Facebook imports wrong time zone

[kimharp]

Hi:

I’m having the same problem addressed here.

My calendar includes events happening around the world, in many different timezones. It’s frustrating that the Facebook import plugin does not keep the original timezone of the event intact when importing. Is there a workaround other than manually changing each event? Can this be made an option in a future release?

Thanks!

Kim

[Barry]

Hi Kim,

Please do add your support to this feature request (or even add some additional comments/create a new one if you feel that doesn’t quite cover it).

Right at this time unfortunately I’m not sure there are any particularly straightforward workarounds here, but we certainly appreciate you aren’t the first person to request something along these lines and will be happy to consider changes in future releases 🙂

[kimharp]

Thanks Barry and I’ve added my comments! Given that the plugin imports the location of events, it seems logical that you wouldn’t want to change the time zone to something other than that of the location. At this point since I have to manually make the change, I can’t use auto import. I hope you’ll consider this in the next release!

[Barry]

Given that the plugin imports the location of events, it seems logical that you wouldn’t want to change the time zone to something other than that of the location.

I do see your point, here.

To give a little background as to the logic of this, though, suppose your WordPress installation is configured to UTC (perhaps it is primarily UK based) and you import an event taking place at 8pm in UTC-8 (ie, California). If we simply pretend that is actually 8pm UTC then, yes, it will show up in the calendar as taking place at 8pm.

However, at midnight on the appointed day it will automatically “drop” from the list of upcoming events since, in UTC time, we’ve progressed on to the following day – despite the fact it is still only 4pm in UTC-8 timezones.

Given that, our adjustment to local/WordPress time does make sense – it’s an attempt to reflect the true event time.

I hope you’ll consider this in the next release!

It’s something we’re going to have to give careful consideration to as, with regards to the above scenario, simply turning off the adjustment will not suffice for all users and so some larger changes may be required not only to Facebook Importer but to The Events Calendar itself.

Not to say we won’t get there – just that I can’t guarantee a single release-cycle turnaround for this.

Thanks again for your feedback and for making use of our UserVoice channel 🙂

[kimharp]

Ok Barry, that makes sense, I get it. However, I still think most people using a calendar would want to see what the time of the event is in the location where it is being held. Many of my users don’t have any idea where my time zone is, so they just want to know what time to show up somewhere :-). Thanks for considering it…

Kim

[Barry]

Absolutely 🙂

[Author]

Posts