Multiple duplicate events being created for the same date

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  • #751692
    om4
    Participant

    Hi Tribe,
    We have a site running on latest versions of WordPress, EventCalendar Pro and WooThemes Canvas.

    Recently there have been intermittent (but common) problems when adding new recurring events. When you add a new recurring event, most of the time there are multiple additional events created for the same date.

    There doesn’t seem to be a pattern to this. For example, there are some event dates without duplicates, and some with 1, 2, 3 and in one case 17 additional duplicates created for the event date. Something we’ve also noticed is that sometimes the Featured Image appears in the duplicates, sometimes it is missing.
    We can’t reliably recreate this problem, it seems to happen randomly.

    We have a staging site available that is a complete copy of production, so it is possible to see the duplicate events. We also have the Stream plugin running on the site, so it is possible to see exactly when plugin updates have been applied.

    This issue seems to point towards the same root cause:
    https://theeventscalendar.com/support/forums/topic/thousands-and-thousand-of-events/

    At this stage, there doesn’t seem to be much point in checking for conflicts. The issue occurs when creating events, and the duplication seems to be occurring in the database calls from the ECP plugin itself. And as the issue is occurring intermittently, stripping the theme and other plugins offers no additional value in diagnosing the problem.

    Can you assist in trying to figure out what is causing the duplicates?

    The impact is significant. The only workaround we can find once you create an event that duplicates, is to manually edit each duplicate event to remove it from the recurring series, and then delete it. When you have multiple event dates that have 17 duplicates to remove, this is time consuming.

    A login is available to the staging site if that helps in resolving the issue.

    Thanks,

    Glenn.

    #753305
    Josh
    Participant

    Hello om4,

    Thanks for reaching out to us!

    This is definitely a troublesome issue to be having and I apologize for the inconvenience.

    A couple of questions that will help us in attempting to diagnose / troubleshoot this issue for you.

    1. <span style=”line-height: 13px;”>Did this duplication issue just start happening after an update to WordPress core, the Events Calendar plugin, or any other update that you can think of on the site or your server?</span>
    2. Is it only happening when creating recurring events?
    3. Can you try following the Testing for Conflicts procedures on your staging site? In this scenario, leaving the staging site with default theme and only the couple of TEC plugins active for a couple of days and sporadically creating events to see if the issue continues to occur with everything disabled.

    I look forward to hearing back from you on this issue.

    Thanks!

    #757777
    om4
    Participant

    HI Tribe,
    1. No, it was occurring before the WP4 upgrade. It appears to have got worse now (ie. more duplicates), but that is only an impression.
    2. Yes, it only occurs with recurring events.
    3. No, the Testing For Conflicts procedure hasn’t been tried, and it doesn’t make sense to do so. The most likely cause of the error is the the plugin code. This is because for recurring events, your code is designed to create multiple records for a single logical event. The nature of the problem is that there are an *incorrect number* of multiple records being created for the single logical event. Since the plugin code controls the creation of the multiple events, that is the first place to go looking for the cause of the problem. There are no indicators that it a plugin or theme conflict is at work here. So it doesn’t make sense to spend a lot of time ruling out a potential conflict – before investigating the most likely cause of the problem. I can appreciate why you do want the conflict resolution procedure to be carried out in some situations (we write and support plugins ourselves), however in this case it doesn’t make sense to do so.

    #761734
    Josh
    Participant

    Hello om4,

    Thanks for following up with us!

    Unfortunately I am unable to recreate the issue and the only reference I can see of others having similar issues is from an older version of our plugin that has since been patched.

    I understand your hesitation with following the Testing for Conflicts procedures however this could still be a conflict with your current configuration and could be the only way to find your solution.

    I apologize for the inconvenience but hopefully this can get us pointed in the right direction.

    Thanks!

    #763552
    om4
    Participant

    I’d be Ok with going through the testing for conflicts process if you can give me a plausible scenario where a plugin conflict could cause this type of error. As I said at the beginning, there are strong indicators there is a problem with the plugin (including prior errors of this nature) and no indicators of a plugin conflict. And ruling out plugin conflicts would not get you ‘pointed in the right direction’ in any case, it would just leave you at the starting point. We are not getting the problem with the old version of ECP, as stated earlier it is with the current version. The fact you’ve found and solved one bug relating to duplication doesn’t mean you’ve solved them all. Without logging into the staging environment that shows the data that is wrong, you can’t even start to assess what might have happened.

    Your plugin conflict policy will clearly stop a lot of people reporting errors. We have a real staging environment available and so could do the tests if warranted, but that isn’t common. If Tribe want a better plugin, you should be investigating errors, not simply be bouncing them back at people using the testing for plugin conflicts as an excuse.

