Error 500 on calendar page

[Bruce]

I had some problems with editing a recurring event.
I have since deleted the relevant recurring events.

Now the site is working normally apart from an error 500 message on http://godewsbury.uk/events – which is the calendar.

Have resaved Permalinks and checked the .htaccess file without success.

Regards
Bruce

[Geoff B.]

Good morning Bruce and welcome back!

Thank you for reaching out to us.

We are sorry to hear about the error 500 creeping up on your website.
I would love to help you with this topic.

I had some problems with editing a recurring event.
I have since deleted the relevant recurring events.

When you say that you deleted that recurring event, do you mean in WordPress’ back-end or directly in the Database ?

In any case, I would suggest trying:

1. Go to Events -> Settings -> Display and change the setting for Events Template
2. Re-save your permalinks

Furthermore, can you tell me what is the amount of WordPress memory defined in your wp-config.php ?

Can you also tell me if you are able to get a single event to display (not the full calendar) ?

Best regards,

Geoff B.

[Bruce]

I deleted the events in the plugin database. i.e. in Events/Events

The /events page returns an HTTP ERROR 500 while, if I deactivate the plugin I get a 404 page.

Reset Settings/Display to Skeleton, saved Permalinks – no change
Ditto Tribe styles

While the /events page is not working both individual events and add/edit events are all functional.

from info.php
memory_limit 128M 128M
post_max_size 128M 128M
upload_max_filesize 128M 128M

Regards
Bruce

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Bruce,

Thank you for writing back and for providing additional information.

In regards to the issue you had while editing some recurring events, we did notice an issue with the Events Calendar Pro 4.2.2 and recurring events.

I don’t know if the update to 4.2.2 fits the timing of that issue. But in case it does, you will be glad to know that we came up with a fix for that in version 4.2.2.1 that was just released earlier this week.

Furthermore, in order to clean any remnants of recurring events issues we suggest adding the following snippet to your theme’s functions.php : https://git.io/vKl0q

The /events page returns an HTTP ERROR 500 while, if I deactivate the plugin I get a 404 page.

The 404 page is normal when you deactivate the plugin, but the 500 error message is not.

Reset Settings/Display to Skeleton, saved Permalinks – no change

Actually I was suggesting that you try changing the Events template setting (Default Events Template, Default Page template, etc..). Could you try that as well please ?

Finally, If you haven’t already done so, could you please update the Events Calendar to 4.2.2.1 ?

Hang in there as we work on fixing your site.

Let me know how that goes.

Best regards,
Geoff B.

 

[Bruce]

Geoff,
The plugin is already updated to 4.2.2.1.

Adding code snippet to the end of the functions.php file causes the entire site to fail. However, as a non-techie, there is no telling if I did it right.
I copied the existing code out of functions.php into a text file before renaming the existing file.
Then copied the entire raw code from the link provided and added it to the end of the text file and saved the whole as functions.php. Then uploaded into the theme folder.

After the failure I’ve recovered the functionality by simply renaming the two files so that the original file is again functions.php.

Have now changed the Events Template to Default – no improvement.
Changed to Default Page Template – no improvement.

So the outstanding issue is getting the modified functions.php file to work. Any suggestions?

Regards
Bruce

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Bruce,

Thank you for writing back.

I am sorry to hear that adding the code to your theme’s functions.php file caused the site to crash.
This was certainly unintended.

The simplest solution would be if you could send me a copy of your WordPress theme / child theme in a .zip file link (via Dropbox or Google Drive) so that I can add the snippet in there for you and test it.

Especially since I have another snippet to add in there that I believe would prove helpful to your situation.

As an FYI, it is super important to not copy the opening <?php statement when using the snippet (since it should normally be in your theme’s functions.php

Best regards and hang in there while we fix this,

Geoff B.

[Bruce]

I tried adding the snippet without the opening statement but without success.
I still don’t know what I’m doing! 😉

Dropbox link to Ignition.zip theme file.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11926265/ignition.zip

How will the additional code be carried forward if/when the theme is updated?

Regards

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Bruce,

Thank you for writing back, for trying my suggestions and for the files.

Here is the updated file back (tested and all): functions

I hope this helps. As a side note, it might take a while to kick in because it uses CRON jobs in the background. So give it a couple of hours.

How will the additional code be carried forward if/when the theme is updated?

That’s a great question. The functions.php file would most likely get overwritten.

This is one of the top reasons why a lot of people choose to use child themes. If you don’t know about them, I would highly recommend it. There are even a bunch of plugins out there to ease the process.

Let me know how that goes.

Best regards,
Geoff B.

[Bruce]

Oooh, Geoff, you are a tease….

Yes, I am aware of child themes – hence the question.

Some customer feedback: providing a solution that is not robust in the long term is not really a solution. Thrive Themes update regularly so this is not going to last long.

After more than 10 years playing with websites I have settled on both a host and a theme provider that I like for functionality and for customer service. In both cases, in the event of a problem that I can’t easily fix they will ask for access and go in and fix it. It usually doesn’t take more than 48 hours from start to finish.

