Next/Prev event navigation links doesn't lead to correct events

[twkmedia]

We’ve recently discovered an issue on one of our websites with the navigation links for next/prev events on the single event page. Instead of linking to the next or previous event, it links to one event in the next month, or one event from a previous month. It links to those two same events no matter what single event one is looking at.

This is the code used to display the links and I can’t figure out why there’d be any problem with it.
`<ul class=”tribe-events-sub-nav”>
<li class=”tribe-events-nav-previous”><?php tribe_the_prev_event_link( ‘<span>«</span> %title%’ ) ?></li>
<li class=”tribe-events-nav-next”><?php tribe_the_next_event_link( ‘%title% <span>»</span>’ ) ?></li>
</ul>

I also had a look at the posts that are linked to and could find nothing unusual about them.

Both the Events Calendar and Events Calendar Pro are up to date.

I don’t have a test server for this particular website so I am a little wary of especially switching to Twenty Fourteen theme, and of deactivating all other plugins as well since it’s a live site. Do you know of any conflicts between any of the plugins installed on the site and the Events Calendar?

[George]

Hey @twkmedia,

Sorry to hear things aren’t working right on your site – I’m happy to help try and fix this. There aren’t any conflicts that I recognized off the top of my head as I looked through your System Information, and I totally relate to your concerns about going through all those conflict-related troubleshooting steps on a live site…

We can keep conflicts in mind and come back to that for troubleshooting purposes if nothing else is letting us make progress, but before we get to that sort of testing, I’m curious if you can first clarify your comments here:

This is the code used to display the links and I can’t figure out why there’d be any problem with it.

Do you mean that you’re using some custom code on your site at all, any customized The Events Calendar views perhaps?

No worries if so, but just for the sake of testing I would recommend making a backup of all of these customizations; and then temporarily removing them from your site. Once removed, see if your issues with the Prev/Next links persist or are different in any way.

Let us know about this, we can continue troubleshooting from there!

Thanks,
George

[George]

Oh, and P.S. – I noticed your version of WordPress is 4.2.5 – that’s a pretty recent version, but the current one is 4.3.1. Any chance you can update 4.3.1 just to rule this out as a possible factor in this issue?

Thank you!

[twkmedia]

Hi,

I haven’t had a chance yet to update the site to the new WordPress version. I will try that next week.

Yes, there is custom templates that we use, and I tried removing them but the problem persisted.

I also noticed another forum post that was quite similar to my problem, https://theeventscalendar.com/support/forums/topic/single-event-view-previous-event-link-incorrectly-points-to-the-oldest-event/
And, I tried changing time zones, and toggling the ‘Recurring events instance’ which had worked for them, but didn’t help with this issue.

Thanks!

[George]

Hey @twkmedia,

Thanks for your patience here! I’m curious about how updating WordPress might affect this on your site, so do keep us posted on how that goes when you do it.

Finally, in regards to this thread: https://theeventscalendar.com/support/forums/topic/single-event-view-previous-event-link-incorrectly-points-to-the-oldest-event/

I finally was able to produce a bug there, so I’m wondering if that is affecting your site here in a different way than it was for those folks…

Anyways, are custom templates currently active on your site? If so, please remove them. You should back up your theme’s whole /tribe-events folder, and then remove this whole folder. If you do this, just to be clear, does anything change at all?

Sorry for the lack of solid answers at the moment – I’m having trouble recreating your exact issue in a way that is different than the issue reported in the thread linked above.

Sincerely,
George

[twkmedia]

Hi George,

Sorry to have taken so long to reply. We have now updated the site to the latest WordPress version and also updated the plugin to version 3.12.3. The links are still not working.

I also tried removing our custom templates again, after the update, and that doesn’t work either. It still displays the wrong links. I can’t leave the templates off since that affects the styling of the website, but I did completely remove them from the server and reloaded the page, and there’s no difference, except in styling.

Thanks!

[George]

Thanks for the update @twkmedia, I’m sorry that issues are persisting here…

1. Have you updated your site’s version of WordPress at this time yet? Updating to 4.3.1 may make a difference here.

2. Also, just to be sure, what are your site’s “Permalinks” settings?

3. You mention testing out the removal of your custom templates already, which is a useful test, but unfortunately if updating to WordPress in step #1 here still does not make a difference, then the troubleshooting steps here are the next best recommendation → https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/testing-for-conflicts/

Now, I know how wary you are of doing those tests, and I don’t blame you for feeling that way. But I fail to reproduce problems here with the prev/next links, and you mention having already tried some of the other weird fixes like the “Recurring events instances” toggle – to no avail 🙁

So if upgrading to WordPress does not help, then a theme and/or plugin conflict is the only thing left standing as a very likely culprit here, and so those troubleshooting steps are called for.

Let me know what you think about all of this! I appreciate your patience with this thread and all of your testing so far, and if there’s anything I can do to make the testing of theme or plugin conflicts easier, let me know!

