Daylight savings bug still there

[Jim]

This is my first year using EC. I’ve been getting angry phone calls about messed-up events and have assumed I had erred. Turns out I did nothing wrong, the plugin decided to change event starting and ending times after DST ended.

What is up with this? I’m finding complaints in the forums that go back years. I have to go through the whole calendar and change the times, plus apologizing to the multiple people who’ve been inconvenienced.

Folks, if this is something that simply cannot be fixed in the context of WordPress, the very least you could do is send out an email to your users (especially newbies who haven’t been through this before) alerting/reminding them that ALL their events may need to be rejiggered to be consistent with regular time.

I mean, really!

[Andras]

Hello Jim,

Thanks for reaching out! I’m really sorry about this frustrating issue with the timing of events changing at DST change.

Do I understand correctly that your event timing have changed automatically by 1 hour after the DST time was over?

We had some other reports of this unfortunate issue. More of us in the support team have checked this and none of us had this issue. It is also quite difficult to test because there are only 2 days in the year when this can happen. At the moment we are collecting as much information about the cases as we can.

In order to get a bit more details on why this could happen I would like to ask you to share some more details with me.

1. How is the timezone handling set up in The Events Calendar? You can find this under Events > Settings > General tab (looks like this: https://cloudup.com/cJxYQ0ulUVE)

2. How are the event timings / timezones set up for the individual events? (This section for the events in question: https://cloudup.com/chXmUKvZ1Oj)

3. Did this happen to all events in your calendar or only some? Do you see any specific rule for those where it happened?

Again, sincerest apologies. Thanks for getting back to me with the answers.

Cheers,
Andras

 

[Jim]

This happened to all events that were recurring.

My handling of timezones is set up locally, and “Los Angeles” is the correct timezone showing in my event setup/edit screen.

Also, WordPress is correctly handling Daylight Savings.

As I said in my original post, I have seen people complaining about this some years ago — and in those threads, TechSupport is apologetic and promises to deal with the issue. Yet, here it still is. I have a hard time believing I’m the only person it has happened to this year, given the massive number of EC installations that are out there.

Here is one example from a year ago, which is labeled [RESOLVED] but I can’t see where it’s been resolved.
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/events-calendar-pro-dst/

I have checked with hosting service, they’re US-based and allow WordPress to do its own handling of the change of time.

Let’s get to the bottom of this, okay? I have manually repaired all the screw-ups but would like not to have to do it again in March, 2017.

Thanks,

Jim

[Andras]

Hello Jim,

Thanks for getting back to me on this and I appreciate your open feedback.

As I said, we are aware of this issue, we have seen the reports of it, and I can assure you it does not go unnoticed. I have flagged this to my superior, also talked to some developers who were and are looking into the issue, but we didn’t manage to reproduce it locally yet anywhere.

Having DST change only twice a year also doesn’t help too much.

This being said, the more information we get on these cases, the closer we get to a fix. And I can assure you, we are trying to get to the bottom of this with the invaluable help of users like you. I also hope we can fix this by the next DST. 🙂

Good job on contacting your hosting provider and letting me know. One thing though that I see in your system information is that the SERVER TIMEZONE is set to UTC. You might want to check that with them as well.

Do I understand correctly that <span style=”text-decoration: underline;”>only</span> and <span style=”text-decoration: underline;”>all</span> recurring events had their time changed?

Can you give me more details on this? When do the recurring events start and end? (First and last occurrance.)

Which way did the times move? What was the original / what should be the start time, and what did it become after DST?

Thanks for getting these answers for me.

Cheers,
Andras

[Jim]

Andras,

I’m not sure how you’d set up an artificial time change for testing purposes, but it seems possible.

As near as I can tell, ONLY the recurring events were changed. Most of our events are recurring, and non-recurring events tend to be entered into the EC pretty close to the time of the event, so…if changes were being done to non-recurring events I’m not sure it would have affected us. (Before March 12, 2017 rolls around, I will place a single event in April to check this out.)

Every affected event had both its starting time and ending time moved LATER — i.e. a post-DST event that was to start at 8:00 AM and end at 10:00 AM showed up on our website as starting at 9:00 AM and ending at 11:00 AM. The other thing I can’t tell you is whether the re — hang on a moment!!! I just did an experiment and GUESS WHAT? Now that I’ve changed “all recurring events” to their proper time — if I go to April 2017, those events are scheduled AN HOUR EARLIER! So, this phenomenon didn’t occur AS we moved from DST to PST, it occurred (unbeknownst to me) at the time the recurring events were entered into the EC. Now, THAT you should be able to test out at your end, no?

I don’t see how the host’s timezone being set at UTC should make a difference. They have to choose a timezone, but it’s WordPress that sets the timezone for WordPress installations. (See screen clip) I manage another website that is hosted at a different host and WordPress (settings=>general) shows the same UTC and local time.

So, now we know that the change happens AS RECURRING EVENTS ARE ENTERED INTO EC. That should help.

Let me know what you discover!

Cheers,

Jim

[Andras]

Hey Jim,

Wow, thanks for sharing that! Good find!

