Migrating Events Calendar from 1.6.5 to 2.0
This is a video & post contains a walkthrough on how to upgrade the open source events calendar for WordPress plugin from 1.6.5 to 2.0. In a future screencast, we’ll review updating your theme settings to conform with the update once you’ve finished — here, we’re just focused on migrating your 1.6.5 events into 2.0. Take a look.
The largest change in 2.0 is the move from having events live in regular posts to the (somewhat new) WordPress custom post types. This means that events are no longer going to appear in your posts but rather in their own panel called events. Part of the process of upgrading is to move your events (we have a magic button).
Step -1: OOPS – I didn’t want to update. No problem, you can easily revert. Grab a copy of the version of the events plugin you want here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/the-events-calendar/download/ and add it to your plugins folder. Deactivate the new one and activate the old one your just upload. All better. If you already migrated your posts though that won’t work. In that case, go grab a backup from before you migrated, restore and revert to an older plugin.
Ready to Go?
Step 1: Before you do anything: BACK UP YOUR SITE. That way if you run into challenges you can revert if you have to. We use backup buddy and are extremely happy we do as we have had to restore numerous times over the years while playing with WordPress & Plugin updates.
Step 2: Click update in the plugin admin or download and add it manually.
Step 3: Migrate! In order to migrate your events after you activate the plugin, you will need to visit the setting panel and click the “Migrate Data!” button. We have some screenshots of the process on our FAQ.
Step 4: Reset your permalinks (go to settings > permalinks > hit save). We’ve noticed that a lot of weird issues people have often get solved by this easy step.
Step 5: Walk through the setting. The place the most people will run into challenges will be with Themes. We have a new theme integration approach that allow you to pick from any page template (screenshot) the theme offers or from the default event templates we bundle with the plugin. Try different options to see what looks best. If we get lucky, your theme will play nicely and one of these will work out of the box. If not, then you have a few options. There is a before / after html set of text areas to allow you to add any divs etc you might need. Often the issue is simply a little missing css on your main content div and can be added to your theme css file. This may take some noodling. We wish the you the best of luck. Feel free to ask the community for help on this step. People have been great. The plugin devs won’t help on this step unless you have uncovered a legit bug with the plugin as supporting the 100k+ themes in the world is basically impossible and we all want them to stay focused on making awesome features.
Step 6 (optional): Dealing with custom templates. If you have been noodling in code, odds are extremely high you are going to have to make some fixes.
The path from open source 1.6.5 to 2.0 has been a long one with years of evolution. As you can imagine the template tags, queries & css have significantly changed over time. The odds of a highly customized theme upgrading cleanly is unlikely. While it may not be a ton of work, some is inevitable. We are actively working on documentation this week and will have it up soon at http://tri.be/support as it comes out. There are already quite a few items in the FAQ and you are welcome to search the PRO forums to find answers as it fills out.
Please let us know where you get stuck as you go through the migration process. While we won’t help you code your site, we are on the active lookout for bugs. The more clarity we can get, the faster we can patch those suckers and get everyone an update.
Hope you all enjoy the significant effort we have put into the new version once you get through the migration and get up and running.
One quick note: PRO WON’T FIX YOUR SITE. If you are having any issues with the free version, adding PRO won’t make any difference. All PRO or any other add-on offers are some additional features to help you accomplish more awesome things.
Does this also migrate from the old CodeCanyon version (1.3.3)?
yup, the upgrade from 1.3.3 is an easy upgrade. Happens automatically. Only major impact will be changes in template tags for custom templates.
Sounds great, thanks!
Hi, I’m wondering if its possible to add 2 calendar with different events on it.
Hey Ryan. Not at this point, unfortunately…your best bet is using categories for the time being.
I’m using Thesis 1.82. Is this going to be OK or should I prepare for a bad weekend?
hah. while we definitely have some thesis support in there, you might have to hunker down a bit. That said, we have many thesis users and there is starting to be a wealth of info in the support forum.
After the upgrade I lost the ical feed. Is it just me? Did I do something wrong?
