Stalls when changing month

Resolved JKEngineer
(@jkengineer)

1 year, 1 month ago

This has been working fine for years.

Currently, when I try to go to the previous or next mont the display grays out and 3 black dots appear on the first Weds. box of the calendar. Nothing further happens.

Our host, JustHost, was just merged into BlueHost. BlueHost installed Jetpack Protect. I don’t know for sure if that is the problem.

I deactivated Jetpack Protect and was able to change months. I reactivated it, and I was able to change months. I left it that way. A couple of days later I checked and the problem was recurring. I deactivated Jetpack Protect again and the calendar seemed to be working. A couple of days later, it is not. I don’t know if there is any real relationship to the plugin or not.

I have not done any further testing. At the moment I do not have a staging site, although if that is needed, I think I could spin one up.

The other change that BlueHost made was to install The Bluehost Plugin, which is described as: “WordPress plugin that integrates a WordPress site with the Bluehost control panel, including performance, security, and update features.” I have not touched that.

Both of these plugins were installed without permission or notification. In addition, they switched all of the plugins and themes to automatically update, also without permission or notification. Both of these actions have really ticked me off. That’s probably beside the point. /vent.

Is this a known problem? What would the best trouble shooting steps be?

The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 14 replies - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)

Plugin Support Darian
(@d0153)

1 year, 1 month ago

Hi @jkengineer

Thanks for reaching out. Let me help you with this one.

Upon checking, it looks like The Events Calendar’s REST API is being restricted when you try to change the calendar month.
You can view the issue here: https://share.zight.com/2Nuelg7d

If deactivating Jetpack Protect resolves the problem, we recommend trying to whitelist The Events Calendar’s REST API endpoint (/wp-json/tribe/*). This may help avoid the conflict while still keeping Jetpack Protect enabled.

Please note that our plugins are not fully compatible with Jetpack Protect at this time.

Let me know how it goes.

Thread Starter JKEngineer
(@jkengineer)

1 year, 1 month ago

Thanks for responding.

You may have misunderstood the current situation. I suspected Jetpack Protect because it was the most recent change to the site, and was done by BlueHost not by me.

It is currently deactivated and was when you saw the problem. So, just deactivating it is not the solution.

I could not duplicate the display you shared. I opened Inspect, selected network, and tried to change the month. I just don’t see what your screenshot is showing.

Given that Jetpack Protect is deactivated and the problem is still there, what do you suggest?

Plugin Support Darian
(@d0153)

1 year, 1 month ago

Hi @jkengineer

Thanks for your response.

For reference, here’s how I encounter the issue on my end: https://share.zight.com/Kou57dvO

It’s possible that a plugin or theme conflict on your site is causing the problem. To help isolate the issue, I recommend running a quick conflict test: activate only our plugins along with a default WordPress theme like Twenty Twenty-One, and then check if the issue still occurs.

If everything works as expected in that setup, you can begin reactivating your other plugins and theme one by one. This will help pinpoint exactly what’s triggering the conflict.

I highly recommend doing this on a staging site to keep your live site safe and uninterrupted. If you haven’t set one up yet, the WP Staging plugin makes the process quick and easy—it just takes a few clicks.

Let me know how it goes.

Thread Starter JKEngineer
(@jkengineer)

1 year, 1 month ago

Hi Darian,

TL:DR: The situation is confused, but promising.

I tried to set up a staging account through the hosting dashboard. It failed initially. I repeated it and seemed to get one. I couldn’t get past a “coming soon” page if I wasn’t logged in. If I was logged in, the /events page did not show a full calendar.

I had 2 long chats with the host’s support. It seems that one of the databases in the site is too large for the staging site set up.

In working with support I discovered that the Jetpack Protect plugin was active, which was definitely not the way I left it. I deactivated it. I think the calendar worked at that stage. I then deleted Jetpack Protect. The calendar is working at the moment.

If BlueHost does not screw with the site and put Jetpack Protect back in, I hope we will be OK. Let’s give it a few days to see what happens.

Thanks for your help. I’ll plan to come back to this thread to let you know what the situation is after a few days.

Plugin Support tristan083
(@tristan083)

1 year ago

Hi @jkengineer ,

Thank you for your message and the update.

We’re glad to hear that your calendar is now working after deactivating/removing Jetpack Protect. Please feel free to let us know how things go or if you have further questions/concerns.
Thread Starter JKEngineer
(@jkengineer)

1 year ago
I just checked the site. The problem with the calendar’s changing months had returned. I checked it in Incognito as well, there also.

I confirmed that Jetpack Protect was not present. I deactivated the other plugin that Bluehost had installed, The Bluehost plugin. I reloaded the page in incognito and tested it. It worked properly. I reactivated The Bluehost plugin. I reloaded the incognito tab. It works properly. I did note that having loaded Feb from the top button (yyyy-mm-dd) previously, it loaded very quickly now. I tried January, it loaded, but with a distinct lag.

Could this entire issue be related to caching?

I now have 2 caching entries on the top black bar menu when logged in. One says: Purge Cache (the dropdown says Page Cache, the cache size is 1.16MB (14 files), and Purge Cache for all pages). The other says Caching (the dropdown says Purge All, Cache Settings).

I have WP-Optimize – Clean, Compress, Cache installed. The Bluehost Plugin apparently also provides caching.
- This reply was modified 1 year ago by JKEngineer.
Plugin Support tristan083
(@tristan083)

1 year ago

Hi @jkengineer ,

Thank you for your message, and I’m sorry to hear that the issue re-occurred.

