Event List view displaying publication date instead of event date?

[Steven W]

Hope I can explain this correctly… I’ve got a “recurring” event (“Lectionary”) that is “recurring” only in that it happens over and over (every Sunday), though with different content every time (readings, liturgical colors, etc.). Because the content changes with every instance, I do not have it set up as a recurring event. All instances of this event have the same Tag (“Lectionary”). I have a Tag Cloud set up that (of course) includes the tag “Lectionary”. When a user clicks the “Lectionary” tag, they’re taken to what I presumed to be the Event List page (but may in fact be a WP page that displays all posts for the tag that was clicked) which shows all events entitled “Lectionary” in reverse chronological order. So far so good. But the problem is that every event listing displays the publication date (i.e., posting date) rather than the Event Date… Since they were all set up (i.e., created) on the same day, they show the same date in the listing, which could be confusing. Example: 10 listings for “Lectionary” show up in this view, but while each one is attached to a different Sunday, the publication date on every one is “Sep 9, 2015”, the date the events were set up. I may in fact have wanted the Lectionary “event” for “Nov. 11, 2015”.

So my question: is there a way to make this listing display the event date instead of the posting publication date? Note that changing the publication date to the event doesn’t work because it sets all events in the future to “Scheduled”, and therefore they don’t show up. Failing a good answer to the first question, is there a way to suppress the posting publication date in the list view?

[Josh]

Hey Mark,

Thanks for reaching out to us!

I just did some tests on this with a basic event on my local install. The event that gets displayed into the default tag template is showing the event date for me rather than the publication date. Additionally, for the list view the publication date should not display at all by default.

As an initial test, have you tried following the Test for Conflicts procedures to ensure that there isn’t a conflict with the existing theme or plugins?

Thanks!

[Steven W]

OK, so I’ve got some really weird sh stuff going on… I’ve followed the Test for Conflicts procedures, and the results are inconclusive.

Development Box–a Windows 8.1 box running wampserver:
When I switch to Twenty-Thirteen (or -Fourteen or -Fifteen, for that matter), the default WP Tag Archives template doesn’t display any date at all for posts (i.e., events) generated by TEC. It does display the appropriate date for standard posts… I even clicked a tag that I knew was associated with both a standard post and a TEC post, and the standard post had the date while the TEC post did not.

Production Box–hosted on SiteGround, under construction, behind a “Maintenance Mode” screen:
When I click on a tag associated with a standard post, I get a list as expected–with the correct date. When I click on a tag associated with a post generated by TEC, the site crashes and I get a black screen with the page’s html code in it.

I am, of course, more concerned with the production instance working correctly–but it’s pretty weird for the two environments to be behaving differently, since they’ve never behaved differently in the past. Note that this is the first time I’ve tested this particular scenario on either box. At this point, it really seems to be associated with tags associated with TEC (event) posts… I’m not sure about next steps, but experience tells me you all can point me in the right direction.

[Steven W]

As a little more information, here’s a shot of what I get when I click a tag associated with a regular post:
http://screencast.com/t/SpbCgLjQw2ec

And here’s a shot of what I get when I click a tag associated (exclusively) with a TEC post (i.e., event):
http://screencast.com/t/6XkA66Yx

And here’s a shot of what I get with I click a tag associated with both (the TEC post is the first one and the date is the date the post/event was created):
http://screencast.com/t/PaIkc8adu8Je

[Josh]

Hey Mark,

Thanks for following up with us here! For the difference between the two environments, are they both set with the same timezones? The function for displaying time is processed through some timezone considerations and that could potentially impact here.

However the more pressing matter, it definitely sounds like there is something strange going on with the tag archive displaying the HTML code. A couple of quick questions:

1. Can you be more specific with the steps taken to recreate the white screen with html content? I’m unable to replicate and want to make sure I’m doing the right steps.
2. At that time, did you have all other plugins deactivated and a default WordPress theme activated? Additionally, do you have any caching setup at that time? If so, did you try purging the cache prior to testing?

Let me know if this helps.

Thanks!

[Steven W]

Both environments are set to the same time-zone. Again, I’m less concerned about the fact that the two environments are behaving a little differently than I am about the fact that the post-date rather than the event-date is displaying in the Tag Archives default template.

