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!
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