Daylight Saving problem on two sites

[James Miller]

Hey, I’m having the same problem as the below user.

I have two client sites using this plugin, and both of them now have recurring events that are an hour behind. This is ONLY when displayed on the website. The time shows as correct when editing the events (e.g. an event scheduled for every Monday at 2pm, shows 2pm in the Admin, but when you view the event as a site visitor, it shows a 1pm start time).

I’ve gone through the standard disable all plugins routine on one of the sites, and it fixed nothing. Tried switching to the Twenty Seventeen theme, and the problem persists. I switched between named-city timezone and UTC offset. I switched The Events Calendar to use timezones sitewide, I tried local tz for each event. I tried editing a recurring event and just clicking update, to see if that fixed it. None of these actions provided any results. Events still displayed incorrectly.

This happened last year at the end of DST, and we had to delete all recurring events and re-enter them. This is extremely, EXTREMELY frustrating.

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PLEASE LEAVE FOR SUPPORT
Reporting the same issue as: https://theeventscalendar.com/support/forums/topic/all-recurrent-events-off-an-hour-after-dst/

[Sky]

Hi James,

I’m sorry to hear about your frustration with this issue. I will try to help get it sorted.

It sounds like you’ve gone through all the normally suggested steps for troubleshooting DST issues. Thanks for the detailed description of what you’ve tried. As you mentioned, other users are having similar issues as well. The development team has been working hard at tracking down the problem, but have been unable to reproduce the issue.

If you haven’t seen this already, check out this article explaining how the settings will affect the expected output: https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/daylight-saving-time/.

Can you provide me with a link to a specific event that is having this issue? I’d like to see if I can isolate the factor that would make it behave differently in different circumstances.

Thanks,
Sky

[James Miller]

Sure. This event should be 11:30-1, and is saved as such in the admin. But as you can see, it displays incorrect start/end times on the website: https://nashvillecable.org/event/powerconnect-donelson/2018-03-16/

[James Miller]

Also, on the staging site, I checked the box to append the timezone to the events on the website. As I go back and forth across the CST/CDT line, the appended timezones are correct, just the times are not.

[Sky]

James,

Thank you for providing that link. I can see the time displayed change on the instances starting after DST kicks in.

Could you also upload screenshots of both your global WP timezone setting and the “date and time” section of this event?

Thanks,
Sky

[James Miller]

This reply is private.

[Sky]

James,

Thank you for the additional screenshots. It looks like you have things set up in a way that should work. I’ve been advised that perhaps just changing the settings may not fix things, but that it may be necessary to regenerate the recurring events after making the changes.

Can you try removing the events from the “events series” section on this event, saving, and re-adding? Also, try changing the initial date of the event to the next upcoming occurrence during this process.

I appreciate your patience with this. Let me know if that changes anything.

Thanks,
Sky

[James Miller]

Will we lose past events by changing the start date?

Also, some clarification on what you’re asking:
Just remove the recurrence schedule from the event? Then save? Then add the recurrence schedule back and save?

[James Miller]

Also also, we had to delete and re-add these events when DST ended last year, because of the same type of problem (off by an hour). This really needs to be fixed. If I have to do this again when DST ends this year, I’m going to be very angry.

[Sky]

James,

With my suggestion of changing the start date, you would lose the past events. This is not necessary, I just wondered if it may make a difference. You can try this with a test event if you want to be safe, or just skip that step at first.

I agree this is not something you should have to mess with once it is set up properly. The official consensus is that if you create the events with the correct settings in the first place, this should not occur. So hopefully once we get this working, it shouldn’t need to be changed again. That being said, even starting with the “wrong” configuration, you would expect just changing the settings to correct any issues without having to regenerate anything.

Thanks,
Sky

[James Miller]

I removed all recurrences, saved, reloaded today’s instance of the event on the front page — it showed the info for the first (now only) occurrence of the event. I added the recurrence back to the event, saved, reloaded today’s instance of the event, and the DST hour-off bug is still there.

[Sky]

James,

I had someone else take a look at your issue, and they pointed out something that may be the cause of the problem. According to your system information, the “PHP Timezone” is set to “America/Chicago.” By default in WordPress, this is configured using the UTC +/- format. The Events Calendar relies on this to be configured this way, as the other method can create problems. This is not the same thing as the WordPress Timezone settings, or the Events Calendar settings. Sometimes plugins will alter this for whatever reason, and this is a big cause for plugins being incompatible with the Events Calendar plugins. It is also possible to change this setting on the server in the php.ini file. But this is less likely than the first possibility.

If it is a plugin that is changing this configuration, it is possible that any event that is created while that plugin is active may not behave as expected. So, this is the suggestion I was given: try creating a test event that spans the same time and recurrence as the problem event, but while all other plugins are inactive and using the twenty seventeen theme. Also, use UTC format for both the global WordPress settings and the individual event settings.

Give that a try, and see if it changes anything.

Thanks,
Sky

[James Miller]

THAT WAS IT.

If anybody else is having this issue, I recommend doing a find in your project for “date_default_timezone_set”.

So, now I don’t have to delete/recreate every recurring event, just the recurrences.

Is there any way to find only the events that are recurring?

[James Miller]

This reply is private.

[Sky]

James,

Awesome! So glad we figured that out!

If you install our Advanced Post Manager plugin, it allows you to sort and filter in the admin by whether it is recurring or not.

Hope that helps!

Let us know if you have any other questions or issues in the future.

Take care,
Sky

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