1. Let’s forget about the crash. That occurred after I deactivated the Events Calendar Color plugin without removing some custom color code from the theme’s function.php file. It was throwing a function-not-found error.
2. I deactivated all plugins (except for TEC, of course), switched to the WP Twenty-fifteen theme (as well as Twenty-thirteen and Twenty-fourteen) and did a hard flush of the cache and the issue persisted, although in those default themes, the date didn’t display at all for TEC-generated posts. It did display the date for non-TEC-generated posts, as expected.

Not sure where to go from here…

[Josh]

Hey Mark,

Thanks for following up.

I see what you mean by the date not showing on those templates. I’ve got a similar template that it was showing for and it looks like the difference is that the default templates have a check to see if the post type is “post” using:

if ( 'post' == get_post_type() )

If you changed that to:

if ( 'post' == get_post_type() || 'tribe_events' == get_post_type() )

within the “content.php” file within the theme then you would see the date correctly.

For your theme, can you look at the files and see what the function is that’s being used to display the date on your archive pages?

Thanks!

[Steven W]

OK, Josh. This feels like a little bit of progress, but just a little… I inserted the code you suggested (in the Twenty-Fourteen theme), and sure enough, the date (and other info) appeared. But it still displays the same date for every entry…

I’m pretty wet behind the ears when it comes to deep PHP code stuff (30 years in IT, but most of my coding experience was in COBOL and other ancient relics), but I think I can find the piece you’re looking for. It’ll just take me a little time, and I’m about to be out of the office for a couple of weeks to boot. I’ll appreciate your continued patience.

But before I sign off, it occurs to me that part of the problem may be in a failure to communicate (i.e., my failure)… I may not be using the right terminology to describe the problem, and want to be sure we’re on the same page, so bear with me for another couple of minutes while I re-state the issue…

I’ve created a series of “event”, each one called “Lectionary”. It’s not actually a recurring event in terms of how it’s set up, but is recurring in that it happens every Sunday, plus a few weekdays during the year. The content of each event is different. The client is in the process of building the content for the site now, so almost every event called “Lectionary” was entered into the database on the same calendar day — the “Published on” date in WP (and it happened to be 29 September, about three weeks ago). Since we want all of these events to show up on the calendar (i.e., out into the future, so users can download them as iCal), we chose not to change the “Published on” date to the “Start date-End date” of each event (each one is set as an “All day” event). Now, with all that background, what’s happening is that when a user clicks the tag for “Lectionary” out of the tag cloud, they get a listing of all events called “Lectionary” — which is as it should be. The problem is that each event displays the “Published on” date of “29 September”, the day the event was actually entered into the system. That makes it impossible for the user to determine (when scanning the list of events called “Lectionary”) which one is for which calendar day. The desired result would be for the listing to show the contents of the “Start date” (the event date?), so that for example, the event called “Lectionary” that occurs on Sunday, 6 December actually shows that date (6 December) instead of “29 September”.

I have an idea that I haven’t adequately explained this in the past… If I have, please forgive the long, redundant explanation, but again, just want to be sure I’m not wasting your time.

[Josh]

Hey Mark,

Thanks for following up and providing the detail.

To clarify, it sounds like the events were originally entered with incorrect dates (which matched the publish date). You then went back to add the proper dates for the events, however the original dates (the publish date) are still showing in the tag archive even in a default theme?

To help in diagnosing, when looking at the main calendar view, or the single events do they show the right dates that you’ve updated for the events? Would you mind sending me a screenshot of the admin screen for one of the updated events?

Also, if there ends up being a conflict here it sounds like it isn’t within your theme. I’ve tested with the Twenty Fourteen theme as well and am seeing the right event date on the event (https://cloudup.com/c3Dcr3-QWEQ) Since the issue persists with the Twenty Fourteen theme for your site it sounds like it could potentially be a conflict with another plugin.

Thanks!

