Recurring Events Permalink Slug Error

[Robert]

Hi,
On a testing site where we are checking the functionality of various features prior to rollout, we have identified the following error with the Recurring Event functionality.
If you create a recurring Event for example every 3rd Monday commencing 2017-01-16, events are created e.g.:
January Event is event/Title/2017-01-16
February event is event/Title/2017-02-20
March Event is event/Title/2017-03-20
If you edit the January Event (break from series) the Event slugs are changed as follows:
January event is event/Title
February event is event/Title-2017-02-20/2017-02-20
March event is event/Title-2017-02-20/2017-02-20
This will affect searches such as Google Search which has already indexed the site and will then display errors as the previous page will not be found.
This is a serious error and prevents the use of the recurring event functionality in case any editing is required.
Regards,
Robert

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Robert and welcome to the Events Calendar Support forum!

Thank you for reaching out to us.

We are sorry to hear the slug issues you have encountered while breaking events away from the series. Yikes!

I would love to help you with this topic.

I was able to reproduce the issue on my end.

We apologize for the inconvenience caused by this glitch impacting our single event view.
We are actively working on a fix for this.

Unfortunately, I cannot commit to a release date for a fix at this point.

But you will be contacted as soon as there is one.

Thank you for your patience as we see this through.

Best regards,

Geoff B.

 

[Robert]

Hi Geoff,
Thanks for the response confirming that you can reproduce the problem at your end.
We regard this as a serious issue which prevents us from using the recurring event functionality until this is fixed.
We purchased The Events Calendar Pro on the 12th July and reported the issue on the same day.
Although we understand that it is difficult to provide a release date for this fix, I would like confirmation that if a satisfactory fix is not released within the 30 day refund policy time frame, that you will still provide a full refund if this can not be resolved, even if the release date is outside this time frame.
It might be necessary to edit an event for a variety of reasons such as cancellation, change of venue, additional information e.g. attachments, but the permalink slug must remain the same as it will affect searches. We do not understand why the permalink slug is being changed when a recurring event is edited as it should always remain as /event/title/event-date as when the recurring event is created.
Regards,
Robert

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Robert,

I totally agree with you. This is indeed a very serious issue and is treated as such.
To add to that I made sure this was escalated.

It was completely unintended on our end and can truly be qualified as a bug / glitch.

I absolutely believe you when you say that you reported this on July 12th.
However, I am finding no trace of that thread anywhere.

Would you mind giving me a URL of some sort so that I can find out what went wrong with your initial report? Maybe it was placed under a different user ? In any case, that would help us get better.

As for the refund, I absolutely understand where you are coming from.
This must be a pretty frustrating situation. Let’s try to fix this first.

We would gladly refund you considering the situation. At least as long as the payment gateways lets us do it.

Hang in there as I follow-up on this for you.

Best regards,

Geoff B.

[Robert]

Hi Geoff,
My apologies, I meant 12th January, not July.
It would be nice to know the release version that will include the fix.
Thanks,
Robert

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Robert,

Thank you for writing back and for the precision on the date.

I have escalated this to both the head of support and our product director.
At this point I do not have a release date for you.

But, I did stress out the importance of this.
Additionally, I believe you should know that if nothing else, this issue would completely disappear as part of version 4.5 (but that is likely past your deadline).

So I am hoping it can get patched in one of our upcoming Maintenance release.

With that in mind, as much as we would hate to see you go, I will gladly make sure the refund is processed correctly if we get there.

Hang in there!

Best regards,

Geoff B.

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Robert,

I am afraid I do not have good news regarding this issue.

Although we understand the seriousness and importance of this, we cannot repair this bug without refactoring the code (which is a large scale effort).

As I shared with your earlier, we are actually working on such an effort with the goal of delivering it for version 4.5.

Unfortunately, I believe this is past you deadline. But, I thought I would let you know as soon as possible.

I wish I had a better answer for you, but for now it’s the best one I have.

Best regards,

Geoff B.

[Robert]

Hi Geoff,
As it appears that the resolution to this issue will not be until release 4.5, please can you provide an estimated time-frame for this release.
Thanks,
Robert

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Robert,

At the current time, 4.5 is scheduled to be released in March if all goes to plan.

Have a good weekend,

Geoff B.

[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

[Victor]

Hello Robert,

I just wanted to share with you that a new release of our plugins is out, where we added a message to warn users about the URL changes when breaking an event out of its series:

“When you break events from a series their URLs will change, so any users trying to use the original URLs will receive a 404 Not Found error. If this is a concern, consider using a suitable plugin to setup and manage redirects.”

You can find out more about this release → https://theeventscalendar.com/maintenance-release-for-the-week-of-9-september-2018/

We are currently working on improving the recurring events functionality altogether, so the URL change is likely to be solved in the near future. Until then, we suggest setting up a plugin to handle the redirects.

We apologize for the long delay in getting back to you. Let us know if you have any follow up question.

Best,
Victor

[Author]

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