    #764481
    Rob
    Member

    Hey om4! Rob from Modern Tribe here – I head up the Support team and wanted to get involved here after seeing your last reply, expressing obvious frustration with our troubleshooting process. We appreciate this feedback and you make some great points here…while I’m going to let Josh continue to address the core issue of your thread here, I figured I’d offer up some context on why we have people follow these steps and the value we’ve found it adds. I also should clarify right off the bat that we aren’t suggesting we would not troubleshoot on your staging environment. But we do ask folks to meet us halfway before we do.

    We usually have people run through the testing for conflicts procedure when we cannot recreate a problem they’re reporting – if that’s happening, it naturally means that there’s something different about their setup than our own. We do all our testing on a totally stripped down, Twenty Fourteen environment with zero other plugins active. This is as close to a conflict-free environment as it gets. Running such a test here (and we had a few folks on the team try it) consistently yields the correct behavior with regards to recurring events. So while it may be accurate that something in our plugin’s code is causing this behavior on your site, there is something about the site where this problem is occurring – be it custom code, the theme or another plugin – that is triggering that. If it were purely in the plugin code alone we’d be seeing it on our end and getting a higher number of these reports. Having someone follow the troubleshooting steps we outlined at the page Josh linked to is a quick, streamlined process of clearly answering the question – “Is this a conflict, or something else?”. We’re happy to look into it and dig deeper when it is “something else”…but I do question whether it’s reasonable to expect that depth when we haven’t yet even narrowed it down.

    I’m also not sure its fair to accuse the team of “bouncing [conflicts] back at people”, when by reviewing this thread I get a clear sense Josh is doing his best to help you out. At no point has he said that he isn’t going to dive into the staging site to check this out for you – he just requested, as is our standard operating procedure, that you meet us halfway before doing so and confirm that there’s zero, nada, absolutely no chance of a conflict at play. It’s especially important when – as is the case here – we don’t even have specific steps to recreate the problem.

    The conflict procedure is one that many users are willing to work with us on. That said I can understand that the steps might be more time-intensive than you may have time for, and we’ve been exploring recently adding a setting for “conflict mode” that runs through all this automatically. Hearing your feedback here makes me wonder if we shouldn’t expedite that. Out of curiosity, would you find such an approach less unpleasant: something where you just hit a button and it essentially automates this step? Would love to hear more from you as to how this troubleshooting process – independent of exploring your staging site, which Josh will follow-up on – could be made less intrusive on end users such as yourself. If you wanted to continue this conversation offline I’m always available via email (rob @ this domain).

    Thanks again for your patience so far. I’m optimistic we can get you sorted here – either by identifying that this is legitimately a bug (and patching it accordingly), or seeing what’s up with your system that may be causing this funky (and as of yet un-recreatable) behavior. I welcome any other feedback you may have – it’s these types of concerns that help us improve, and at the end of the day, I want to do right by you…even if it means altering our systems to better set expectations and make the troubleshooting process easier for everyone.

    #764976
    Josh
    Participant

    Hey,

    Thanks for adding the clarification on why we request the conflict testing procedures Rob!

    om4,

    Like Rob said, once you’ve gone through the testing for conflicts procedures and ruled out any possibility of a conflict, I will be more than happy to investigate the issue further on your staging environment.

    Let me know if anything changes when going through the testing procedures.

    Thanks!

    #766441
    Josh
    Participant

    Hello om4,

    If you don’t mind, could you provide us with the login credentials for your staging area via a private reply here? We can then take a look and see the problem firsthand.

    Thanks!

    #766804
    om4
    Participant

    This reply is private.

    #769023
    Josh
    Participant

    Hello om4,

    Thanks for providing the information!

    I logged in and created about 10 different recurring events. I tried random settings as well creating an event that was identical to an event that I noticed experienced the duplication issue before. You can review these test events on the staging server. A final option that may help will be to take a screencast showing the steps you’re taking when creating an event, all the way from logging into your dashboard to noticing the duplication. This may help us see something different in the process that may shed some light on the issue.

    Beyond that, we are still brought back to our Testing for Conflicts procedures. Again, I understand the hesitation but it still has every potential to be a plugin or theme conflict.

    I apologize for the inconvenience but hopefully we can get this worked out for you.

    Thanks!

     

    #907120
    crash6711
    Participant

    Was this ever figured out? I’m having the same situation, with over 122,000 events now and barely able to maneuver the plugin because of the slow speeds.

    #907261
    Josh
    Participant

    Hello crash6711,

    I sent a quick follow up on the previous thread. We can complete the conversation there or in a new thread if the issue seems different than the flow of the previous ticket.

    om4,

    I’ll go ahead and close this ticket for now. If you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to open a new one.

    Thanks!

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