To get a clear view on this, so that I understand correctly: when you set up a recurring event that goes through a DST date, then the events before have the right time, while the events after are moved by one hour? Is this right?

Are you able to recreate this? If yes, what are the exact steps you are taking?

Also, please share with me the below two screenshots:

1. How is the timezone handling set up in The Events Calendar? You can find this under Events > Settings > General tab (looks like this: https://cloudup.com/cJxYQ0ulUVE)

2. How are the event timings / timezones set up for the individual events? (This section for the events in question: https://cloudup.com/chXmUKvZ1Oj)

 

Thanks in advance for sharing these. This could really help us move forward with solving this issue.

Cheers,
Andras

[Jim]

András,

Yes, I most certainly can recreate the “situation” we’ve been discussing.

I created an event for Feb. 14, 2017, starting at 8:00AM and ending at 5:00PM. I made it “recurring” until March 14, 2017 (two days after return to DST).

On the calendar, the February event starts at 8:00AM and ends at 5:00PM, as designed.

HOWEVER, the March 14 event starts at 7:00AM and ends at 4:00PM, even though WordPress, by that time, will have reset its clock per the time change.

I can make this happen all day long.

My recent experience demonstrates that EC doesn’t make the adjustment when the clocks change, it just leaves it…wrong.

I’m not a programmer or a developer. But I can’t help thinking that the technology exists for my event to be started and stopped at the time I have set, no matter what happens in the outside world. 8:00AM is 8:00AM, whether we’re in DST or PST.

Please allow me to skip the screen shots. There is no difference at all between yours and what I see on the EC settings screen, except my time zone is Los Angeles instead of Vienna.

Thanks.

[Andras]

Hey Jim,

I did some extensive testing on this.

I could recreate the issue with some specific settings.

The timing of your events after the DST change date will be off by 1 hour if all of these conditions are met:

• Under Events > Settings > General tab > Timezone mode is set to ‘Use sitewide timezone everywhere’
• The site timezone under Dashboard > Settings > General > Timezone is set based on UTC (e.g. UTC or UTC-8)
• The timezone of the event itself is set city / GMT based, e.g. Los Angeles

Here’s a screenshot: https://cloudup.com/cvk26JgEfDY

You will also get this if:

• Under Events > Settings > General tab > Timezone mode is set to ‘Use sitewide timezone everywhere’
• The site timezone under Dashboard > Settings > General > Timezone is set based on GMT (e.g. Los Angeles)
• The timezone of the event itself is set UTC based, e.g. UTC-8

 

There are 2 solutions based on your Calendar Timezone mode:

1. Set the Events > Settings > General tab > Timezone mode to ‘Use the local timezones for each event’. Then you should be able to use whatever combination for your site and the events.

2. If you want to keep Events > Settings > General tab > Timezone mode on ‘Use sitewide timezone everywhere’, then make sure that you use the same type of timezone setting for both your site and the events. So both either UTC based, or city / GMT based.

I hope this helps. Let me know if that solves the issue.

Cheers,
Andras

 

 

[Jim]

Unfortunately, the listed solutions do not work.

First, I have never used UTC-8 anywhere in EC or on the website’s general settings. All settings are to Los Angeles time zone. (It’s obvious that if you have UTC-8 as your basis, and DST kicks in, UTC-8 is going to be one hour off unless someone magically changes it to UTC-9.)

I changed the “Events > Settings > General tab > Timezone mode on ‘Use sitewide timezone everywhere'” menu item to “Events > Settings > General tab > Timezone mode to ‘Use the local timezones for each event’”

I investigated and found no other timezone settings hidden in WordPress or EC. I then recreated my test event as outlined above, using Feb and Mar of 2017 as brackets for the arrival of DST. And, sorry to say, the March event is once again an hour earlier in both start and end times.

My guess is that somehow, in spite of settings to the contrary, UTC is making its presence felt somewhere in the workings of EC. It’s the only explanation that makes any sense. Still, you guys should be able to overpower this tendency.

Keep working on it, András. There has to be a solution.

(Once again, I’m not sending screen shots because it’s a nuisance and I swear to you, both settings per your instructions are to LOS ANGELES.)

[Andras]

Hey Jim,

Thanks for your cooperation so far. I know this is an upsetting issue. We are working on it with the invaluable help of our users like yourself.

I ask for a bit of patience while I will try to pull in an extra set of eyes to look at this.

Thanks for hanging in there!

Andras

[Jim]

Thanks for letting me know I’m not forgotten. This isn’t going to be a problem again until March 12, 2017, so take your time!

Cheers,

Jim

[Andras]

🙂

I am going to close this ticket to new replies (pending fix), but the issue is still open and we will update this ticket once we release a fix. If you set up notifications for this thread, you’ll get an email.

If you have any new questions or issues please create a new ticket and reference this one.

Thanks and cheers,
Andras

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi There!

Just wanted to share with you that a new release of our plugins is out, including a fix for this issue 🙂

Find out more about this release —> https://theeventscalendar.com/maintenance-release-week-25-march-2018/

Please update the plugins and let us know if the fix works for your site.

Best,
Jaime

[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]

Posts