Thx
Hey Steve. The iCal feed should not have been removed upon upgrading, no. Do you not see it under your Settings –> The Events Calendar page? It should give your iCal feed at the top there (“Here is the iCal feed URL for your events…”). Are you saying that’s gone too, or just that the feed itself — which once worked — isn’t any longer? Let me know and I’ll do what I can to assist.
I’ve updated from 1.6.5 to 2.0.2. In Calendar Setting Page there isn’t any “update” button. I’ve tried to deactivate and reload the 1.6.5, then re-update to 2.0.2 but the old post are not migrated.
How can I resolve?
Can you give me the mysql query to run to convert post manually? thanks
“In order to migrate your events after you activate the plugin, you will need to visit the setting panel and click the “Migrate Data!” button. We have some screenshots of the process on our FAQ.”
Great reading. But unfortunately, there is nowhere described, what to do, if you hit the button and … nothing happens. Just a blank page.
Where can I find the old entries to delete them manually?
Worked like a charm with one note – I had a custom /events/ folder in my theme for layout and had to remove it.
I’m running Arras 1.5 and he Theme Default or Single page worked fine, Events page did not work.
You need to add a note about how to disable the upgrade warning when the previous version wasn’t really installed.
Thanks for the heads up, Will. I received your email on this today as well and will be following up on that shortly.
Hello – I’m upgrading from 1.3 (not 1.3.3) and don’t get the upgrade option. Is this because of not having a recent enough 1.x plugin version? I can’t find the newer 1.x version to get to 1.3.3 or 1.6.5 … do you have a link?
Hey David, you’ll need to get 1.3.3 from us (as it is no longer available online anywhere). If you shoot an email to pro a/ tri.be, referencing this article, we’ll hook it up. Cheers!
Hi… Just checking the email I sent went to the right place.
Believe so David, responded a little while ago and you should be all set. Please let me know if you need anything else!
Can someone (anyone) please tell me how to grab the data from my old site URL and add it my new site URL. I no longer have the old domain but I have all the files. I just don’t know where WP Events Calendar stored the events?
THANK YOU IN ADVANCE
I’m in panic mode!!
Hey Chris. Thanks for the note here, and sorry that it took me a little while to get you a response here. (In the future if you need an answer in a timely fashion, definitely either email pro /a tri.be or post on the forums here at /support/forums, as we generally hit those quicker than comments on the site).
The events should have been stored in the database of your old site…have you tried copying / importing the old database or do you no longer have access to that either?
I migrated and updated the permalinks but many of the events that had been visible in the blog are no longer there. How do I get these to show up in the home page blog again? Thanks!
Hi Felix, this should help you: http://tri.be/show-your-events-in-the-main-post-loop/
I am unable to do the migration. when I click on the button I get a server error :
Server error
The website encountered an error while retrieving http://www.austinfreeevents.com/wp-admin/edit.php?post_type=tribe_events&page=tribe-events-calendar. It may be down for maintenance or configured incorrectly.
Here are some suggestions:
Reload this webpage later.
HTTP Error 500 (Internal Server Error): An unexpected condition was encountered while the server was attempting to fulfill the request.
When you go to plugins it show I have version 2.0.9, my events are all still in Posts but are no longer events. All calendars are down or blank, no events are listed in upcoming events. Categories are still there.
I tried deactivating all other plugins but that did not work. Someone suggested I need more memory.
My site is 100% events so right now it is pretty much dead.
Hi Jennifer,
Increasing the PHP memory is the first thing I would suggest trying. Here is an article with a few different ways you can do it: http://www.dailyblogging.org/wordpress/increase-wordpress-memory-limit/
I hope that helps, let me know how it goes.
- Jonah
thanks – I have an email in to my host ( BlueHost) on increasing my memory. You are the second person to suggest that. I am hoping that will help.
So memory is already at 64M ( which is what i was told to increase it to) do I go higher?
Hi Jennifer. Just wanted to close this loop and confirm in writing that you got this sorted by moving to another plugin; let us know if we’re wrong there but I’m 99% sure based on our past exchanges that this is the case.