We were unable to sync your event to Eventbrite. Here's what happened:

[Jon]

Been using the Events Calendar for some time, but just recently started receiving this message after saving/updating an event.

We were unable to sync your event to Eventbrite. Here’s what happened:
This event cannot be published because it is already published or deleted.

Encountered this once on Friday 7/22 and then again several times today 7/25. It has never happened previous to that, as far as I’m aware. It saves changes on WordPress, but won’t push them to Eventbrite.

[George]

I’m sorry to hear about this, @Jessie! Syncing issues can arise for a number of reasons. I looked through the System Information you posted—there isn’t anything outright problematic there, so I’m wondering about a few things:

1. Does this happen with EVERY event you make? Or is it intermittent / sporadic / random?

2. Are you still able to import events from Eventbrite.com without issues? Or are there issues with that, too?

3. Can you share a link to the event in your screenshot on your WordPress site?

4. If the event in your screenshot has been posted to Eventbrite.com, can you share a link to the eventbrite.com version of the event, too?

Thank you!
George

[Jon]

Hi George,

Thanks for your response. It has been happening on every event since Friday 7/22 – newly imported events and when making updates to existing events that were imported before that date. The events are importing fine, it seems to just be about pushing updates back to Eventbrite. The events are live on both our site and Eventbrite.com, here are the links:

http://www.slimspresents.com/event/sales-gamh/
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sales-gamh-tickets-26714368395

I notice on the EB page of this event it randomly is showing the location map as somewhere in Sweden even though the address is in San Francisco, but I don’t think that is related to this problem, as that isn’t the case with any of the other events.

Here’s another example, in case it helps to compare / contrast:

http://www.slimspresents.com/event/two-tongues-slims-w-backwards-dancer/
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/two-tongues-slims-w-backwards-dancer-tickets-26570741804

[George]

Thanks for this information, Jessie.

I’m sorry to ask for some more information here, but I just want to track the details of the behavior so that we can best try and figure out what’s happening:

• For the first event, you say, “The events are live on both our site and Eventbrite.com, here are the links:”, and then share the event’s version on your WordPress site and on Eventbrite.com.

• Can you clarify exactly HOW the events ended up in both locations?

• What I mean is: the error you report says “This event cannot be published because it is already published or deleted.” So, can you confirm if at the time the Eventbrite.com version DID already exist on Eventbrite.com? Or did you just manually create the event on eventbrite.com after seeing that error?

Thank you!
George

[Jon]

No problem. The events were built on Eventbrite.com originally and then imported to WordPress. Once imported, we mostly manage both locations through the Events Calendar integration on WordPress. There doesn’t seem to be a problem with the API sending data to the Events Calendar, only with sending data back to Eventbrite from the Events Calendar.

[Jon]

I have an update to this issue that seems to be related, though I’m not positive it is because of the inconsistent results.

2 of the events we were attempting to update via the Events Calendar plugin on WP somehow created new copies of those events in Eventbrite.com and saved them as Drafts. This has only happened for 2 events so far (though we’ve updated and encountered the error for many more than that) and we’re still unsure why it occurred on these events and not others.

The duplicate events were created as drafts and include the same title, date and show time information, but did not copy over any of the ticket types or allotments. The original events that these duplicates were copying seem unaffected and still exist completely independently of the duplicates.

I’m awaiting additional information from Eventbrite and will update here when I receive it.

[Jon]

This reply is private.

[George]

This reply is private.

[Jon]

Hi George,

There’s been a new development – where previously I mentioned that the ‘rogue’ duplicate events did not effect the original events at all, apparently I was wrong about that. When viewing the original imported events on WP, I noticed that the ticket widget was not showing up for either of the events that had rogue duplicates. I attempted to trash the events on WP and re-import them, but upon import it would pull in the rogue event instead of the original (meaning that when copy/pasting the EID of the original event, upon import that EID was CHANGED to the EID of the duplicate). I tried this several times with the same results.

Eventbrite is now aware of this issue and will likely be reaching out to try to help you get to the bottom of it.

—

I tried the test you outlined above, building a test event in WordPress and then registering it with Eventbrite. When saving, I received this notice:

We were unable to sync your event to Eventbrite. Here’s what happened:
This event cannot be unpublished because it is not currently published.

Not sure why it’s talking about unpublishing, BUT when going to My Events on Eventbrite, the test event did show up as a draft with the ticket and onsale info I specified.

