Runaway recurring event. HELP

[Delbert]

I am using the events calendar pro and my client has entered an event thats recurring, for what looks like, every day forever. Im not sure how this error occurred but now I have over 12524 instances of this event. Im afraid to try and delete all at once in fear of my db crashing and its becoming a really serious issue. Im not the best with back end development but I have had some experience with it. Im going to take away the recurring option in the future for them but I’m not sure how to go about taking care of this issue. Its causing a strange error talking about not being to do this “directive” and im seeing memory errors in the logs. Have you seen this before?

[Nico]

Hi Delbert,

Thanks for reaching out to us, and sorry to hear about this issue… I’ll try to help you dealing with it!

Recurring events have a ‘limit’ to be created in advance and to be clean up. You can set that up in WP-Admin > Events > Settings > General > Clean up recurring events after / Create recurring events in advance for, the default value is 36 months, which for this case might not be enough to limit the recurrence. You can lower that to 12 months and then the recurring events amount should lower (a cron runs to clean up / create recurring events, so it might take some time to adjust this).

What I suggest you do is back up the site db and files before proceeding with the cleanup, just to be sure your data is safe and you can restore it if something goes wrong. Ideally you could create a dev site (maybe a local copy) with the current state of the online site, and make the clean up in a safe environment. Having a staging/dev site for testing updates and making these type of changes is always recommended. For the clean up itself I recommend you try to set the recurrence rule to ‘Once’ and save the event.

Please let me know if this advice helps you out,
Best,
Nico

[Delbert]

I am in the process of setting up a local dev environment, which should have been done already but thats a different battle and different story all together. Im relatively green when it comes to this as Im a front end dev who is now also the backend dev. If I go to the event and set it to not recur at all, should this crash anything given the sheer amount of events? Truthfully, Im not even 100% how to backup the db because its a giant mess that I inherited pretty much.

[Delbert]

Thanks for your time, I REALLY appreciate it.

[Delbert]

If I go to my phpmyadmin screen in cpanel, can I just click on each individual database on the left, go to export, and do a quick export in SQL format? Would that be sufficient?

[Nico]

Hey Delbert,

Thanks for following up with this!

Basically what you describe about the back is the wy to go, just export the db in SQL format, take a look to this article. The db back up + the site files backup should be sufficient to create a local copy of the site. This other article describes a different way: How to Move a Live WordPress Site to Local Server.

If I go to the event and set it to not recur at all, should this crash anything given the sheer amount of events?

It should not crash, specially if before doing so you lower the settings ‘months to create events in advance’ and ‘months to clean up events in the past’. But +12.500 events is something to be cautious about, so if you can first test it locally it can be safer.

Please let me know how this goes,
Best,
Nico

[Delbert]

It wont even let me change the settings of when the recurring event ends. I just receive this error: [an error occurred while processing this directive]. There is no hope in this at all if i cant even change the settings. I know it wont let me delete them.

[Delbert]

Ok, now that i refresh the page after logging out and back in it says recurance: none but its still doing the “running in the background” spinning up top. Will it remove the excess events automatically or do i have to do that manually?

[Delbert]

also, for the record, There are 4 to 6 reoccurring events per day that its on. How is that even possible? There has ot be something goofy going on.

[Nico]

Hey Delbert,

Thanks for following up here! I’ll try to order your feedback a bit…

It wont even let me change the settings of when the recurring event ends. I just receive this error: [an error occurred while processing this directive]. There is no hope in this at all if i cant even change the settings. I know it wont let me delete them.

Can you send me a screenshoot of this error? Are you logged in as the site admin?

Ok, now that i refresh the page after logging out and back in it says recurance: none but its still doing the “running in the background” spinning up top. Will it remove the excess events automatically or do i have to do that manually?

It should do that automatically. It might take a bit to finish. It uses a cron job, in some installs the cron just runs when you visit the site. Can you update me on this?

also, for the record, There are 4 to 6 reoccurring events per day that its on. How is that even possible? There has ot be something goofy going on.

I’m sorry but I don’t get you here. You mean there are 4 to 6 instances of this event per day? Can you elaborate a bit?

Thanks for the patience while we work on this issue,
Best,
Nico

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