Timezone Issues during Daylight Savings Time

[Barry]

Hello,

This fall the Daylight Savings time switch messed up all my client’s event times. Their site had been set up as follows:

WordPress General Settings Timezone – Chicago
Events Calendar Settings Timezone Settings – “Use the sitewide timezone setting everywhere”

We ended up having to switch the settings in every event to UTC-6 (as well as the WP timezone setting) to fix the problem. My client is worried that they will have issues again this Spring. They would like to use “Chicago” as their timezone setting, but every time we try to switch it, we get massive timing discrepancies.

[Andras]

Hello Matthew,

I’m really sorry the time move messed up your events.

We’re always trying to improve how the DST is handled. It looks like there is need for more.

I did some quick tests and have discovered some glitches. I will need to dig into this a bit more, please give me some time.

You can help with with giving me a bit more details about your issue. Thanks for sharing the settings, that is a good start!

Can you tell me more on how the event times got messed up? Were they recurring events or normal ones? Did all the event times get messed up or only some?

Thanks and looking forward to getting this sorted.

Cheers,
Andras

[Barry]

Hi András,

Thanks for getting back to me.

All events were recurring events. And I believe the times that were messed up were those entered as recurrences. So not the “first” event in a recurring series (entered under “Start/End:”), but all subsequent recurrences (entered under “Event Series”).

Hope this helps. Let me know if there’s anything else you need from me to help get this figured out.

Thank you!

[Andras]

Hi Matthew,

Thanks for the extra info.

So far I have discovered a glitch that the wrong timezone is shown if you create a summer event in the winter. That also affects recurring events. This happens when you have the TEC timezone setting as “sitewide”.

Also what I found out is that if you use “local” timezone setting, then the proper timezone will be shown.

This could be a cause of the bug. I have created a ticket and we will take a look at it. I’m pushing this as much as I can so we can eliminate this issue before the DST change in March.

Cheers,
Andras

[Sally]

Any updates on this issue?

[Andras]

Hi Matthew,

Thanks for the ping.

I checked the ticket. It looks like a fix has been developed and it is currently waiting for code review.

Once that is done it will still go through testing before it is released.

If all goes well the fix should be out with the upcoming Maintenance Release early March and I hope it will fix your issue.

Cheers,
Andras

[Victor]

Hi There!

Just wanted to share with you that a new maintenance release (for the Week of 5 March 2018) is out, including a fix for this issue 🙂

Find out more about this release → https://theeventscalendar.com/maintenance-release-week-5-march-2018/

Please update the plugins and let us know if the fix works for your site.

Best,
Victor

[Barry]

The issue is not solved. This is beyond frustrating.

We have an event set up as follows:

3-9-18 @ 7pm (19:00)
3-10-18 @ 9pm (21:00)
3-11-18 @ 5pm (17:00)

When I run the function, tribe_get_recurrence_start_dates, the following is returned?!

Array
(
[0] => 2018-03-09 19:00:00
[1] => 2018-03-11 03:00:00
[2] => 2018-03-11 22:00:00
)

[Andras]

Hello Matthew,

I’m really sorry to hear that you are still having issues.

Could you please give me a bit of context on the issue? What dates / times are you expecting to show up? How is the event and the recurrences set up? What are your timezone settings (WordPress and EventsCal)? Are they still the same as in the opening post?

Please note that the maintenance release does not and can not always automatically fix existing entries. These usually need to be re-saved.

Let me know and I’ll be happy to help you further.

Cheers,
Andras

[Barry]

The issue was resolved after deleting the old entries, re-entering and saving.

Thanks for you help! So glad this issue is resolved.

[Andras]

I’m stoked to hear that Matthew! Awesome!

Since this is marked resolved I am going to close this ticket, but if you need anything else related to this topic or another please create a new ticket and we’ll be happy to help.

Cheers,
Andras

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