Sudden increase in number of events

[Steve]

Hi there,

Our client has just reported problems with their events calendar listing. I’m assuming it’s related to recurring events. We had it set to create events 12 months ahead. I’m not sure what the total was before, but now it’s around 60,000, and the listing on the front is frequently timing out.

I’ve reduced the setting to only create for 4 months ahead but there’s still the same number of posts. How do I get it to purge?

Past that, I’m wanting to investigate if this is simply having a too long a range for creating recurring events, or if there’s a problem here. I’ve updated to the latest version of the plugin (and PRO, which I use). Have you had any issues recently that might relate to this? Where should I start for diagnosing the problem?

Cheers,

Steve Taylor

[Steve]

For now I’m assuming it’s about this recent issue:

https://theeventscalendar.com/release-events-calendar-pro-4-2-2-1/

I’ll let you know if the plugin fix doesn’t work.

[Steve]

I just tried uploading the ‘fix plugin’ to our live site, and basically the events section began giving 500 server errors, timing out I guess. I’ve deleted the plugin via FTP. Please let me know how to proceed – we urgently need this issue fixing but your plugin seems to crash the site.

[Cliff]

Hi, Mike. Sorry you’re experiencing this.

You might want to try increasing the memory limit on your current server:

• Here’s is how to upgrade WordPress’ memory limit, right from the WP Codex
• Here is the PHP reference for modifying your php.ini memory limit

Sometimes this is necessary as well. Not all hosting plans allow you to edit the php.ini file, so you would need to consult with your provider on how to do it and if you need to switch plans. You might even ask them what the maximum allowed memory is for the current plan, and make sure you are already there.

Keep in mind that WordPress is a powerful application, and our Calendar only adds to that power.

===

Please make sure all your Modern Tribe plugins (and WordPress core) are at their latest versions:

• Downloads / Version Numbers
• TEC Automatic Updates
• or TEC Manual Updates
• WordPress core updates

Once you verify you’re on the latest versions, please test to see if the issue is still happening for you.

If it is, please follow our Testing for Conflicts Guide (basically switch to TwentySixteen theme and deactivate all plugins and custom code other than Modern Tribe plugins) and see if that helps narrow down the cause of this.

Once you’re on the latest versions and in Testing for Conflicts Mode, please try changing one or both of these settings (shorter time means less events for both settings):

• Clean up recurring events after
• Create recurring events in advance for

If still not fixed after 1-2 days (to allow time for the scheduled processes to work), then please share your System Information (while in Testing for Conflicts mode).

Let us know what you find out.

Thanks.

[Steve]

Thanks for the reply but it looks like a copy/pasted response?

The issue seems to be the problem with your recent update that you acknowledged here – https://theeventscalendar.com/release-events-calendar-pro-4-2-2-1/ – and provided a plugin to remove the erroneously created recurring events.

As I mentioned, I tried uploading this plugin but it immediately crashed the site. Are you saying that part of the use of this fix plugin is that you need to temporarily increase the memory limit? I’m just checking with the hosts to see if this is possible, but please confirm that this is what the plugin needs to do its work.

[Cliff]

Mike, I didn’t miss that you thought your client’s issue was the same as was mentioned at https://theeventscalendar.com/release-events-calendar-pro-4-2-2-1/

Since you said the site is timing out, there’s obviously an issue — but if the “fix” plugin didn’t work for you, it could be because your system is already overloaded, and therefore extra memory (until the issue is resolved) may help.

Since you said the “fix” plugin immediately crashed the site, did it cause 500 errors or PHP errors or memory timeouts or some other kind of errors? Did the entire site (wp-admin and home page) crash or just when trying to view the /events pages/views?

As stated in my previous reply and in the linked article, the “fix” plugin can take time to do its work, which is why I recommended allowing 1-2 days (especially since it was going to be over the weekend when our support team is off duty).

And we always do recommend switching to a WordPress default theme like Twenty Sixteen and deactivating all non-Modern Tribe plugins to avoid any conflicts or, in this case especially, any other plugins taking resources that TEC may need extra of until it’s all fixed.

I hope this extra information provides better context for you to help your client’s site get fixed ASAP.