[Steven W]

Lemme try again…
On 29 September of this year, we created 52 “events”, one for every Sunday of the year. Every one of the events has the title “Lectionary”. Each one of those events was created as an all-day event and each had “start day/end day” values that matched the day we want the event to appear on the calendar. For example, the event created to show up on 6 December had a start date of 6 December and an end date of 6 December. Each event also has different content. After creating these 52 events, each one of them had a “Published on” date of 29 September — the date they were all physically entered. Each one of them had a different “start day/end day” value, to make each one appear on the appropriate day. In this respect, none of them were entered incorrectly (at least not as I understand the way TEC works), and we haven’t changed any of the date values — either the “Published on” date or any of the “start date/end date” values.

In calendar view, each event appears on the correct day — dictated by the “start date/end date” value. You can see that at this link: http://screencast.com/t/9s2QS6wF5. When I select the tag “Lectionary” from a tag cloud, however, I get the this screen: http://screencast.com/t/0hSs0K2bCT.

Here is a screenshot of the admin page for one of the events, typical of the way they’re all set up (with the exception of the start date/end date fields and the content, of course): http://screencast.com/t/GIE7raldA

Hope this makes a little more sense… I feel like I’m not doing a very good job of communicating here…

[Josh]

Hey Mark,

Thanks for clarifying, I see where I misunderstood the steps from the previous message.

I’m still struggling to recreate this issue on my local install. A couple of further questions that may help in diagnosing what may be happening here:

1. You mentioned that you switched to a default theme (Twenty Fourteen) and the issue persisted. Does the issue persist if you deactivate all other plugins while the default theme is active?
2. I see that you also have an event “Intercessory Prayer” that appears to have the same title, repetition as the “Lectionary” event. If all of those were tagged with the same tag “Intercessory Prayer”, does that tag archive do the same thing with the date.
3. While on the tag archive that has the wrong date for each of the events, does clicking on each of the events take you to different dates for the event or do all of the links take you to the same event?

Thanks!

[Steven W]

Here’s what I’ve done:
1. changed to the Twenty-Fourteen theme
2. when I select “Lectionary” from the tags here’s what I get: http://screencast.com/t/cXJmUoev As you can see, the two instances displayed show the “Published On” date, 29 September… (Remember, I did add code in content.php to make the TEC date show up, at your suggestion — it wasn’t showing up at all before.)
3. then I disabled all plugins except for TEC, and this is what I get: http://screencast.com/t/NGG2nvdmu The issue persists…

I flushed cached each time as well, just to be sure I’m pulling fresh data.

As for the Intercessory Prayer event, it’s set up as a recurring, every Wednesday, event. The content never changes, so that seemed appropriate. When I click the tag for it, this is what I get: http://screencast.com/t/Cs99pAoozM I only get one entry, but since it’s built as a recurrent event, I think that’s appropriate — unless I could get it to always show the next occurrence, instead of the “Published On” date of the series, which is what’s appearing now. While this might be confusing to some, I think the greater chance for confusion is with the Lectionary issue…

By the way, I don’t think I answered one of your other questions earlier… When I click on one of the Lectionary events that appear in the Tag Archive list (#2, above), the detail displays correctly, like this: http://screencast.com/t/sfKBHGJej That pesky “Published On” date is nowhere to be seen…

having fun yet?

[Josh]

Hey Mark,

Thanks again for answering those questions. So it persists with all plugins deactivated and using the default theme as well as purging cache after each step. This is definitely a strange and I’m a bit stumped since I’m still unable to replicate the issue. I’ll reach out to one of our developers first thing in the morning to see if they have any ideas about what may be happening here.

I apologize that I haven’t been able to get this one resolved for you so far.

Thanks!

[Steven W]

No apologies necessary, Josh. It’s easy to be patient when you know somebody genuinely wants to help and I believe that’s the case here. We’ll get it figured out. My bet is that it’s something I’m doing wrong. I just can’t figure out what it would be. I just went in to our production site (hidden behind a maintenance screen normally) and followed all previous steps, i.e., deactivated all plugins except TEC, changed to Twenty-Fourteen theme (I had to make the change to content.php you suggested just to get the dates to show up at all), and flushed the cache. Still no go. The screen shots I sent you were from my local dev environment, and I wanted to be absolutely certain I’d get the same results on the different, production environment. So no revelations. Same behavior. It’ll be interesting when we find out what’s causing it, if we ever do.

[Steven W]

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