Recurring event issues

[Rose Marley]

Hi

I have used your plugin to help me develop the following website: https://www.mcrgreater.co.uk

Whilst browsing my site, I have noticed something odd over the last few weeks.

Some of the events have missing information when I set them to recur. Here’s a recurring event that works & has venue/info/everything correct: https://www.mcrgreater.co.uk/event/next-thing-award-fine-art/2017-10-02

The next link is the same event, but on a different date, as part of the recurring events feature. This one seems to be missing info: https://www.mcrgreater.co.uk/event/next-thing-award-fine-art/2017-09-29 (Notice how the venue and some other info is missing.) Each recurring event should be identical – apart from the dates.

Basically, it seems like the recurring events function isn’t working/generating recurring instances properly – I’ve noticed it keeps on loading when I create a recurring series and doesn’t say ‘complete’. It just stays on an empty loading bar.

Sometimes, it suddenly says ‘completed’ when I’ve clicked ‘Update’ on the event page, but then looking at the series (as above) some events still aren’t being generated properly.

Is there a way to fix this issue? I have the latest version of the plugin and we’ve not made any changes to the website recently.

We’ve just been listing events as usual but noticed the recurring series feature isn’t working as it usually does.

Thank you in advance.

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Rose,

Thanks so much for reaching out!  I’m sorry to hear that you are having issues with the way recurring events are displaying on your site.

I viewed the link where you mentioned venue and other information is missing.  Here is what it looks like to me:

https://cloudup.com/chDmQ0fIuZW

I see venue information and it looks the same as the other page you linked to.  Are you still experiencing the issue?  Please let me know if I’m missing something and I’d love to help you!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Rose Marley]

Hi Jaime,

Thank you for your reply!

It seems that all the event info for that specific event has re-appeared and it seems to be working as expected. However, I am still having issues with other events e.g. some event info goes missing and sometimes the event featured image does not show up on my recurring events. Is there any reason why this would happen?

Here is another example of what I mean: I have an event listed (called: BBC CAREERS – TRAINEE SCHEMES, WORK EXPERIENCE, CAREERS, ADVICE & MORE). When I search for this event and click the ‘see all’ link to see all the occurrences of the event, Some of them do not display a featured image (please see attached image). Could you please search for this event on the site and let me know if the event image appears on your computer or if it’s simular to the screenshot attached?

web link: https://www.mcrgreater.co.uk

Also, when creating recurring events, the site tends to run slowly. Is this because of the large number of recurring events we have on the site? if so, is there a limit to the number of events we should be listing?

Many Thanks,
Ihtezaz

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Ihtezaz,

Thanks for the update!

I viewed the site and it seems that all of the featured images are appearing:

https://cloudup.com/cJQgF0SwRui

Sometimes, when you work on a site, your browser remembers previous versions.  This may be why you are not seeing all of the information on your site.  The best way to check on your site is to view it in a private window, with no browser history, so that you can see what it looks like in its current state.

In response to your site running slowly, as a first step, please have a look at our Performance Considerations and see if there is anything you can adjust in order to help your site run better:

https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/performance-considerations/

After that, you may be interested in caching, so take a look at this article:  https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/caching-basics/

Let me know if you need any further clarification and if you have any other questions on this topic!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Rose Marley]

Hi,

Thank you for your reply.

I have tried to look into the links and solutions you have sent over, however, they don’t seem to fix the issue.

Also, when listing a new event and setting it as recurring, the recurring event data bar that gets display on the event edit page used to take a few minutes to create the recurring event data (see image attached). It now takes up to 20 mins and gives us the 500 internal server error (please see attached). It there a fix for this as we cannot seem to list any recurring events without having to go through this process of errors.

Thanks,
Ihtezaz

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Ihtezaz,

It seems like there may be a few different issues happening here at once, so let’s try to work on the recurring events issue now.  First, please make sure that all of your plugins are up to date.  We recently released new versions of some of our plugins, so please make sure that you have those versions.

As a next step, let’s try to rule out if there is some type of conflict at play.
This is usually because of:

1.    A conflict with another plugin

2.    A conflict with your WordPress theme

3.    A template customization for the Events Calendar that requires updating

When it comes to that type of issue, it is preferable to troubleshoot in a staging environment if you have one.

A first quick test is to simply temporarily revert back to a default WordPress theme such as twenty-sixteen to see if the issue persists.

The next step would be to go through our testing for conflicts procedure and let us know what you find out.

Basically the goal here is to revert back to a bare WordPress installation to see if the problem persists. It also allows us to pinpoint what the cause of the issue is.

But, before you do that, there are 2 things I would advise:

1.    Make a backup of your database

2.    Consider activating a “Maintenance Page” plugin if you are doing this on your live site (to minimize impact on your visitors)

If you are unable to pinpoint the issue at this point, please enable WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_LOG and share any debug messages you see when creating a recurring event, with the scenario that caused your issues to occur.

Let me know how that goes, and if you have any other questions along the way!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Rose Marley]

Hi Jamie,

Thank you for your reply!

I have tried the above solutions but did not find any conflicts with themes, plugins or cache data. I have also gone through the ‘testing for conflicts’ and did not find anything useful.

