Recurring events issue

[Matthew Nelson]

Hello,

We seem to be experiencing an issue with recurring events on one of our clients’ websites related to daylight savings time. After daylight savings time ends, the time is shifting forward an hour. I have looked through some articles and forum entries and have found things that seem related, but do not seem to provide a fix for us. The site’s timezone is set to UTC-4 and the data seems to have already been updated previously. Am I missing something here?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Andras]

Hello Matthew,

Thanks for getting in touch.

Ah, the dreaded DST change. 🙂 I’m sorry you are having issues with this.

Could you give me some more details on this? Can you point me to an event where this is happening in your calendar?

Does it also happen with newly created recurring events?

The more details you can give me the better.

Thanks and looking forward to solving this case.

Cheers,
Andras

 

[Matthew Nelson]

Hi Andras,

You can find an event that this is occurring with here http://cawley.sau15.net/. One event that this is happening with is Student Council, which is currently set up to be on the first Friday of each month, but will be swapping to the third. This month it is showing the correct time from 7:15-7:40, next month it is displaying as an hour later at 8:15-8:40.

After you mentioned it, I did try to set up a new event just in case the client had not tried it, but unfortunately it was of no help anyway and I experienced the same problem.

Thanks again for your help!

[Andras]

Hey Matthew,

Okay, I see the issue, thanks!

I started testing this locally, but couldn’t reproduce yet. I’d like to as for some screenshots from you so I can try to replicate your case. This is what I would need:

• WordPress timezone settings under Settings > General > Timezone (screenshot)
• TEC timezone settings under Events > Settings >  General tab (screenshot)
• Recurrence rules of the Student Council event

This will allow me to mimic your setup as close as possible.

I discovered some css glitches on your site where the datepicker and the tooltip were hidden behind the main menu. If you copy the below snippet to your theme’s (preferably child theme’s) style.css file that should fix this. 😉

.datepicker, .recurring-info-tooltip.tribe-events-tooltip {
z-index: 9999 !important;
}

Cheers,
Andras

[Matthew Nelson]

Hey András,

Thanks for the CSS tip, I hadn’t even noticed that so that’s very appreciated. I have attached the screen shots for your review. I don’t believe anything is off, but please let me know if it is.

Thanks again for your help!

[Andras]

Hi Matthew,

Thanks for sharing the screenshots.

I tried to recreate the issue with exactly the same settings but I couldn’t.

If you set up a new event with the same rules do you still get the same result?

A note: based on my experience it is best to have the WordPress timezone set up as a city name like New York, if that is your timezone. The reason is that the UTC-4 timezone will always give you the UTC-4 time and that doesn’t take DST into account. And I would do the same for the events.

Andras

[Matthew Nelson]

Hey András,

I did create a new event with the same settings, although I did remove the first recurrence rule just in case that was affecting things. I also adjusted the time zones like you mentioned, but still had no luck.

I assume you don’t have any other recommendations?

Thank you for your help so far!

[Andras]

Hi Matthew,

I tried all combinations of timezone setting on my local install and couldn’t recreate the issue.

What you can still try is set the recurrence not at the ‘same time’ but set it to ‘different time’ and enter the same hours. With this you might fool the system.

Meanwhile I will try to check further on this DST issue.

Let me know if that works out or not.

Cheers,
Andras

[Andras]

Matthew,

I have another user with a slightly different issue, but gave me an idea.

The user had a line with date_default_timezone_set() in the functions.php file of the theme.

Try to check if you have something similar in yours. Also you can check your wp-config.php file if there is any timezone declaration there which might influence this.

And you can also try deactivating all plugins except for The Events Calendar and Events Calendar Pro and switch to a default theme like twentyseventeen and create a recurring event like that. Switching everything off will eliminate any influence that might come from the theme or other plugins.

Recommended WP Timezone setting is a city-based one, as that follows the DST change automatically. UTC time is always the same, doesn’t change with summer time. I.e. New York is in the UTC-5 timezone, however when DST kicks in for the summer, then the difference to UTC will only be 4 hours. (I know, this is a bit confusing. 🙂 )

Andras

[Matthew Nelson]

Hey András,

I tried looking into your other suggestions and unfortunately they weren’t of help either. Attempting to hack the event made it jump even further in time for some reason, before the event start time jumped from 7:15am to 8:15am, but this time it jumped to 12:15pm. Also that function was set in the functions file, but commenting it out had no effect.

Probably next week we will need to try to go ahead and disable everything to see if something is affecting it. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time today.

Thank you again for your help so far!

[Andras]

Hi Matthew,

Sorry to hear there is no progress yet.

I had a chat with the developers on the timezone and DST topic. Basically in the code we don’t do anything to handle or offset DST. Everything is left to be calculated based on WordPress and the plugin timezone settings.

Could you share a database dump with me? I will try to fire it up and check if I can find something.

Andras

[Matthew Nelson]

Hey András,

The issue is resolved! It turned out that the portion of code in the functions file you had mentioned was what was affecting it. The events just needed to be recreated after removing it from the file.

Thank you again!

[Andras]

Oh wow, glad to hear this is solved! Thanks for sharing this and congrats on finding it!

Since this is resolved I am going to close this ticket, but if you need anything else related to this topic or another please create a new ticket and we’ll be happy to help.

Cheers,
Andras

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