Timezone support now available!
Posted on December 13, 2017
We’ve just released our latest beta/dev version for the upcoming release of 5.8.2, which includes the much-anticipated timezone support, allowing different events to have different timezones!
We ask that anyone that has a staging server, or a local install to please try it out and let us know if you experience any issues. Since we’re adding new fields to the database and UTC-based start/end times for previous events, we’d be interested to know of any issues experienced during the upgrade. We also certainly recommend backing up before upgrading, although any database modifications are completely backwards compatible with older versions.
You can install dev versions directly from your WordPress site, much like a regular update.
Timezone support will seem like a relatively subtle change from the outside (and it should just ‘work’), but from coding/architecture standpoint, it is another important building block to the foundation of the plugin that opens doors to other possibilities. We have already written a somewhat lengthy documentation article describing the changes for developers.
One major improvement out-the-gate is within event lists and displaying future/past events. Previous versions of Events Manager have always shown future events only taking dates into consideration, whereas now events that started a minute earlier (wherever in the world it may be) will now automatically be removed from that list and would appear on lists showing past events. Another important feature that will be coming soon (and is already in alpha stages – lack of timezone awareness was a blocker) is an importer/exporter which will be able to take timezones into consideration as well.
We’re really excited to get this feature out the gate and move onto even cooler features! Given the subtle yet fundamental changes to the plugin in this release, whilst this has already gone through extensive testing, we’re going to hold off until right after Christmas holidays before releasing an update.
Happy Holidays!
I installed the dev version because my overseas members were seeing bookings and events close at the wrong time.
Everything is working except on group pages in BuddyPress.
Clicking on the link to an event no longer opens it. Opening it in a new tab by right-clicking works though.
For some reason the hyperlink doesn’t do anything.
You can see an example at my test site: https://ozmeetup.com/groups/demo-group/events/
Hi Graham, the link works fine for me, not sure if you fixed this in the meantime. I’d find it hard to link to timezone changes, since the link generated is no different to what it was before. If you still have issues, please ask on our support forums and we’ll look further into it.
Hi!
I had been installed the new version of the plugin but I´ve a problem when I select a diary group event of the general setting. I don´t know what´s happend with the date on the list. The date of the H2 in the events list is wrong, it´s a day before of the event
Please check this url: http://www.elperfildelatostada.com/conciertos-musica-indie-2017
I don´t have been intalled the WP Super Cache, I retored the plugin but it´s not fixed,
Thanks for your help.
Regards
Javi
Hi Javi, the dates look right to me, if you still have issues please ask on our support forums and we’re happy to help there!
Hi Marcus,
Yes, I fixed it by commenting out the check for “pending” events in groups.php
It was the only way I found to fix it.
Hi Graham, if you can raise this issue on our support forums, we can take a closer look. I’m not seeing pending events on my test group page, so we’ll likely need to do a little back/forth to replicate your settings. Any info that’d help doing so on your opening post would help (also, mention you’re using the latest dev version, although I think it’s unrelated).
This is great! I was just about to try to figure out how to add timezones to EM when I found this post. It’s working really well. I was able to add a Timezone setting for my users so that when they add events, the select list will default to their timezone, or the blog’s timezone if they don’t have one set. The template was very easy to customize.
Thanks for adding this!