scheduled imports not running

[Wayne]

Hello,

We have been using the Aggregator for imports a long time, but are just trying to set up scheduled imports now and they don’t seem to be working. I’ve already tried deactivating all our other plug-ins for conflicts and it doesn’t help. We don’t have “Disable Event Aggregator imports” checked. I’ve tried both daily and weekly scheduled imports with no luck. Can you please help?

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Wayne,

Thanks so much for reaching out!

I’m sorry to hear that you are having issues with your scheduled imports.  Would you mind elaborating on what the issue is with your scheduled imports?

In addition, 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?

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Wayne]

Thanks. I’ve attached a picture of the Aggregator status. The 17 imports listed are all ones where I clicked “run import” on my list of scheduled imports. They are not automatically running daily as I have them set. I enabled the event log, but it just says “the selected log file is empty or has not been generated yet.”

The URLS include:

https://www.facebook.com/DemocraticClubSealBeach/
https://www.facebook.com/canyondems/
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100019132264938
https://www.facebook.com/LWDemocraticClub
https://www.facebook.com/CostaMesaDemocraticClub/
https://www.facebook.com/pg/FlipThe49thNeighborsinAction/events/
https://www.facebook.com/DCWOC/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/tustindems
https://www.facebook.com/DWSOC/
https://www.facebook.com/SOCDC
https://www.facebook.com/TheRealOCYD/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/173329116484839/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/130468853682611/events/
https://www.facebook.com/demsofnoc/
https://www.facebook.com/pg/Democrats-of-Greater-Irvine-112029782240706/events/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/AlisoNiguelDemocraticClub/events/

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Wayne,

I have done some investigation into the links that you’ve provided and have found a variety of results.

With this link (https://www.facebook.com/DemocraticClubSealBeach/), there is no Facebook Page there.

With this link (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100019132264938), there don’t seem to be any events there.

Let’s focus on this link: https://www.facebook.com/canyondems/, as I was able to import events from this link.  Can you take a screenshot of the way you import events and your event settings so that I can try to replicate things on my end?  In the meantime, I will set up a scheduled import for this URL so that I can test if it works for me.

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

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Wayne]

Hi Jaime,

I don’t think you’re understanding the problem…

I can import from Canyon Democrats too, either as a one-time import or by clicking the button on the list of scheduled imports. This is not the problem. The problem is that the scheduled imports are not running every day at their scheduled times as they are supposed to–not for any site.

This may not be obvious to you from the screenshot, as I manually clicked “run import” on every import on the scheduled list this morning one at a time about an hour before I took the screenshot.

You’re right, the URL for Seal Beach is wrong, and the DPOC link points at their main page not their events page, but this is not our issue. The scheduled imports are not running and failing due to bad URLs. They’re not running at all.

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Wayne,

Thank you for your explanation.  I understand now that your scheduled imports are not working.  This is a complicated issue and I will do my best to explain how it all works to you.

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 your thoughts and if you have any other questions on this topic!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Wayne]

Jaime. That is incredibly complex. While The other add-ons seem like they are fairly advertised and can be easily used by the average WordPress user, saying that Event Aggregator allows “automatic imports to be scheduled run behind the scenes” is quite a stretch–at the very least, it requires some pretty intense knowledge and tinkering to even be partially true.

That’s not your department I’m sure, and I am going to try to make this work, but it will take time. Meanwhile I’d rather troubleshoot why some of the imports in the list I gave don’t work whether the import is a single-time or recurring import. Let’s take this one–

https://www.facebook.com/groups/AlisoNiguelDemocraticClub/events/

If I try to import here, I get “your preview doesn’t have any records to report”, yet I can clearly see five events on the page. I can only import these events one by one. Why does this not work?

Here’s another one, with completely different and inconsistent results:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/canyon.democrats/events/

Here I can import from the page and get three events the bus to the Women’s March, Training for Neighborhood Outreach and Voter Registration and Flip the House Pancake breakfast, but not Songbook for OC Women’s March or Candidate Academy.

Why on this page do I get some events, but not others?

Thanks,

Wayne

• This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by Wayne.

[Wayne]

Here’s another one!

https://www.facebook.com/pg/DCWOC/events/

There’s clearly an event on the page, a general meeting on Feb 1. But if I click “Run import” on the scheduled import I’ve set up, I get nothing. If I edit the import and click “preview”, the event shows up in the list, but it will not import. Even if I do a one-time import and click on the URL for the event page, it does not import. In the history, all it says is “one event updated” for every attempt.

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Wayne,

Okay, let’s work through these groups and see what we can do to make things work.

With this group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AlisoNiguelDemocraticClub/?ref=group_header, it is a private Facebook group.  When I go to this group, I cannot see the events there because it is a private group.  Unfortunately, Event Aggregator can only import events from public groups at this time, which is why it is not working.

This group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/canyon.democrats/?ref=group_header is also a closed group, which is why it is not creating any imports.

For this group: https://www.facebook.com/pg/DCWOC/events/, I was able to import the event on February 1 without any issue.  So let’s work with this URL for now.  First off, I see that you have imports set to a status of Pending.  Can you check if that import show up there?  Alternatively, can you try changing the status to Published to see if your event shows up on your calendar after importing?

In addition, please enable WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_LOG and share any debug messages you see?

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 how it goes and if you have any other questions in the meantime!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

 

[Wayne]

Hi,

No it’s not in the pending bin and changing it to “published” did not affect the result. I did, however, see this in the event log–

2018-01-18 19:39:26 Record 9653 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:26 Record 9653 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:24 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:24 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:23 Record 9653 has stalled for too long: deleting it and its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:23 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:23 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:23 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:23 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:22 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:22 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:22 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:22 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:21 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:21 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:21 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:21 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:20 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:20 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:20 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:20 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:16 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:16 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:15 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:15 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:15 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:15 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:14 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:14 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:14 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:14 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:14 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:14 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:13 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:13 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:13 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:13 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:12 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:12 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:12 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:12 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:11 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:11 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:11 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:11 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:10 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:10 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:10 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:10 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:09 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:09 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:09 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:09 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:08 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:08 Record 9658 is failed: deleting its queue information debug Queue_Cleaner
2018-01-18 19:39:05 Record 9658 has stalled for too long: deleting it and its queue

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Wayne,

Thanks for providing me with that information.  As I mentioned in my previous reply, I was able to import the event from https://www.facebook.com/pg/DCWOC/events/ without issue, so let’s try to further investigate what might be causing this issue on your site.

Let’s try to rule out if there is some type of conflict at play.
This is usually because of:

1.    A conflict with another plugin

2.    A conflict with your WordPress theme

3.    A template customization for the Events Calendar that requires updating

When it comes to that type of issue, it is preferable to troubleshoot in a staging environment if you have one.

A first quick test is to simply temporarily revert back to a default WordPress theme such as twenty-sixteen to see if the issue persists.

The next step would be to go through our testing for conflicts procedure and let us know what you find out.

Basically the goal here is to revert back to a bare WordPress installation to see if the problem persists. It also allows us to pinpoint what the cause of the issue is.

But, before you do that, there are 2 things I would advise:

1.    Make a backup of your database

2.    Consider activating a “Maintenance Page” plugin if you are doing this on your live site (to minimize impact on your visitors)

Let me know how that goes!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

 

[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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