FROM wp_posts WHERE post_type = 'tribe_events';

This assumes your tables are prefixed wp_ and of course you would have to adjust that if your setup is different. While this would leave a number of “ghost” entries in the post meta table, it ought to remove this particular block within the admin environment.

[cityparksfoundation]

I’ll have our SQL guy try this out and let you know if this can be resolved. Thanks!

[Barry]

Great, I hope it helps 🙂

[cityparksfoundation]

Hi, Barry – Well, the DB was wiped clean successfully, but even with the snippet in functions.php the import still created corrupted data for recurring events. We ended up just recreating all the events on the live site.

I wish I’d known the issue with importing recurring events from the get-go so I could have saved a lot of headaches with this launch. My clients are not impressed with me or this plugin, which I recommended with confidence at the beginning of this project. I’ve recommended it to multiple other clients in the past, but I am reluctant to do so in future. I hope the recurring bug is fixed eventually.

Thanks!
Stephanie

[Barry]

I can only apologize for the rough experience which is, admittedly, a failing on our part. I’m sorry the snippet didn’t provide any relief but I’ve raised the priority of this bug on our internal issue tracker and we’ll certainly aim to resolve this as quickly as we reasonably can.

[Author]

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