Hello Vicki,
Do you have a lot of events? In version 3.5 we fundamentally changed how the recurring events are stored. This requires a very long time to update when you have a lot of events while the update script runs in the background. Unfortunately for some providers they shut the script down before it completes. So you have to refresh the page and it will pickup where it left off. If I were you I would:
1. Make a complete backup of my site and especially database, unless you already have one from before you tried updating. http://codex.ww.wp.xz.cn/WordPress_Backups
2. Update to 3.5.1, not 3.5. Both Core and PRO should be 3.5.1. Email support [at] theeventscalendar.com if you need that version of PRO. Download core from here: https://downloads.wp.xz.cn/plugin/the-events-calendar.3.5.1.zip
3. Install the update. You will likely see it load for a long time, then finally get a timeout error or it will stop loading. That’s okay. Refresh and let it continue running. Do this until the page finally loads, which is an indication that the update script has finished running.
4. Update to 3.9, both Core and PRO. Shouldn’t face an issue, I bet it will be a very quick update.
Please let me know if you have any questions! Updating that big of a jump, from 3.1 to 3.9, is a pretty big deal. Most people update one version at a time. Sometimes issues arise when you do multiple, though not always. To the best of my knowledge you shouldn’t face issues if following the above, but I’ll try and help you if you do.
Thanks for posting!
– Brook
Hello Brook,
Thanks for getting back to me! We have close to 5,000 event posts, most of those are recurring. If each indiv. recurring event was only one post (instead of 100 or 200 posts), we’d have a total of only a few dozen event posts.
When I updated to 3.5 or 3.9, the entire website and wp-admin hung. Should that happen, if the update script is running in the background? I let it run for maybe 5-8 minutes before rescuing the website. — If this is normal, that the update script will hang the website and wp-admin while the script is running, do you have any rough estimate of how long the update script would run for our 5K events?
After going to 3.5.1 (or 3.9) will there be fewer event recurrences? I started looking at switching to a different event calendar, just to have a more manageable number of event posts.
Thanks again! vicki
Vicki what you described is unfortunately normal for the upgrade to 3.5.1. The admin will hang, it will likely even eventually say it timed out. Refresh the page as outlined in Step 3 above. Rinse and repeat until the admin loads.
I can not estimate how long that will take 🙁 . There are simply too many variables that determine how fast your server is. I have seen servers that could to that in less than a minute, and then cheaper web hosts that could take a truly long time. I’d hope only 15 minutes or less will be necessary. 5k events is not that much. We have many clients with many tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds. But, many of them are on powerful servers to because that is a lot of WP Posts!
Hope that helps. Yes the update to 3.9 should be rather painless. It is the 3.5.1 update that will take a while.
Cheers!
– Brook
Brook,
After going to 3.5.1 (or 3.9) will there be fewer event recurrences? it looks like I will be able to better control phone number of occurrences? Thank you!
3.5.1 will prevent any more duplicates from being made. From there you can delete any unnecessary duplicates. The update to 3.9 should not increase or decrease occurrences at that point. I hope this answers your question. Cheers!
– Brook
