Expiring Events in Widget

[tiboston]

I am noticing that events that ended at 9AM are still on my calendar, how do I set it to remove the expired events from the events list widget? http://tisrael.wpengine.com/

Our upcoming events had to be added using Events Rocket for Events Calendar Pro because we needed the events list widget to work in the main body of the home page and not a footer, sidebar or header. The upcoming events widget should auto remove events that have elapsed their times so other events can show.

How do I get that to work?

Is there a way to display the widgets in the body of the page without using a third party add-on like events rocket?

[George]

Hi Christopher!

Funny to see Boston-area folk here, I live quite close to your Temple and ride past it on my bike on the Riverway pretty often! 🙂

Now, as for your calendar problems – I’m curious about the behavior you describe with your list widget here. You sum things up well when you write: The upcoming events widget should auto remove events that have elapsed their times so other events can show.

That is indeed what should happen, so to learn a bit more about what’s going on here, could you clarify some of these points here? In no particular order:

a) When you encounter the problem of “passed” events not disappearing, do you always indeed have more “upcoming” events that should be showing up instead?
b) You mention that events that end at 9am, for example, still stay on your calendar – do they eventually disappear as desired?
c) What are the timezone settings for your WordPress installation? You can find this out in Settings > General in your admin area.

---

The other thing you asked was this:

Is there a way to display the widgets in the body of the page without using a third party add-on like events rocket?

There is a way to do this, but it means editing theme code. You can use WordPress’ the_widget() function to create widget instances basically anywhere you want – learn more about this function here.

Let us know about some of the questions mentioned above regarding your Past events widget display problem, and if the the_widget() function seems promising for your needs.

Thanks!
George

[tiboston]

Small world indeed,

Thank you for getting back to me on the list of issues we are experiencing.

We imported well over 600 events between now and October. On average about 3-4 events per day display on the upcoming events. However, an event starting at 9AM doesn’t come off the list until the end of business day. Even though we imported the start time, end time, date, department and description, we still cant get the upcoming events widget to auto cycle the expired events off the display. See our homepage here: http://tisrael.wpengine.com/

You will see about half way down we had to use the add-on Events Rocket to use the Events Calendar Pro widget on the home page because we are not utilizing a side bar style site. According to our wordpress design and implementation team, this was the only way to show the widget. Now we have limited edit and filter ability with the widget because of this add-on. The website is still in the design/implementation phase and should be launched in the next few weeks. We love the functionality of the events calendar pro, but were hoping the widgets would have worked better with the home page

The sites timezone settings are New York as they should be.

[tiboston]

I am also noticing that the uploaded events recorded the start and end times a the same times. How does that get fixed without re-uploading the entire list again?

[George]

Thanks for the information here Christopher – one thing that stands out to me is that you mention importing these events.

1. Just to clarify, do you mean importing from a CSV file? Or from Facebook, or Eventbrite, etc.?

2. As for there being no way to display that widget where you needed it on your page, that function I referenced earlier should indeed to the job (the_widget()) – if possible, do you think your WordPress team could try making an instance of this widget without using Event Rocket, to see if the same issue persists there?

That would be a very helpful test here, and would confirm (or rule-out) the role of Event Rocket in this issue here.

3. Finally, for now, in your WP Engine dashboard page, do you have Caching enabled on your site? If so, I’d recommend disabling caching – if you have two caching options, disable both of them. Then, clear the cache using the clear cache option there. Leave things in this state for the duration of this troubleshooting process, as it’s possible (unlikely, but possible) that caching is making the queries used for the widgets here update on a slower timetable and not update immediately as an event time passes.

Thanks for your patience as we work through the problems here.

Sincerely,
George

[tiboston]

I am importing from a CSV. I mapped all of the fields using the tool that pops up during the import process.

I disabled Dynamic Page Cache and purged the cache as well. However, the widget is still holding on to the expired events.

I forwarded your comment about the widget setup to our development team, though I am skeptical as the person assigned to us has a learning curve on WordPress code.

Thank you for taking the time to work with us on these problems and I know together we will find the right solution. Plus your name George is my last name, so I have even greater faith.

[George]

Thanks for the update and for your patience here Christopher, I’m sure with our combined attention and George-based nomenclature we’ll figure this out! 🙂

Not to obsess over small details, but you mention disabling and then purging the Dynamic Page Cache in your WP Engine options – do you also happen to notice similar options for the Object/Transient Cache? If so, does disabling & purging this cache make any difference here?

That may seem like minutiae but there’s actually some meaningful differences between the Cache types, so this is a worthwhile test for sure.

Let us know what you find, and if you’ve heard anything from your WordPress team.

Thanks again for your patience here Christopher!

[tiboston]

Object/Transient Cache is also disabled. With WPEngine, one section disables it all.

[George]

Thanks for clarifying that Christopher – and for your patience here!

I’m still unable to reproduce this behavior, so I’m curious, have you heard back from your WordPress team at all? If so, does not using Event Rocket seem viable here?

Even without waiting for feedback for them, in the meantime do you have any widgetized sidebars on your site where you could just drag a default Events Calendar widget to for testing? Deactivate Event Rocket before doing this – and then see if you can find the same behavior with the default List Widget and such that you report above.

Thanks for your patience here Christopher, if we find ourselves stuck with progress on this ticket I’ll pull in some other developers on our team to see if they have any insight here.

Thank you,
George

[tiboston]

Our site is not using any sidebars at all. Our WordPress team doesnt seem to have the best knowledge on widget coding ability. We dont plan on using any side bars either. I dont understand how the widget is restricted to side bar access. Especially when many newer sites don’t use side bars.

[George]

Hey Christopher,

First of all, apologies for the delayed response here, we were all-hands-on-deck at the end of last week to help get the Eventbrite and Facebook product updates out, and then address some issues that happened because of that.

As for your sidebar comments, if there aren’t officially-registered sidebars on your site to “drag and drop” the widgets into in the admin, that’s fine. If possible, the test I suggested of deactivating Event Rocket and then adding a the_widget() function call somewhere in your theme for testing should still be a very fruitful test. As of now, I still cannot reproduce your issues so we technically don’t have the source of your issue nailed down yet, the [maybe obvious, but worth stating] necessary first stop to then actually solve the problem.

While you mention your team not having great widget-coding abilities, this test should fortunately be quite simple regardless of skill level.

Basically, all you’d have to do is make the_widget() function calls along the lines of the following examples:

The Core list widget

the_widget( 'TribeEventsListWidget' );

---

The PRO version of the list widget

the_widget( 'TribeEventsAdvancedListWidget' );

---

The PRO Mini-Calendar widget

the_widget( 'TribeEventsMiniCalendarWidget' );

---

I hope this helps!

[Support Droid]

This topic has not been active for quite some time and will now be closed.

If you still need assistance please simply open a new topic (linking to this one if necessary)
and one of the team will be only too happy to help.

[Author]

Posts