Sincerely,
George

[twkmedia]

Hi George,

1. Yes, it’s updated to the latest version.

2. They’re set to /%postname%/

We are going to set up a test site in the next week or so, when time permits, and try it with a regular WP theme and disabling plugins to see if that’s the problem. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

Thanks for your help so far!

[George]

Hey @twkmedia

Thank you for the update, and for your patience with this problem. I’m sorry that you have to go to such lengths as setting up a whole test site just to test this issue, but testing a default WP theme and disabled plugins will be an immensely valuable test here.

Keep us posted on your “clean slate” testing – it should hopefully reveal a conflict, and if not, it will at least definitively rule out the possibility of a conflict which is a huge step forward in its own right since conflicts are so often the cause of issues…

Thanks you,
George

[twkmedia]

Hi George,

We have now set up a test server, and gone through the Testing for conflicts steps and unfortunately the problem persists.

The test server has the latest version of WordPress installed, all our plugins are up to date and the browser cache was cleared. This is what I’ve tried so far:

• I downloaded and activated the Twenty Thirteen theme and tried it first with the plugins activated – still had problem with the sub-navigation.
• Then I disabled all plugins except Events Calendar and Events Calendar Pro – no change.
• I tried disabling Event Calendar Pro as well, so that only the regular Events Calendar was active – no change.
• Kept all plugins except Events Calendar deactivated and switched back to regular theme – no change.
• I tried deleting the two events that the calendar seems stuck on in case there was something wrong with them, but then it showed no sub-navigation at all. The li-tags were empty.
• I also tried changing to default permalinks while all plugins were deactivated and the Twenty Thirteen was active – no change.

It’s a very odd problem since it works fine on our other sites where we have similar plugins installed. With a generic theme and no other plugins active I expected it to work fine. Is there something else I can test?

[George]

Hey @twkmedia,

It seems like in your last reply you are saying that problem relates specifically to your “sub-navigation” – is this the extent of the problem? In other words, are the next/previous links themselves linking to the correct events now, but just the sub-navigation doesn’t reflect such changes?

Also, can you share a screenshot of the sub-navigation you mean specifically? You can do so by uploading the screenshot to Imgur.com, Flickr.com, CloudUp.com, or any similar image-hosting site; then just share the links to those images here and I’ll take a look.

I’m sorry if my assessment is off – just wasn’t 100% certain about the meaning of some of your reply, and want to be 100% sure so that I accurately help with your problems.

Thank you for your patience with this!

Sincerely,
George

[twkmedia]

Hi George,

Sorry if I was unclear, what I mean is that the links to previous and next events within the tribe-events-sub-nav at the bottom of the single event page are not working. They remain stuck on two events only. Both of them now in the past. It’s just the prev/next links on the single event page that are not working. The prev/next month ones in the calendar view work fine.

This is what the code from the site looks like, as you can see it doesn’t output anything inside the next events li-tag.

<ul class="tribe-events-sub-nav">
    <li class="tribe-events-nav-previous"><a href="http://backup.com/event/rugby-v-maidwell-hall/"><span>«</span> Rugby v Maidwell Hall</a></li>
    <li class="tribe-events-nav-next"></li>
</ul>

This image shows an upcoming event, but it doesn’t link to the events immediately before or after it. It links to one single event in the past. There are plenty of other upcoming events that take place before and after the current one, but it doesn’t link to any one of them. And the previous event it links to is over a month old.

All single events link to that same event in the past. If you go to a single event that took place before the Rugby one that it is stuck on, it will show one other event that is also in the past. Those two events are the only ones that are being displayed in the prev/next links on the single event page.

I can’t figure out why it would be stuck on those two events only. And if I delete those two events from the event calendar, both the li-tags in the tribe-events-sub-nav are empty so there’s nothing showing at all.

Thanks!

[George]

I am truly baffled here, and am so sorry about that! I’ve tested this on my original testing site and then also a brand-new test site and cannot reproduce this issue. I’m going to rope in some developers here and see if they might have some insights.

I’m really sorry for the oddity of this issue – your patience means a lot. I will update this thread as soon as I learn more.

Thank you!
George

[twkmedia]

Thanks George

How is it coming along? Have you managed to find anything that could cause the issue? I understand that it’s difficult for you to fix it if you can’t reproduce the error.

Is there any other information you need from me? Anything else I can try?

Thanks!

[George]

Hey @twkmedia,

I appreciate your offering to help more with testing and such, but you’ve actually done pretty much every test of import that I can think of here so far!

There’s no update on the ticket at this time, unfortunately. I’ll keep my eyes on it, and if changes related to any of this make it into a given plugin update, it will be listed in the update’s “Changelog” – so keep your eyes on updates! We’ve got some coming soon 😉

Cheers!
George

[Author]

Posts