** For Geoff B . ** – Venue & Event Duplication

[Greg]

Hi,

Please see attached image.

The Events Calendar is, for some reason, creating dozens of duplicate Venues

This is incredibly confusing and offputing for the site administrators, who are already dealing with the many other problems and instabilities we’ve already raised.

Furthermore, duplicate events are also being created. Example attached, BBSC Pre-Assembly Meeting

The duplicates have today’s date assigned to the event date. That’s not correct.

I note another user experienced similar, recently, but we did not get to see what happened with that…

Dozens of Duplicate Venues

Please advise,

Thank you

[George]

Hey Greg,

Sorry to hear about this behavior!

Can you share your site’s complete system information? Here is how to do that → https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/sharing-sys-info/

Also, can you confirm if this issue only happens when WPML is activated?

Thanks,
George

[Greg]

This reply is private.

[Greg]

Hi George,

Sure, there’s the info.

It’s hard to tell as this has been reported to me, I’ve not witnessed it directly. But the administrators of the site that has the duplicate Events have not been working/logged in to the admin area during the time of the problem.

WPML is indeed enabled.

But looking on a sub-site where WPML is not enabled, I still see some duplicate venues there. (Screenshot attached)

(By the way, not sure if it’s related – our posts status show for example (8) drafts, but when we click on Drafts… there are none). Screenshot also attached.

Thanks
Greg

[George]

Hey @Greg,

Thanks for sharing this information. I am not able to recreate any of these issues and we do not have any reports from other customers of this sort of behavior, so I am unfortunately suspecting a plugin or theme code conflict on your site.

To help investigate this, can you clarify how and when the venue and event duplications happen?

• When an event is created, does it automatically get posted twice, for example?
• When a venue is created, does it automatically get posted twice, for example?
• Or do things post fine, and then a week later you check out the admin and all of a sudden there are duplicates?

I’m just curious for more information about when you notice the duplicates, and what behaviors make them arise.

Thank you,
George

[Chris Dawson]

please can i offer an insight into this issue. i’ve set up a site for a content owner and they have come across this rather major “duplicating venues” issue. with a bit of discussion i was able to work out that it’s actually caused by the content editor using wordpress’s “PREVIEW” functionality.

so… they create a new event, start entering information for the venue, and IF THEY CLICK ‘Preview’ in the top right panel (rather than ‘save draft’ or the main ‘publish’ button) THEN it creates a venue at this point. because they have not saved the EVENT yet, they then may click ‘preview’ a few more times whilst setting up the event. and, BANG, they’ve (unintentionally and in the background) created several replicate ‘venues’ (event though they haven’t saved the event itself yet!).

Also, I used the ‘merge venue/organiser’ button in the event settings to help dedupe existing venue replicates, but it disappears after running this once.

I think this is quite a big issue with the duplicate venues, and i’ve seen several forum posts about it, but no one has mentioned the REASON for it – i believe it’s to do with content people using “Preview” (something that very few developers/admin people ever use!)

[Greg]

Interesting, thanks Chris. Glad someone else has seen the problem.

Your description could well tie in with our scenario – the people entering the events are more day-to-day users rather than developer/experienced wp admin types, and so may be using Preview.

Cheers.

[Chris Dawson]

Further to this, in General settings, the ‘Merge replicate venues’ button reduced our venues from 112 to 62, but the button then disappeared.
Good news, there is a functions.php code snippet in this thread which makes sure the dedupe button remains in settings (rather than disappearing after using it once):

Merge duplicate venue/organizer confusion

Am still testing, checking things at this end, it’s a moving target right now… but more and more I think the ‘Preview’ glitch is key here

• This reply was modified 9 years, 6 months ago by Chris Dawson.

[George]

Thanks for chiming in, Chris!

Greg, it is definitely worth finding out if the Preview button is being used by the folks administering your site.

1. Let us know if you find anything that confirms that many people are using the Preview Button.

2. Let us know if when you yourself use the preview button in the process of creating new events with new venues if that seems to lead to some duplication like you originally reported.

Cheers!
George

[Chris Dawson]

thanks george, yes i tested the theory after talking to my client. Using ‘Preview’ does indeed lead to (potentially large numbers of) duplicate venues without the editor realising until later when they look at the venues list.

further to this, i believe the ‘merge replicates’ button (in settings) only works if the replicate venues are identical. So if a content editor uses Preview several times whilst updating venue fields on an Event then they may end up with (for instance) 6 replicate venues, and the ‘merge replicates’ button may remove 3 of these but leave the other 3 if they vary a bit.

it seems to me that work needs to be done to stop venues/organisers being replicated on each ‘Preview’ click. i guess the initial ‘Preview’ call would require a venue/organiser to be created, but subsequent ‘Previews’ need the venue/organiser records to be checked and updated if necessary rather than generating a new one each time.

(i note in a couple of other threads about this issue WPML is mentioned. i think this is a red herring, WPML is not in use on our site)

• This reply was modified 9 years, 6 months ago by Chris Dawson.

[George]

Hey Chris,

Thanks for elaborating on the behaviors here!

You say:

it seems to me that work needs to be done to stop venues/organisers being replicated on each ‘Preview’ click.

☝️ I agree and we are investigating these issues.

[George]

Hey Greg,

1. Let us know if you find anything that confirms that many people are using the Preview Button.

2. Let us know if when you yourself use the preview button in the process of creating new events with new venues if that seems to lead to some duplication like you originally reported.

Cheers!
George

[Greg]

Actually, in my case, the venue doesn’t get created at all.

I create a new event.

Input some details for the new venue.

Click Update.

The venue details are gone.

a new venue has not been added in the Venues overview page.

[George]

Okay, thanks Greg. So do your issues persist? And are they essentially that you will create an event and venue, publish it, and all looks fine…but then a few days later you return to the site and notice a bunch of inexplicable duplicates?

I’m sorry to ask more for clarification and details here, Greg. Earlier in the thread you said, “It’s hard to tell as this has been reported to me, I’ve not witnessed it directly,” so I understand that you may not have much detail to add here. That will make it hard for us to enact any specific recommendations or solutions until we can clearly identify a problem and its cause…so let me know what you find and what you think might be the sequence of events on your site that produces duplicate events and venues.

Thanks!
George

[Greg]

Cheers George.

The scenario Chris has described is extremely likely for our case, knowing our client and their staff – they will probably be using the Preview. Perhaps without even knowing it. They’re not very WP-Savvy.

We have identified some venues that have the most duplicates. I have therefore asked them to find out who was the administrator responsible for creating the events at those venues, and ask if they recall using the Preview function.

Seperately, I am unable to actually recreate the issue because, as I mentioned with those screenshots, when I create a new event and add a Venue, it doesn’t save ANYTHING. No venue is added or created. Let alone multiples!

Thanks

Greg

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