All-in-One Event Calendar Update 2.0.6

Hello,

You can upgrade to 2.0.6. Please sure you backup your DB.

Thanks

@lordliverpool don’t do that. You can have a lot of problems.

@jashan

Do you ever do bug fix releases?

That is you don’t add any new functionality, you just fix known issues?

Just wondering

Cheers

Most of the 2.0.x series is to either fix regressions compared to the 1.x series, or just to fix bugs. The whole idea now is that the 2.x core is going to be the stable bit that all the add-on functionality is built on, and it won’t do much different to what it does now. 2.1.x will probably have some extra stuff in it, but nothing huge.

1.10.x was out for quite a while, and eventually they had to move on. Time.ly didn’t release any versions after 1.10.11-standard and 1.11.5-pro. They’ll support 1.11.5-pro but then again everyone using that has paid for support. They won’t release another 1.10.x or 1.11.x version as all their time is committed to making 2.0 as stable as possible, and working on paid add-ons to 2.0 that people want. Businesses need a sustainable model to survive or they go bust. I’ve been on the bust side of that model, and it’s not fun for anyone let me tell you – the company, the employees or the users of their software (who suddenly need to find an alternative).

A lot of people complained about the speed of the 1.x series, so Time.ly went and completely re-wrote the plugin to address this. The new plugin is generally faster in all respects, and is generally more versatile. At the same time, supporting and maintaining 3 versions (free, standard & pro) was too much work, so they moved to a modular approach where the core is the equivalent of the free (and there is little if any extra features added to it), and there are add-ons that give you any extra functionality on top of that.

That said, despite the fact that Time.ly asked for people to do some beta-testing before the release of 2.0, bugs got through. Most notably are some of the issues that were around use on WP network sites (now mostly fixed), some display rendering issues (now mostly fixed), bugs around disabling gzip compression (now fixed), and translations (whole new kettle of fish). These of course were mainly because the people who would have found these things didn’t test the beta.

With WP, there are so many configurations and possibilities that testing them all is pretty close to impossible, unless you have a truly staggeringly sized team. And Ai1ec is not a small piece of code (it’s about 1/2 the size of WP itself).

If you don’t run a WP network site, have a fairly standard webhost with reasonable defaults (like reasonable PHP memory limits, webserver group write access by default), don’t run a completely paranoid locked down wordpress install, and have your site in English, then you’ll have few if any issues.

If you’re not using english, then look at translation section of Time.ly’s website, which is specifically trying to address this. https://translate.time.ly/projects

If you’re worried, set up a clone of your site (either using a local LAMP/WAMP/MAMP setup or get a test site on the same webhost) and TRY IT on that before you upgrade your main site.

I have a local setup that I clone to, using my site backups as a base (this ensures to me that my backups work, which is always a good thing to know). I then do all my tests on there, as I’ve been bitten all too many times by WP upgrades, theme updates and all sorts of plugins breaking things when I upgrade them.

PS: Time.ly have been really working hard on trying to roll out new bug-fix only V2.0 core releases approximately every 2 weeks, unless there is a major issue that they thought needed fixing fast (eg: the fast release of 2.0.8 hot on the heels of 2.0.7). They’ve slipped once or twice, but in many cases they’ve been close or on the mark with doing just that.

Note: I don’t work for Time.ly. I help out a lot on their forums (I’m a Moderator there), and I like their plugin. IMO they’re doing a reasonably good job in this transition from an unsustainable setup to a sustainable one, and where they aren’t, they’re listening to users and trying to do better. So much so that when they decided to change their forum (not the WP one, the old one on their site – which was running vBulletin), they asked a few of us for ideas so they could make it better. Unfortunately, changing stuff doesn’t happen overnight, especially when it’s not a simple change, but they’ve changed so much stuff lately I’m quite staggered at just how much they’ve done.

@cefiar @time.ly

Buoyed by your uptempo response I decided to go ahead and upgrade.

As a precautionary measure I took an FTP back of my website and a SQL dump using phpMyAdmin.

I then upgraded the plugin from 1.10.9.standard to 2.0.8

My Calendar looked nothing like what I expected, after a few searches online I discovered that I needed to go to the Time.ly website, Create an Account, Choose an Add-On, Add it to my Cart. Download a licence key, Download the plugin, Activate it, upload the Posterboard plugin. etc etc. what a load of bother!!!

I feel the “add-ons” TAB should just be there. I appreciate that Time.ly have separated the core and created new (free & chargeable) add-ons to produce a small code footprint with configurable addon ( a modular approach) but this was not a good/easy (UX) user experience/flow.

(grumble over) Anyway when I finally got it installed my Posterboard was mangled beyond all recognition. I thought maybe CSS? plugin or theme conflict. But I am using Twenty Twelve as my theme, English is my language. I tried deactivating all plugins. Nothing!

So I deactivated and reactivated Ai1ec 2.0.8 (you never know, one could get lucky.) Nothing!

So I then deactivated and deleted both the Ai1ec 2.0.8 plugin and the PosterBoard Add-On plugin. Then I FTP’d into my server and deleted the two plugin folders to make sure it was gone for good.

I then FTP’d my old 1.10.9 plugin folder back up and did a SQL restore of my database.

Nothing!

So I thought maybe there was a residual structure left over from the 2.0.8 upgrade i.e. new table structures. So I dropped these 6 tables:

wp_ai1ec_events – the important one!
wp_ai1ec_event_category_colors – CSS?
wp_ai1ec_event_feeds – empty
wp_ai1ec_event_instances – join table?
wp_ai1ec_facebook_users – empty
wp_ai1ec_facebook_users_events – empty

And then extracted just the SQL to create and populate those 6 tables from my 1.10.9.standard SQL dump. – Nothing!

Using phpMyAdmin I can see 196 events in my database but I can’t see any events at all in my calendar.

I can create a new event and it will show up fine in both the calendar and in the database.

Looking at wp_ai1ec_events the only difference I can see is the column instant_event (boolean?)

The events not displaying contain a 0 whereas the events that are displaying contain a 1

So I tried editing an event changing the value in instant_event from 0 to 1 – nothing!

Two questions:

1.) When I upgraded to 2.0.8 (with Twenty Tweleve and all plugins turned off) why was the PosterBoard view so badly mangled??

2.) Any ideas why the events won’t display? Is there another column’s value I need to change?

Thanks in advance.

You need to force the CSS to regenerate in certain cases. Adding an add-on that changes the user view(s) is one such case.

To fix that, you need to go to Dashboard->Events->Calendar Theme and choose a different calendar theme. You can then change the calendar theme back to what you originally had selected (the default is Vortex). I would alos recommend then going to Dashboard->Events->Theme Options and hitting the Save Options button (even though you’ve changed nothing).

If you try this and it still doesn’t work, the fact you have an SQL dump is good. I would use the account you created for downloading Posterboard to access the Time.ly forum and post there. There we can assign a Time.ly employee to look at your site and/or sql dump (sending them a link in a private reply) and help resolve your issues.

Note: I wouldn’t normally recommend this here, but I don’t know of any other way to convey that info privately to Time.ly in a conveniant and reliable manner.

@cefiar

Thank you for your advice I will post a question over at Time.ly

I will report back here the outcome just to maker this thread complete and of use to others

Thanks

Just to round this post off.

I opened a ticket on the Time.ly forum:
https://time.ly/forums/topic/failed-upgrade-from-1-10-9-standard-to-2-0-8/

Time.ly did a database restore from my SQL dump.

They upgraded my Time.ly plugins to the latest versions.

All my events are now appearing in the calendar.

No issues whatsoever.

A big Thank You to all at Time.ly.

Cheers guys!