[Leah]

Hi Eric,

Thanks for your thoughts. We’re working on getting out some other license levels as soon as possible so that folks with larger import needs will have a better option.

Cheers,
Leah

[Leah]

Hi Joseph,

We want to help address these issues, but I will need to ask you to start a new thread so that we can focus on the issues you’re experiencing. It would also be helpful if you can provide some additional information so we can better understand what’s happening.

When you say all your events are in Ignored, are you seeing that for every single event, all imported ones, or all the duplicates?

I’m don’t understand what you’re reporting about your organizers- is the organizer field blank on your imported events? Or is it something with your organizer page?

When you start your new thread, please be sure to share your system information with us as described here. That will help us troubleshoot much faster.

Additionally, all the modifications I have made to the events are gone. I have affiliate links for events and custom fields for events. They have all been either made blank or the URL is now the facebook event url. No more affiliate links in URL. All event URLS have been replaced with FACEBOOK event URL.

Please go to Events –> Settings –> Imports and adjust your Event Update Authority setting. You can choose to have all your local changes preserved upon import.

Thank you,
Leah

[Leah]

Hey Brandon,

Thanks for sticking with me here while we troubleshoot, I appreciate your patience.

If you are on a multisite, you’ll need to delete the row from the wp_options table for the specific subsite you’re using Event Aggregator on. For example, if you are using EA on your subsite with the site ID 3, you’d be looking for wp_3_options in MySQL. The first row of that table will show the site url which can also help you identify the subsite you’re looking for.

Thanks again for working with me. I’m eager to see your imports get migrated smoothly 🙂

A few side notes- firstly, we did just release an update to The Events Calendar which will prevent duplicates from happening when you first switch over to EA. Please be sure to update your site to The Events Calendar 4.3.0.1 to avoid that issue.

Secondly, please check and set the new Event Update Authority Setting under Events –> Settings –> Imports. This setting defines how updates to imported events are handled versus updates you’ve made locally, and you may need to change the default. You can learn more about that setting here.

Best,
Leah

[Leah]

Hi Brandon,

Are you familiar with using MySQL to manipulate your database? If so, you can get the migration button back by going into your wp_options table and deleting the row with option_name = 'tribe-aggregator-legacy-facebook-migrated'. (I recommend deleting the previously-migrated scheduled imports first).

If you are not familiar with MySQL, you can still get it back but downgrading back to The Events Calendar 4.2.7 and then back up to 4.3- that should trigger it.

The scheduled imports run based on when they were started, so a daily one will run 24 hours after it is initiated. This can fluctuate a little based on your site, but that’s the general rule. If you’d like to suggest a feature for specific import times, please post on our UserVoice page. Thanks!

Best,
Leah

[Leah]

Hi everyone!

Thanks to your reports, we were able to figure this out and get a fix in place. Please update to the new hotfixed version, The Events Calendar 4.3.0.1. It can’t fix your existing duplicates, but it should prevent it from happening any more.

If you experience any other trouble making the transition to Event Aggregator, please open a new thread and we’d be happy to help out.

Christoph- I’m glad to hear the script is working! If you want the imports to be saved but not running on a schedule, set them to On Demand. That way they’ll be saved but won’t run unless you click the Run Import row action.

Best,

Leah

[Leah]

Hi again Christoph,

I spoke with one of our developers and we’ve devised a script that will allow you to change the frequency of all of your Scheduled Imports at once via MySQL. You can change the ‘daily’ in line one to any of the following options:

• on_demand [only runs manually]
• every30mins
• hourly
• weekly
• monthly

[code language=”sql”]
SELECT @frequency := ‘daily’;

REPLACE INTO wp_postmeta (
meta_id,
post_id,
meta_key,
meta_value
) SELECT
meta_id,
post_id,
meta_key,
@frequency
FROM
wp_postmeta pm1
WHERE
pm1.meta_key = ‘_tribe_aggregator_frequency’
AND EXISTS(
SELECT
1
FROM
wp_postmeta pm2
WHERE
pm2.post_id = pm1.post_id
AND pm2.meta_key = ‘_tribe_aggregator_origin’
AND pm2.meta_value = ‘facebook’
)
AND EXISTS(
SELECT
1
FROM
wp_postmeta pm2
WHERE
pm2.post_id = pm1.post_id
AND pm2.meta_key = ‘_tribe_aggregator_type’
AND pm2.meta_value = ‘schedule’
);

UPDATE
wp_posts
SET
post_content = @frequency
WHERE
EXISTS(
SELECT
1
FROM
wp_postmeta pm2
WHERE
pm2.post_id = wp_posts.ID
AND pm2.meta_key = ‘_tribe_aggregator_origin’
AND pm2.meta_value = ‘facebook’
)
AND EXISTS(
SELECT
1
FROM
wp_postmeta pm2
WHERE
pm2.post_id = wp_posts.ID
AND pm2.meta_key = ‘_tribe_aggregator_type’
AND pm2.meta_value = ‘schedule’
);
[/code]

As an additional update, we have identified the problem causing the duplicate events and are looking into possible solutions.

Best,
Leah

[Leah]

Hi Brandon,

Thanks for getting in touch. I’m eager to get you set up with Event Aggregator which can handle much bigger import loads and should make your life easier in the long term 🙂

Because the old version always timed out I had only 21 FB pages loaded, I have over 150 pages and load them in blocks.