When I create an event and set it to re-occur, the loading bar (that informs me that the re-occurring events are being created) does not disappear. E.G for one of my re-occurring events that has been set for around four months, the loading bar had been on the event page for around 4 days now and the events are not being created.

The issue never occurred before. Could it be related to the number of events we can have listed on the site as we have hit the 1000 mark? In other words is there a limit to how many events we can list?

ALso, would it be worth me sending you temporary login details for the site so you can try to create a recurring event to see if you can sopt any issues in teh process?

Many Thanks,
Ihtezaz

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Ihtezaz,

I’m sorry to hear that you are still experiencing this issue.  As a next step, please enable WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_LOG and share any debug messages you see when creating a recurring event, with the scenario that caused your issues to occur.

Also, does this occur with any new event that you create?  I am trying to figure out if there is some kind of pattern here, or a general issue.

Another thing you may want to consider is to try to increase your server’s max_execution_time in php.ini (the default value is 30 seconds):
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<table border=”0″ cellspacing=”0″ cellpadding=”0″>
<tbody>
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<div class=”line number1 index0 alt2″>1</div></td>
<td class=”code”>
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<div class=”line number1 index0 alt2″><code class=”plain plain”>max_execution_time = 60</div>
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</div>
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If increasing the max_execution_time to 1 minute is still not enough, you can adjust/increase it more to ensure that the server will have time to process your requests before it hangs.

Let me know how it goes!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Rose Marley]

Hi Jamie,

Thanks for getting back to me!

I have tried the above possible solutions and here were my findings:

I enabled WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_LOG and recreated the same scenario to cause the issue, however, there were no error messages created. I could also not find the Debug.log file after enabling wp_debug mode.

The issue occurs for every event we create that has a recurring date over (around) two months. E.g. if one event lasts from 01/10/17 – 10/11/17 (1 month), it seems to generate the recurring data fine. But once I move the event date from 01/10/17 to 01/12/17 (2 months), the orange loading bar tends to generate the data over a few days and only a few recurrences of the event are published.

Also, I could not find the php.ini file you mentioned. Would I need to create one?

Many Thanks,
Ihtezaz

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Ihtezaz,

You should be able to view the errors at https://www.mcrgreater.co.uk/wp-content/debug.log, though I am not seeing a page there, so perhaps it is not configured properly.  Would you mind checking again that it is enabled?

I would like to test this on my own site and want to make sure that I am replicating the same settings.  Just to clarify, you see this issue when an event is created that lasts for 2 months.  Is this event recurring as part of a series?  So far, I’m not able to replicate this issue.  Would you mind taking a screenshot of the settings on your Event Page, something like this:

You may also be interested in this Recurring Events Cleanup Tool.  It sounds like you have a significant number of recurring events on your site and you may want to look into cleaning them up, in order to increase the speed on your site.

One more thing you may want to look into is what settings you have in Events Settings<General. You can choose to clean up events sooner if you wish, which may help.

Let me know how it goes!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Rose Marley]

Hi Jaime,

I have added the following lines of code in my wp-config.php file:

define(‘WP_DEBUG’, true);
define( ‘WP_DEBUG_LOG’, true );

Is this the correct way of enabling debug mode? If I need to add in any other code, please let me know.

Yes – the issue mostly occurs for recurring events that last over two months and it is a part of a series. Please see the screenshot attached as requested.

I will look into the Recurring Events Cleanup Tool as we do have a lot of recurring events as a series.

The settings I have in Events Settings<General is currently set to 6 months which I may reduce to 4/5 months.

Thanks,
Ihtezaz

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Ihtezaz,

Thank you for providing me with all of that information.  I tried to replicate the issue using the settings you provided and my recurring events were created without any issue.

I appreciate your patience in this process.  Please let me know how it goes after cleaning up your recurring events.  Let me know if you have any other questions along the way!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Rose Marley]

Hi Jamie,

I have installed the recurring events tool and will start to remove some events presently. However, I have a few general questions I would like to ask:

1) Where do my past events go? I have tried to find my past events in the events list on the WordPress backend, but I can only seem to find events that start from today’s date and onwards. I set the events to be deleted automatically after 6 months but cannot find any before that.

2) Is there a limit to the number of recurring events we should be listing? Or does this depend on the server settings?

Many Thanks,
Ihtezaz

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Ihtezaz,

1. You should be able to see all of your past events in your Events tab in your WordPress backend.  You can sort them by Start Date if it makes it easier for you to view.  Events that have been cleaned up will not appear there.
2. There is no exact limit on the number of recurring events that you can have on your site.  It depends on a number of factors.

Let me know how it goes and if you have any other questions along the way!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Rose Marley]

Hi Jamie,

Thank you for your reply!

Unfortunately, the recurring events tool is not something my client would want me to use as they would prefer to not delete any recurrences of the recurring events (This helps build a good archive and helps with seo for the site). They would prefer to use an alternative method that could help solve this issue.

Could the issue of the recurring events not publishing correctly be related to the web server? We do get a 500 Internal Error (see attached) when publishing recurring events, so could this be related to the servers capicity and performance?

We have also hit the 900 mark on our event posts – would a better server load these events faster?

If you think there could be another solution, please let me know!

Many Thanks,
Ihtezaz

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