One of my ical feeds is coming in with event times 4 hours late

[Diane]

I use event aggregator to import several .ical and facebook feeds. One, in particular, is giving me trouble with the event times:

http://hcplfl.evanced.info/signup/eventsxml.aspx?dm=ical&nd=14

I have checked my wordpress and event calendar timezones and they are set to EST. I have also tried clicking the “make all events in the calendar timezone” and unchecking “make all events in the calendar timezone.” Still, this one particular feed comes in with the wrong times consistently 4 hours after the events are scheduled for. I have checked with the calendar owner and they have assured me that their calendar is set to EST and that they have no troubles with any other calendars that are using their feed. SO, can you figure out what is wrong with this feed and how to fix it. I am frustrated beyond belief because I have to manually fix each event that I publish.

I have also imported two events from another government ical calendar as .ics files and they both came in with the 4 hours later time issue. WHAT!?!

I have checked for plugin conflicts and I use the TwentyFourteen theme (child), so please don’t waste my time asking me about that. I try to research and fix these things for a long time before I contact you.

Please let me know how to fix this or if you can do so.

Diane

[Cliff]

Hi, Diane. Sorry you’re experiencing this.

I detected that this link ultimately redirects to https://hcplfl.evanced.info/signupadmin/eventsxml.aspx?dm=ical&nd=14

I put that in an iCal file validator and it did not validate due to using the “TITLE:” for each event. After removing all of those, it still did not validate. Please discuss this with the author/creator of this calendar for long-term viability.

Regarding the timing issue, my testing of Event Aggregator worked like this:

• As a sample, the “Medicare – WH” event is set to
  DTSTART:20170501T210000Z
  DTEND:20170501T220000Z
• My site’s timezone is set to Central Time
• The Event Aggregator preview looks like this: https://cl.ly/2i0s2K0D2I26
• Since this event starts at 21:00 UTC (which is 9PM UTC), it imported for me as 9PM UTC.
• Oddly, it didn’t import for me in Central Daylight Time (CDT), but it did still import accurately, as seen here: https://cl.ly/2u0i2w221e2E

It might help to add one or more of these timezone parameters to the iCal’s header:

• TZID
• X-WR-TIMEZONE
• X-LIC-LOCATION

http://mcb.berkeley.edu/seminars/mcb_seminars.ics is an iCal feed that has all three of these and they’re all set to “America/Los_Angeles”.

An example from that iCal feed.

• DTSTART:20170501T230000Z
  DTEND:20170502T000000Z
• This is 11pm UTC, which is 6PM Central Time and 4PM Pacific Time during DST.
• Here’s an import Preview: https://cl.ly/3X301W293R19
• and actual import: https://cl.ly/062N2v1r0h0q (imported correctly as 4PM Pacific Time)

Therefore, please consult the author/creator regarding what’s most appropriate for your iCal feed.

[Diane]

Cliff,

The correct time for the first event (Medicare) is 5pm, not 9pm.

[Cliff]

The “Z” at the end of “DTSTART:20170501T210000Z” means UTC.

21:00:00 UTC is 9PM UTC.

[Support Droid]

Hey there! This thread has been pretty quiet for the last three weeks, so we’re going to go ahead and close it to avoid confusion with other topics. If you’re still looking for help with this, please do open a new thread, reference this one and we’d be more than happy to continue the conversation over there.

Thanks so much!
The Events Calendar Support Team

[Author]

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