Have you already clicked the Migrate Facebook Importer Settings button that appeared at the top of your Imports page? If not, you might try loading all 150 pages into the setting page for Facebook Importer, saving it, and then using the migrate option to add them all into EA. Please let me know if that works for you- if not we might be able to help you out with a script that will help you move the rest of your page IDs over.

I know this is over the 100 limit but I can trim a bit.

One option you have is to change some or all of the imports to run less frequently (e.g. weekly instead of daily) and thus save imports. You can also set up a scheduled import as On Demand, which means it is saved in your Scheduled Imports but only runs when you manually click the Run Import row action.

Please let me know if the above helps you get sorted, or if there’s anything else we can do to help.

Best,
Leah

[Leah]

Thanks for confirming Christoph. My testing shows that the duplication is occurring with Facebook events, but not with events that were imported via iCalendar.

The Frequency for updates is “hourly” in the standard settings.

I’m not sure what you mean- the default in EA is Daily, and I believe the default in Facebook Importer is Weekly. That said, if you had changed the Facebook setting to Hourly, then that’s how your Facebook imports migrated into EA.

Who can I change the without open each of the over 300 entries?

There isn’t a way to bulk edit the frequency like that, although it’s an interesting idea. I can certainly see how it would be particularly useful to folks migrating from the legacy plugins.

It is possible to switch of scheduled import completely?

Not at this moment- but again, that’s an interesting idea. If we pursue either of these, I’ll do my best to let you know.

Cheers,
Leah

[Leah]

Hi Christoph and others,

Thanks for your posts. We are actively looking into the issue of the duplicated events and will keep you updated with our progress.

It would be helpful if we could understand more about what you are experiencing. We built in import tools to help folks move from the legacy importers to Event Aggregator- did any of you use the Migration options?

Christoph, you said that _in most cases_ EA wasn’t recognizing the event. If you have noticed any particular pattern, that would be useful to know.

Another big problem is the limit of 100 imports daily….It is at least possible to buy more imports?

We are planning to expand our offerings- upping the daily limit and/or providing additional license levels with higher limits. I appreciate you posting and sharing your thoughts here- knowing how people use the importer tools will help us plan for these changes.

Again, that you all for your input here- we’ll do our best to keep you updated as we address the duplication issue.

Cheers,
Leah

[Leah]

Hi André,

Thanks again for your thoughts.

You can certainly keep using Facebook Events if you prefer. Please keep an eye on our newsletter and site- that way you’ll know if we up that daily import limit or make other license key levels that will work better for you.

Cheers,
Leah

[Leah]

Hi André,

Thanks for your note. As a long-time Facebook Events user, I appreciate hearing your thoughts on Event Aggregator.

One of the reasons we built Event Aggregator as a service instead of a plugin was so that we could run the imports through our own servers. For many users, this is a big plus as they are not going to be limited by their host or their own server capabilities. This has made Event Aggregator a much more reliable tool for importing large amounts of information, and allows more of our users to import events.

The daily limit was a deliberate decision to make sure that our launch was successful and the servers would stay up for all our new users. We are carefully monitoring the usage of Event Aggregator as a whole so we can better understand what kind of limits are most reasonable for our users and our servers. This limit is not necessarily set in stone and may well change in the future.

As a Facebook Events user, I hope you are finding Event Aggregator’s increased importing capabilities helpful. Unlike the legacy plugin, EA can do bulk imports from Facebook Groups which was a widely requested feature. You can import all events from a group with just one import.

if the page im importing from has no events or nothing new… it still counts as an import, doesn’t it?

That is correct. Checking for updates does count as an import. You might try editing your scheduled imports so that they don’t happen quite as often to stay within the daily limit.

Best,
Leah

[Leah]

Hello!

I’m happy to report that we have been working on this feature for our upcoming 4.2 release. The new features for each of our plugins are currently being tested by our QA team and by our beta testers. Soon we’ll be putting the finishing touches on the code and then shipping the new versions out to our lovely customers.

Thank you for your patience while we worked on this. We appreciate your support! Keep an eye out for version 4.2 coming your way in the coming weeks.

Cheers,
Leah
and The Events Calendar team

[Leah]

Hello!

I’m happy to report that we have been working on this feature for our upcoming 4.2 release. The new features for each of our plugins are currently being tested by our QA team and by our beta testers. Soon we’ll be putting the finishing touches on the code and then shipping the new versions out to our lovely customers.

Thank you for your patience while we worked on this. We appreciate your support! Keep an eye out for version 4.2 coming your way in the coming weeks.

Cheers,
Leah
and The Events Calendar team

[Leah]

Hello!

I’m happy to report that we have been working on this feature for our upcoming 4.2 release. The new features for each of our plugins are currently being tested by our QA team and by our beta testers. Soon we’ll be putting the finishing touches on the code and then shipping the new versions out to our lovely customers.

Thank you for your patience while we worked on this. We appreciate your support! Keep an eye out for version 4.2 coming your way in the coming weeks.

Cheers,
Leah
and The Events Calendar team

[Leah]

Hello!

I’m happy to report that we have been working on this feature for our upcoming 4.2 release. The new features for each of our plugins are currently being tested by our QA team and by our beta testers. Soon we’ll be putting the finishing touches on the code and then shipping the new versions out to our lovely customers.

Thank you for your patience while we worked on this. We appreciate your support! Keep an eye out for version 4.2 coming your way in the coming weeks.

Cheers,
Leah
and The Events Calendar team

[Author]

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