[Jon]

One more follow up – not sure if this is related to this problem at all, but the page we have set up displaying the calendar view of events (http://www.slimspresents.com/events/month/) takes a pretty long time to load – the browser info says ‘waiting for slimspresents.com’. Eventually it does load, however, one of our staff members reported that last night when it finally loaded they were only showed text that said ‘calendar view will go here’. I’ve not experienced that error message myself, but thought it may be worth mentioning. While the browser ‘waiting’ info would seem to indicate a server issue, no other aspects of the site are experiencing the same loading delays.

[Jon]

Some additional follow up – this problem seems to be snowballing! But, in doing so, at least it’s revealing a bit more about the potential cause.

Another rogue event draft was created on Eventbrite.com while trying to update an existing event via The Events Calendar. The error given was different than previous ones:

We were unable to sync your event to Eventbrite. Here’s what happened:
There are errors with your arguments: event.tickets – MISSING, event.name – INVALID

We were attempting to update the event title, which we’ve done many times in the past. I believe it was the fact that the updated title was not matching up with the existing title that caused the rogue duplicate event draft to be created. Obviously this has never been the case before, as we regularly updated events in this way until this problem started occurring.

[George]

Hey Jessie,

I am so sorry to hear about the snowballing of issues here! I am determined to help figure out what’s happening. Let’s review some steps for the two separate issues:

---

1. Page load / “Calendar page will go here”

For this issue, regarding the page load time and the ‘Calendar page will go here’ text, I am wondering:

• 1A. If you head to the “Pages” menu in your wp-admin, which lists all of the pages on your site, are there any pages whose title is “Events”? Your events slug is /events, and so if there is a page titled “Events” it may be trying to also use that /events URL slug. This could create odd issues like the one you described in your second-most-recent reply.

• 1B. Is the loading slow-down a constantly-reproducible thing? Or intermittent? If you try loading the page 10 times over the course of one hour, does it load slowly every single time? Or maybe only, say, five times, with the other five times seeming normal and quick?

---

2. Eventbrite Sync Issues

The nature of the Eventbrite sync issues here is complicated and I am going to work with a developer to take a deeper look at our code and our API integration with eventbrite.com. In the past, Eventbrite has made unannounced changes to their API which caused problems akin to what you describe on your own site.

I am not saying that’s the problem here! But there could be some similar API mixup going on. While I’m sorry to say that I don’t have any immediate action to recommend to you at this moment, here is what I am going to do to investigate this in the meantime:

• I will create numerous test events on my own test site, and check their ability to be exported to Eventbrite and then updated from the local site.
• I will create some test events on Eventbrite, and check their ability to be imported to my local site and then updated from the local site.

☝️I’ll do this today and share my findings with a developer on our team, and hopefully arrive at some conclusions about what’s going on here.

Thank you so much for your patience. Stay tuned!
George

[Jon]

Hi George,

Checking in on where we stand with this. We’re still receiving the errors every time we make an edit to an event on our website. Is there anything you need on my end to assist moving this along?

[George]

Apologies for not updating this thread! So sorry Jessie, we’ve actually learned a lot and your posts were a major help in revealing some issues here.

I would like to say I just got caught up in the administrative tasks of calling in developers on this issue, etc., and forgot to update the thread—excuses aside, generally speaking here’s what we have learned:

• Your issues are valid and we can recreate them.
• Other customers are reporting similar issues.
• These issues are new; i.e., they’ve only popped up in the last week or so.
• So, since they are new, the problems could be (and seem likely to be) related to some Eventbrite API changes (which have caused sudden breakages/issues in the past).
• If the problems are some sudden Eventbrite API changes, then the documentation for those API changes is likely to not be complete or detailed at this point…

…So, we’ve confirmed a bug or bugs here and are coordinating developer resources to fix this as soon as possible. I am hoping for a new release of our Eventbrite Tickets add-on to address these problems in no more than 2–3 weeks. Sooner would be ideal, of course.

I’m sorry to have to bear the bad news here; please let me know what you think and what other questions / concerns I can try to help with in the meantime!

— George

[George]

Hey Jessie,

I wanted to post an update here that our developers actually have a fix in place that is being Code Reviewed, discussed, and tested at this time. If it works and passes all checks, then we should be able to publish an update some time in the next few days.

Thank you for your patience here!
George

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