In this case we are more than a week with a broken website and still have not identified the problem. I say that having just found that Jetpack has now disconnected and says that it is getting 403, site inaccessible- and I cannot reconnect it, so am presuming that there is possibly another issue.

What can we do about the child theme? Or will the Scripts function in the theme serve this purpose? See: http://screencast.com/t/9sS1gpi1YRLL

In the meantime, replacement functions.php file uploaded to the server at 0900 my time. Will let you know when it becomes effective.

I appreciate your help – I’m just more worryied about my broken website.

Regards
Bruce

[Bruce]

12 hours later and events page still down.

Regards

[Geoff B.]

Good afternoon Bruce,

Thank you for writing back and for your great feedback.

Some customer feedback: providing a solution that is not robust in the long term is not really a solution. Thrive Themes update regularly so this is not going to last long.

You are right, the more robust the solution, the better.

That being said, in your specific situation, we are trying to fix something that might have gone wrong at the Database level.

Once that initial fix in place, it should not happen again and the actual snippet will no longer be necessary (in fact I recommend removing it).

If this situation was caused by a glitch in our plugins, you can rest assured that we take this very seriously and systematically integrate bug fixes in our maintenance releases. That would cover the robustness side of things.

After more than 10 years playing with websites I have settled on both a host and a theme provider that I like for functionality and for customer service. In both cases, in the event of a problem that I can’t easily fix they will ask for access and go in and fix it. It usually doesn’t take more than 48 hours from start to finish.

In this case we are more than a week with a broken website and still have not identified the problem. I say that having just found that Jetpack has now disconnected and says that it is getting 403, site inaccessible- and I cannot reconnect it, so am presuming that there is possibly another issue.

I completely understand how frustrating this must be and I am absolutely aware of the importance of this issue.

In fact, I share absolutely the same goal as you do: solve this as fast as possible.

For the record, most of the issues we encounter can be fixed below the 48 hours mark.

That being said, your specific issue is much harder to pinpoint than a normal one because of it’s nature.

Keep me posted on what you find out about the other issues.

What can we do about the child theme? Or will the Scripts function in the theme serve this purpose? See: http://screencast.com/t/9sS1gpi1YRLL

Normally a child theme’s rules and customizations will always have priority over the theme’s default behaviour.
But, it actually uses the Parent theme for pretty much everything else.

If you want to be extra safe about this, I always recommend making a database backup before trying anything.

That being said, in my experience, the parent theme’s settings usually carry over when switching to the child theme.

In the meantime, replacement functions.php file uploaded to the server at 0900 my time. Will let you know when it becomes effective.

I appreciate your help – I’m just more worryied about my broken website.

The script usually kicks in at most after 12 hours (depending on your server’s CRON settings).

This means that either the script didn’t kick in (for some reason) or that issue lies elsewhere.

This leads us to what the next steps are:

1. It’s probably not fun, but I would recommend going through our testing for conflicts procedure (preferably in a staging/dev environment or local install of your WordPress website OR a maintenace plugin activated) and let us know what you find out. Basically the goal here is to revert back to a bare WordPress installation to see if the problem persists. It also allows us to pinpoint what the cause of the issue is. 
2. If you are able to have a complete database backup done, it would be worth trying to temporarily delete all events (to see if the issue persists). Now of course, this requires you to be able to get the backup back in place afterwards and is more suited for a testing environment.

   If that works, then I will ask for a database dump to see if I can’t find anything obvious in the DB itself.

Hang in there!

Best regards,

Geoff B.

[Bruce]

Switched to 2016 theme.
Disabled all plugins except events calendar related – website/events page works normally.
Activated all other plugins – /events page works normally.

Activated Ignition theme – problem returns.

So we have theme conflict problem?
Ignition is from Thrive Themes.

I keep 7 days complete backups on Dropbox. Unfortunately, with the time this has taken we’re now one day over so my oldest backup will now have any corruption included.

And the worse news.
From your comment about the database I triggered a manual optimisation of the database using Optimize DB plugin that I have installed – and now the /events page fails in 2016 theme as well.

Presumably this now points to a db corruption rather than a theme conflict?

Would it help if I selectively deleted some recurring events? I have an idea of the ones I was working on around that time.

Regards

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Bruce,

Thank you for sticking with us and running some tests.

To be fully transparent, I am unsure if the issue is caused by Ignition (since it does not fail on my end and the issue returned with 2016 on your end).

So yes, I’m thinking DB corruption.

Based on what you are telling me, I would recommend keeping a manual copy of your DB on your computer before attempting anything else.

But yes, after a backup, manually deleting these events is totally worth a shot.

Additionally, before you do that, would you mind sending me a DB dump (via a dropbox link in a private reply), so that I can take a look at it ?

Best regards,

Geoff B.

[Bruce]

This reply is private.

[Bruce]

Cracked it.

Eventually found an event with ‘Column one’ preceding the description in all occurrences of the back end event listing.
Deleted the series and everything seems to be functioning again.

Working out how to best manage lots of recurring events has been a learning curve and I suspect this was probably my finger trouble in simply confusing the software to the point of corruption.

Thanks for your help. You can close this ticket.
Though I have no doubt I shall be back. 😉

Regards
Bruce

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