Facebook creating duplicate events

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  • #965330
    musiclives
    Participant

    Hi folks, I’ve seen a number of people post this problem but haven’t found a solution in the forums. I’ve set the plugin to pull from Facebook hourly and am getting a number of duplicate posts: http://musiclives.ca/event-listing/ Any ideas?

    #965506
    Barry
    Member

    Hi musiclives,

    I’m sorry to hear you’ve hit up against difficulties.

    Can you be more explicit about which are duplicates (and provide some example names/dates)? I do see a few that appear to be duplicates on first glance but actually appear to have subtle differences between them, so initially I’d just like to clarify where you see the problem 🙂

    Thanks!

    #965757
    musiclives
    Participant

    All of the events with events on http://musiclives.ca/event-listing/ with duplicate names have been pulled in more than once. There should not be any events with the same name on the same day.

    #965758
    musiclives
    Participant

    As an aside, it seems to pull in the event multiple times as the event date gets closer. Could it be because the Facebook creator is updating the description? I know that happens a lot as the event gets closer.

    #965867
    Barry
    Member

    All of the events with events on http://musiclives.ca/event-listing/ with duplicate names have been pulled in more than once.

    OK – but some of these seem to me to actually be distinct events. Example from Saturday, 2nd May:

    • “FORNIGHT MUSIC: THE WOODEN SKY // SKYE WALLACE” runs from May 1 at 10pm to May 2 at 2.17am
    • “FORNIGHT MUSIC: THE WOODEN SKY // SKYE WALLACE” runs from May 1 at 10pm to May 2 at 3.17am

    So they share the same title (and the same description, etc, in this case) – but they were probably distinct events when they were created on Facebook.

    Could it be because the Facebook creator is updating the description? I know that happens a lot as the event gets closer.

    That shouldn’t happen – but if instead they are copying and pasting the old details into a new event in order to modify the time – and then delete the original – that might explain this.

    I’m guessing you are not the actual Facebook admin/that isn’t someone within your own organization in this case?

    #965970
    musiclives
    Participant

    There’s definitely only one event for each of these. We pull from a number of different facebook IDs but we have a good relationship with all of them. It looks like the plugin might be changing the end time as well. Is there any chance it’s the plugin that’s doing it? We do have the end time of days set to 2am so that events dont carry over to the next calendar day. Might that be the problem?

    I need to clean up the calendar today because it’s starting to get a bit ridiculous. If there’s anything else I can do to help debug the problem, please let me know.

    #965975
    musiclives
    Participant

    As a quick update, there are actually another 10 or so events for each single event that I can see in WordPress but aren’t being published to the site. Would it help if I contacted you directly and sent our WordPress login info?

    #965991
    Barry
    Member

    It looks like the plugin might be changing the end time as well. Is there any chance it’s the plugin that’s doing it?

    If your local timezone and the “source” timezone are different (for instance, you have set WordPress to Pacific time but the event on Facebook takes place in Eastern time) then automatic timezone conversion does take place – however this would impact the start and the end time.

    Would it help if I contacted you directly and sent our WordPress login info?

    I appreciate the offer, but I am afraid we do not accept login information.

    How about this: if you create (or perhaps you already have) a Facebook page of your own that you manage directly, can you set up a test event and share it with me here?

    Then, we can both add it to the list of page IDs to automatically import from and assess what’s going on. If there are differences between our respective experiences that might point us to a local conflict on your site, for instance, or if there is no problem that might suggest the issue is as I proposed and it is the way events are managed on the noted Facebook pages.

    Can we give that a go?

    #965992
    musiclives
    Participant

    I’ll look into the timezone thing – that might be the problem.

    The hard part is that this doesn’t happen to every event, so it’s hard to say if the one I create will cause the problem for you as well. Here’s an event that is duplicating (it actually duplicates almost exactly 22 times every time, so that might be something…) https://www.facebook.com/events/1651546745075497

    Here’s an event that I created as a test event. https://www.facebook.com/events/1094903027191889/ I’ll add it to my list for Music Lives and let you know if it duplicates.

    #966022
    Barry
    Member

    Great!

    Here’s an event that is duplicating (it actually duplicates almost exactly 22 times every time, so that might be something…) https://www.facebook.com/events/1651546745075497

    I’m curious about this event. Can you confirm which Facebook page ID you have added to ensure this event is pulled in?

    Neither BarkerBookings nor IllBrokenEntertainment seem to have it in their respective upcoming event lists on facebook.com, despite being marked as its owner.

    Have you been pulling this in through automated imports, or have you been doing it manually?

    #966047
    musiclives
    Participant

    Hm. Maybe it was a bad example. If that event that I created doesn’t help solve the problem, could we wait until it happens again and use that event?

    #966118
    Barry
    Member

    Let’s see how it goes with the test event first of all: I’d note though that if we don’t catch any problems with that it tends to suggest the problem is perhaps the way events are managed, published on deleted on one of the problematic Facebook pages.

    #966256
    musiclives
    Participant

    Hey Barry,

    If you check the site, you can see there have been a number of duplicate events that have been added in the last 24 hours. We are starting to get a lot of complaints and recently got some local media coverage so I’m really concerned. Do you have any ideas? If not, I’m going to have to stop using the plugin 🙁

    Thanks for your help!

    #966370
    Barry
    Member

    Hi musiclives,

    I’m sorry for the further inconvenience.

    • Do any of the recent duplicates relate to the BarkerBookings nor IllBrokenEntertainment page IDs? If so, which events specifically?
    • Did you find that the test event you created was also imported multiple times?

    On my own test site I don’t seem to have any duplicates from those particular pages – so there is the possibility that this is actually the result of a theme/plugin conflict.

    I fully realize you will not wish to run through our standard troubleshooting steps on your live site, particularly when it is getting media attention – but is it possible for you to set up a clean WordPress installation running only our plugins and a default theme such as Twenty Fifteen, configure it to import from the same Facebook entities and monitor it from there?

    If the problem doesn’t happen under those conditions that suggests something else is interfering on your live site: from that point, incrementally adding the same stack of plugins and ultimately your theme would therefore help us to understand which component is causing the conflict (if there is one).

    Is that something we can try?

    #966373
    musiclives
    Participant

    Hey Barry,

    This really sucks that we haven’t made any progress on resolving the issue. There seems to be a bug with your premium plugin that is breaking our website so we are going to have to remove it for the time being. If you folks ever want to work on solving the problem, please reach out to [email protected] and we’d be happy to work with you.

    Cheers,
    Kelly

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