Please keep me updated.

Thanks!

[Steve]

This reply is private.

[Steve]

Any idea how fast this plugin’s supposed to work? The 52,000+ total has gone down by about 5 in the past couple of hours. Any way of speeding things up?

[Cliff]

Steve, thanks for the extra info and of course we don’t want to see anyone’s sites affected, especially this much. Sorry about that.

Moving toward getting this resolved:

• You initially mentioned 60,000 events and more recently mentioned 52,000 events (from about 52,005 to about 52,000). I’d guess that you changing your settings from 12 months out into the future to 4 months out purged those ones. Maybe that’s the reason for changing from 60k to 52k?
• How many events do you expect there to be? It could be the runaway recurring events bug isn’t actually your issue, or it could be that WP Cron isn’t running as often as the fix plugin is expecting it to. If you think runaway recurring events (caused by ) is your issue, please try this different fix plugin (remove the other first one I linked you to) that adds a button to click at each recurring events’ wp-admin Single Event edit screen — https://cl.ly/1O3q1W2G0R2K — so you don’t have to wait for WP Cron.
• If the fix plugin isn’t solving your issue, it could be that your recurring events aren’t actually affected by the bug from version 4.2.2 but instead are simply misconfigured. For example, you might have selected to recur “every 1 days” instead of “every 1 weeks”. Can you share some screenshots of recurring events you think are resulting in an unacceptably large number of generated events (so we can see the recurrence rules)?

I look forward to helping you further with this if necessary. Thanks for your efforts.

[Steve]

This reply is private.

[Cliff]

My apologies about that link not be accessible. Here’s a publicly-accessible version: https://cl.ly/400O3R3q3M1I

Yes, you’d need TEC core and TEC Pro active to run it… and yes it does require you to click it for each recurring event series (i.e. parent post) but not for each auto-generated occurrence within the series (i.e. child posts).

You can identify recurring events at wp-admin > Events > look for a “Yes” in the “Recurring” column.

If you’d like, here’s a snippet to make it so only the first/parent event appears in wp-admin:

https://gist.github.com/cliffordp/81f23a207ab483c9e7c6d910f9b29c0a

Another idea is to possibly search your wp_posts table for tribe_events post type with a creation or modified date that was around the time of your updating. This may help identify the number of runaways if the site users haven’t be creating a bunch of new events since then.

Please let me know how else I can help at this time.

[Steve]

I already have my own filter for hiding recurring instances. There’s 162 ‘parent’ events, most are recurring. Is there really no way to automate this?

At least, if I sit down and do this, I need to know it’s going to work.

Should I reduce the ‘create in advance period’ before doing this? 12 months had been working OK so far.

I tried it with a few events and the total doesn’t seem to be going down.

[Cliff]

If the fix plugin isn’t solving your issue, it could be that your recurring events aren’t actually affected by the bug from version 4.2.2 but instead are simply misconfigured. Can you share some screenshots of recurring events you think are resulting in an unacceptably large number of generated events (so we can see the recurrence rules)?

[Steve]

How would I identify specific events that might be causing an issue, out of over 100? Maybe there’s a way to query the data to list the number of recurring instances that have been created for each event? If that’s a problem you’ve faced before and you have an SQL snippet, that’d be great.

[Cliff]

We really don’t.

Again, the issue could be the bug introduced in Pro version 4.2.2, in which case I’d suggest starting with the events modified most recently (on or after the date you updated to v4.2.2) and clicking that “fix” button on each of those parent events that are a recurring series.

This SQL query may help in that instance (enter your own date):

SELECT DISTINCT( post_parent ), post_date
FROM   wp_posts

WHERE post_parent > 0
  AND post_type = 'tribe_events'
  AND post_date > '2016-07-01'

ORDER BY post_date DESC

LIMIT 100

Another possibility is that there’s a legitimate user error, like setting a recurrence rule like this:

• trying to enter a date
• leaving the recurrence count empty

These are 2 types of user errors that we have on our to-do list to protect against in the future, either/both of which can cause a lot of events within a recurrence series.

Please let me know what you find out.

[Author]

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