The intermittent nature of this issue happening is a tell-tale sign of caching interfering with The Events Calendar. Since you’re using WP-Optimize, I recommend going through our WP-Optimize knowledge base article for some suggested configuration. I would also suggest doing the same with your Bluehost caching (if present). Generally, however, it is recommended to run only one caching and performance solution on a site.

Thread Starter JKEngineer
(@jkengineer)

1 year ago

I logged in to look at the cache settings, but before doing anything I opened an incognito window to test the calendar. ATM it’s working correctly.

In settings for The BlueHost Plugin, I do not see anything related to cache. I believe I was told or read that it does do caching.

In WP Optimize: Minify is off; I reduced cache life from 5 days to 12 hours (although this had been working for years); I added /events to the excluded URLs; and I also added the long list of your plugin folders.

I will watch it over the next few days.
BluehostSupport
(@bluehostsupport)

1 year ago
Greetings @jkengineer! We love caching plugins that’s for sure. On the other hand, too many of the same type of plugin that uses caching can really make your site do a lot of crazy stuff. More often than not sticking to one plugin to handle those tasks would be your best move.

Bluehost offers both a built-in page caching feature and compatibility with popular WordPress caching plugins. To manage caching, you can either utilize Bluehost’s built-in options within the Bluehost plugin or install and configure a third-party plugin like W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache.

Using Bluehost’s Built-in Caching:
1. Log in to your WordPress dashboard.
2. Navigate to Bluehost > Settings.
3. Scroll down to the Performance section.
4. Enable caching by toggling the switch to “On”.
5. Choose a caching level (e.g., Assets & Web Pages).
6. Consider enabling “Purge All Caches”: to clear existing cached data.
Thread Starter JKEngineer
(@jkengineer)

1 year ago

@bluehostsupport I’m glad you have joined the conversation.

There is no Performance section under Bluehost>Settings. What other actions do you suggest?

I hope you’ve read my first post in this thread. I am not happy with your unilateral actions about which I was neither informed nor gave permission. The only way I discovered what you had done was I received a notification that something had updated.
BluehostSupport
(@bluehostsupport)

1 year ago
Happy to address the points in your first post as well!

BlueHost provides Jetpack Protect and the Bluehost Plugin as an option during install, something you did not have to deal with for this migration so there isn’t an opt out action on your end, which I understand may have caused some frustration here. Being that we moved a whole lot of accounts, NOT installing these would have resulted in every webpage being inaccessible through the Bluehost Account Manager as that is one of the many things the plugin helps to connect between the site and the account manager so they communicate with each other. All that said, you can still switch them off, just know you’ll lose functionality of some Bluehost features turning off the Bluehost Plugin so it’s not really recommended. Jetpack is for sure optional though, feel free to switch it off if you do not want/need it, but it is a rather handy plugin.

I can get your point about not notifying about the plugins and will certainly be passing it along to the team. That said if we had not, we would have waaaaay more than this post to respond to with everyone unable to manage websites through the account manager.

As far as the auto-updates, pretty much the same reasoning here. Had we moved over everything and disabled updates (or even maintained no update settings) everyone of those installs would come for us when they get compromised for falling behind on updates. Most of our customers rarely check their account and it can often be too late if you let those updates fall to the wayside.

For the caching plugin flush, you may be on a different version than those old instructions. Go ahead and try the Performance option.
- This reply was modified 1 year ago by BluehostSupport.
Thread Starter JKEngineer
(@jkengineer)

1 year ago

OK. I found the cache controls for The Bluehost Plugin under Performance. I disabled it.

I have cache enabled with WP Optimize.

I have purged the cache. At the moment things are working. Let’s see what happens.

@bluehostsupport You will note in one of the comments above that the Jetpack Protect seems to have been activated without my involvement. Does Bluehost do that? I understand your reasoning about the migration, although I don’t fully agree with it. However, if I have gone in and made changes to the setup, I need to know that I don’t have to keep coming back to be sure you have not reverted them. Please comment. Also, if The Bluehost Plugin is deactivated or removed, I understand that the account level controls it brings to the left menu inside WP will be gone. Aren’t the same functions available by logging into the hosting account itself?

BluehostSupport
(@bluehostsupport)

1 year ago

So the JetPack Plugin is one of those “starter” opt-in/out plugins that is offered during the install like the Bluehost Plugin. So when WordPress got setup on the new account it likely set it up by default for the same reasons explained in the last post. Toggling it off should keep it off though, so no worries there as this is a rare occurrence to have a major change like this that would reinstall it. Not to mention I have reported this issue to see if we may improve going forward if there is a way to avoid it.

As far as the Bluehost Plugin disrupting account manager access, no need to worry there. You’ll still be able to login through the account manager. The major differences will be the inability to utilize the following features:

Bluehost Caching Automatically clears the server page cache when your site updates

Bluehost Staging Create a staging copy of your site to safely test changes

Wonder Blocks & Patterns Library Dozens of beautiful block templates and patterns

Plugin Support Darian
(@d0153)

1 year ago

Hi there,

It seems like this thread has been quiet for a bit, so we’ll go ahead and mark it as resolved. However, if any further questions or concerns come up, please don’t hesitate to start a new thread.

Viewing 14 replies - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)

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