Scheduled imports fail?

[leonardchamber]

Hello,
I am not sure what the red exclamation point means on Events Import > History, but there is a red exclamation point and “0 new” next to the imports whenever it tries to automatically pull events. When I click “run import” from the Scheduled Imports tab, it works fine. It has a green checkmark and “3 New, 76 updated” etc.

These imports are both from TEC calendars that I control.

How do I find out why the scheduled imports are not working?

Thanks.

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Laura,

Thanks so much for reaching out!

Can you provide me with the URL that you are trying to import, so that I can do some testing on my end?

Also, can you enable and check the Event Log under Events < Help to see if you see anything unusual?

Right under that is your Event Aggregator Status. Can you take a screenshot of what you see there?

Let me know if you have any other questions in the meantime!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[leonardchamber]

This reply is private.

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Laura,

Thanks for providing me with that information.

So in other words, imports work if you run them manually, but do not run at their scheduled time.  Is that correct?

I was able to import these imports without issue, so I am unable to replicate the issue that you are describing.

It sounds like it might be a cron issue here.

To explain: WordPress supports a concept of scheduled events and they can be seen as a sort of regularly occurring background task (a piece of code that, theoretically, runs every 30 mins or at some other interval).

In relation to Event Aggregator, we make use of scheduled events to process imports — however, in the simplest and default case supported by WordPress, they actually are not guaranteed to run at the designated intervals.

If, for example, visitor traffic isn’t fairly constant then they may fail to run (or won’t be triggered often enough to process all the waiting tasks). There’s a pretty good description of this here:

http://www.lucasrolff.com/wordpress/why-wp-cron-sucks

It’s an external link and we don’t necessarily agree with the title of the post, but it does explain things pretty well besides covering a possible solution. Note that many shared web hosts (if that’s what you are using) provide notes in their respective knowledgebases that describes how to set up a ‘real’ cron job in a way that makes sense for their setup, so it could be worth researching that if you want to change how this operates.

Armed with that knowledge, does this sound like a viable hypothesis to you – or have you already configured things to use ‘real’ cron?

If you haven’t, it may be worth looking into this. If for any reason you can’t set up real cron tasks and need to rely on WordPress’s implementation, that would also be good to know.

What you can try is setting up a real cron job instead of the WordPress cron. Your hosting provider should be able to help you with this.

These articles might also be helpful:

• https://tommcfarlin.com/wordpress-cron-jobs/
• https://www.siteground.com/tutorials/wordpress/setup-cron-job.htm

Let me know if you have any other questions on this topic!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[leonardchamber]

Yes, they run when I run them manually but the scheduled import has only worked once on one site.

Visitor traffic is not consistent on these sites. It’s a small, rural area.

I have not set up a real cron job. I assume that you mean I need the “real” cron job to run on the site I am running Event Aggregator on, correct? I am using Flywheel and I don’t see any articles on whether or not they can this, but I can ask. I see that WP Engine does have a way to ask them to enable it (one of the FROM sites is on WPE).

Thanks.

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Laura,

Okay, that is good to know.  Visitor traffic does affect the ability of wp-cron to run as scheduled.

With that in mind, you can opt to run the import manually, or you can set up a real cron job through your host.  You can reach out to Flywheel to see what they can for you there.

Let me know how that goes and if you have any other questions in the meantime!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[leonardchamber]

Flywheel doesn’t do custom cron jobs. This is the advice they gave me. I wish I had known that this would be an issue, because this is now extra work I am not getting paid for.

Which do you think would work the best?
—
Sorry, we do not currently allow for custom cron jobs at the server level. We instead recommend utilizing the built in WordPress cron functionality. There are a number of plugins to help with cron scheduling, and we typically recommend the WP Crontrol plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-crontrol/

For external crons, I’ve had success using https://www.easycron.com/. They also have a free plan that allows you to set a job every 20 minutes.
—

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Laura,

I’d recommend you start off with WP Crontol (which won’t set up a real cron job) and if that doesn’t give you the results that you’re looking for, then you can move to Easy Cron.

I hope that helps!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[leonardchamber]

I installed WP Crontrol and changed the WPE event aggregator to import every 30 min instead of daily, so I could test better. It still doesn’t work. I did some research and couldn’t really find out if this cron job is set up correctly. I have attached a screen shot. I didn’t change anything.

Thanks.

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Laura,

I’m sorry to hear that you are still having issues with this.  WP Crontrol doesn’t set up a real cron job, as I previously mentioned, which may be why you are seeing this issue still.

This article may also be helpful in guiding you to set up your cron jobs:

https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-view-and-control-wordpress-cron-jobs/

Let me know if that helps!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[leonardchamber]

That article didn’t help at all. As you can see from the screen shots, I know how to check WP Crontrol to see if the cron jobs are set for every 15 minutes.

I went to Easy Cron and I have no idea where to start. I think we need documentation on how to set up Easy Cron to work with Event Aggregator because from reading the help forums, many people are having the same problem I am having. I had no idea when I bought EA that this would be an issue and am doing hours of work for free at this point.

Thanks.

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Laura,

I’m sorry to hear that you are still having issues with this.  Unfortunately we do not currently have a tutorial on how to set up Easy Cron with Event Aggregator.

You can also add this idea to our Feature Requests, as we tend to implement ideas based on customer feedback, so your input is greatly appreciated:

https://tribe.uservoice.com/forums/195723-feature-ideas

If this functionality is a requirement for your intended project, I’d suggest that a third-party developer would be the best way to make this feature happen on a short timeline. ? We maintain a list of developers who work with our plugins on our Knowledgebase here:

https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/custom-development/ 

Let me know if you have any other questions on this topic!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[leonardchamber]

Hello – the scheduled imports suddenly started working, at least every day during the past three days. I am on the latest version. Maybe something changed? I had not changed anything other than updating TEC when prompted.

[Jaime Marchwinski]

That’s great to hear!  Let me know if you have any other questions before we close out this thread.

[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

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