Recurring Event Series Performance and sort issues

[David Jannetta]

Hi,

Since the last update performance on our production server retrieving a recurring series of events is unacceptable. The page often timeout”Page Unresponsive Kill or Wait” and can take several attempts and 2-3 minutes before it loads (1 minute on a stand alone dev server). When it does eventually load in the ‘Event will not occur’ sectionthe event dates are randomised and not sorted in date order. As we have a considerable number of recurring events it occurs to me that there may be an indexing issue on the table. This would account for the time taken to search for recurring events as well as the fact when they are displayed they are not in any form of date order. This seems to have only occurred since the last release as event series are edited and created every 3-4 weeks.

Cheers
Phil

[Hunter]

Hi Phil,

Sorry to see you’re having issues with performance on your site. What do you have entered into the Events > Settings > General > Clean up recurring events after and Create recurring events in advance for settings? Can you decreasing the number of months you have entered for the Clean up recurring events after setting?

I checked our logged bug reports and am not seeing anything relating to what you’ve shared with me. I’m also not experiencing any similar behaviors on my test site. I see you checked ‘Yes’ to reverting back to the default WordPress theme and deactivating all plugins other than ours as instructed in the Testing for conflicts guide, but can you please confirm this?

It also might be a good idea to review the Testing for conflicts guide again, but this time make sure you have WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_LOG are enabled on your site’s wp-config.php file. Any errors will display at the top of your page and in your error log as you try to reproduce the conflict.

I also recommend right-clicking your mouse and opening the ‘Inspect’ tool to see if any errors display in the console. It also might be best to check the Debug mode option under Events > Settings > General > Miscellaneous Settings. Note what you find and please include it in your reply.

I’ll also provide any relative resources I have relating to performance below:

• https://codex.wordpress.org/High_Traffic_Tips_For_WordPress
• https://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Optimization
• https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/caching-basics/
• https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/caching-month-view-transients/
• https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/caching-basics/
• https://theeventscalendar.com/the-events-calendar-performance-considerations/
• https://theeventscalendar.com/favorite-developer-plugins/
• https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/problems-with-minification/

I notice in your System Information you don’t have a caching plugin (from what I can tell). I use WP Rocket on all of my sites and it’s probably some of the best money I’ve ever spent. Their support is fantastic as well. Here are some other resources worth checking out that can help in a variety of ways:

• Our Favorite Developer Plugins
• Handy WordPress Web Developer Extensions & Tools
• Customizing WordPress #2 – Using Chrome Developers Tools
• Downgrading a plugin to a past version

Lastly, if you’re on shared hosting, it might be best you look into a more powerful hosting solution. DigitalOcean is my personal favorite, but I also hear great things about Pantheon. I hope this helps address some of your concerns and hopefully leads you towards a resolution. Best of luck and have a great weekend ahead. Cheers!

[David Jannetta]

Thanks for the response. I have done some additional testing based on your suggestions. All testing is on a full production copy of the website using a standalone MacBook Pro mid 2014 i7 16GB memory with all files located on SSD drive, no other processes running. This rules out any hardware performance issues my end and eliminates any caching issues. This is purely a performance test of the plugin. For the testing I have used the same dataset and theme (swapping to WP 2015 to confirm timings are constant) and using the same recurring event swapping only the Event Calendar & Pro versions. The process is to go Events>Edit All on a recurring event and timing how long for the system to display the event.

Average timings retrieving 1 recurring event with 53 recurrences local copy production system:-

Version 4.3.4 page displayed in 1 second – date sort order incorrect on some recurring event posts
version 4.4.1 page displayed in 25 seconds – date sort order incorrect on some recurring event posts

Average timings retrieving 1 recurring event with 53 recurrences existing hosted Live Production Database

Version 4.3.4 page displayed in 1 second – date sort order incorrect on some recurring event posts
version 4.4.1 page displayed in 25 seconds – date sort order incorrect on some recurring event posts

See attached files displaying incorrect to sort order.

On versions post 4.3.4 reducing the clean up recurring events made the situation worse, as the number of events was reduced from 53 to 34 which in theory it should have been quicker. It was not. In some tests substantially slower.

Timings on post with 93 recurring events took >5 mins and in some cases had to be killed.

SQL Queries against the WP_POST table returned those items in sub second timing.

I have checked some versions pre 4.3.4 and get the same 1 second timing. All versions post 4.4.1 have the performance and sorting issue. All versions pre 4.4 do not have the performance issue but do display the sorting issue. I can’t comment on whether the recurring events should be sorted in chronological order however logic would dictate they should.

In my view this is proven not to be a caching or server performance issue. It is software related performance issue with the Plugin introduced post version 4.3.4.

Whilst you may not be able to reproduce this on your ‘Test’ system you need to accept that every customer will use the functionality differently.

You comment on logged bug reports not showing anything similar is not strictly accurate and I would suggest you look at the following forum posts which I would suspect, may all relate to the same issue. There are also comments in the forum regarding performance issues on recurring events.

Dispaly of wrong start date for a series of events

Reoccurring events out of order and clicks to archive instead of event details

Reduced recurring events pregeneration, events past this date not deleted

Events not chronological in DAY View

Please confirm that this is accepted as a bug and schedule the fix for the next release. Until then I have reverted our system to v. 4.3.4.

[Hunter]

Hello and welcome back,

Thank you for the in-depth testing and detailed results. I compared the threads you shared with me to our list of logged bugs and features. None of the threads are currently linked to any reports, open or closed.

In response to the issue/threads relating to recurring events not displaying in chronological order: we’re aware of this issue and a bug report has been filed. I’ll include this thread to the report and we’ll update you here once a fix is available.

The one thread you linked to relating to performance is still being investigated and as you mention, each case is different. I’ll gladly bring this thread to the attention of our dev team to see if they have any insight on the matter, but when I created a recurring event for this specific case, I didn’t experience any performance issues. I created a screencast of my testings/findings. If they have any insight on the matter I’ll be sure to update you, but I can’t promise they’ll have much to say until we’re able to reproduce the behavior and the issue affects a large amount of users.

I hope this provides some clarification and let me know if you’ve got any additional questions or comments for me. Good luck with everything and have a good week 🙂

[Barry]

Hi Phil,

WordFence appears to be blocking access to your site (for me) at the moment, but I’d love to take a look at an example of a recurring event /all/ page where the events are out of order, if you’re able to facilitate that.

Thanks!

[Nico]

Hey,

Just wanted to share with you that a new maintenance release (for the Week of 15th May 2017) is out, including a fix for this issue ?

Find out more about this release → https://theeventscalendar.com/maintenance-release-week-15th-may-2017/

Please update the plugins and let us know if the fix works for your site,
Best,
Nico

[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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