Advanced Importer Addon

The Advanced Importer Addon is a professional tool designed to make the process of migrating and syncing event data seamless by connecting Modern Events Calendar (MEC) to major third-party platforms 1. It allows you to authenticate your accounts from services like Facebook, Google, and Eventbrite with just a few clicks, enabling you to schedule automatic imports or perform bulk migrations from other WordPress event plugins.

Initial Setup

To begin importing events, ensure your environment meets the necessary requirements and follow these activation steps:

Requirements

• MEC Lite or Pro: Unlike many other addons, the Advanced Importer is compatible with both the Lite and Pro versions of Modern Events Calendar.
• Activation: Ensure both Modern Events Calendar and the Advanced Importer Addon are installed and activated on your WordPress site.

Accessing the Importer

1. Locate Menu: Once activated, a new menu labeled Advanced Importer will appear under the M.E. Calendar section in your WordPress dashboard.
2. Redirect: Clicking this menu will take you directly to the primary import interface.

Platform Configuration (Settings)

Before importing, you must connect and authenticate your third-party accounts within the Advanced Importer Settings.

• Facebook: You must provide a dedicated URL in the Valid OAuth Redirect URIs field on the Facebook Developers portal to proceed.

• Eventbrite: Requires a free API Key, which can be obtained from the Eventbrite platform after logging into your account.

• Meetup: Requires OAuth Client credentials (Client ID and Secret) from the Meetup OAuth Clients page; note that activation of these credentials can take up to two hours.

• Google Calendar: You must generate a Google Calendar API Key and provide an Authorized redirect URI to Google to enable the connection.

After completing the necessary steps as directed, you will receive your API Key.

• MEC API: This allows you to import events from another website using MEC 9. You must copy the URL from the source website and enter it along with an API Key into the target website’s settings.

Note: To use this feature, ensure the source website also has the Advanced Importer Addon active. You must navigate to that source site to copy the dedicated URL and API Key before entering them into the target website’s settings.

Performing an Import

After configuring your accounts, you must authenticate specific profiles to begin fetching data.

Authentication & Selection

1. Need Authentication: At the bottom of each platform’s settings tab, find your username and click Need Authentication to open a login window and grant access to your events.

2 .Category Assignment: To put an import into a specific category, navigate to New Import > Import Option and choose one.

3. Data Filtering: You can use specific Event IDs for targeted imports or set a Start and End Date range to only fetch events from a certain timeframe.

Import Types

• One Step: This option performs the import immediately.
• Scheduled: This automates the process with frequencies ranging from Once Hourly to Once a Month.

Specialized Import Methods

Importing by CSV or ICS

• Direct File Upload: You can import events directly using CSV or ICS files uploaded from your computer.
• Separator Type: For CSV files, the Separator Type field allows you to specify how your data is structured, with options for comma or tab delimiters.
• Event Status: Use the Event Status field to specify what status the event should hold (e.g., Published or Draft) immediately after the import is completed.
• ICS Feed URLs: If you have a URL for an external ICS feed, you can use it to facilitate the download process.
• Custom Labels: When adding external ICS feeds, you can assign a Custom Title (e.g., “Academic Calendar”) to help identify and organize multiple sources easily.
• Limitation: Scheduled Imports and Sync features are only supported for ICS URLs and are not available for CSV files.

Migrating from Third-Party Plugins

If you are migrating to MEC from Event Organiser, My Calendar, or Eventum, you should keep those plugins active during the import process. Once the migration is successfully concluded, you can deactivate and remove the old plugins without affecting your new MEC events.

General Settings & History Management

• General Settings: General Settings: You can adjust the number of events shown on each Page Table (default is six). If you need to view more than 50 events at once, ensure your server configuration can handle the load without timing out.

• Import History: This interface provides a complete list of all imported events. You can verify the import dates, check their assigned categories, see the current import status, and delete events individually.

Scheduled Imports & Sync Management

This dedicated section handles the automation and long-term maintenance of your event data.

• Scheduled Imports Tab: All planned, recurring imports can be viewed and managed here. This tab serves as a central hub to monitor your automated tasks and ensure you are aware of all planned updates.

• Sync Tab:This tab manages deep, automated synchronization. When the “Add to auto sync” button is clicked for an import, the entire task is moved here. Based on the existing schedule, every time the import syncs, any changes, deletions, or additions made to the events at the source will be automatically applied to your MEC calendar for future syncs.

Use Cases (When This Addon is Useful)

• Automated Social Sync: Automatically pull events from your Facebook Page or Google Calendar so you only have to update your schedule in one place.
• Platform Migration: Quickly move hundreds of events from competing plugins like Eventum or My Calendar into MEC.
• Multi-Site Synchronization: Use the MEC API setting to keep multiple WordPress event websites in sync. This requires the Advanced Importer Addon to be active on both the site you are importing from (source) and the site you are importing to (target).

Situations This Addon May Not Be Ideal

• Instant Google Updates: Changes made to a Google Calendar may not reflect instantly; you may need to wait 30 minutes for re-authentication or clear your browser cache.
• Low-Resource Servers: Fetching very large numbers of events (over 50 at once) requires appropriate server resources and may cause timeouts on weak hosting plans.
• CSV Automation: Since CSV files do not support scheduled syncing, they are only ideal for one-time manual migrations.

Troubleshooting for Beginners

• Authentication Expiry: Regarding Google Calendar, you may need to go through the authentication process every 30 minutes to maintain a live connection.
• Meetup Delay: If your Meetup connection isn’t working immediately, remember that the activation process for their OAuth clients can take one to two hours.
• Credentials Check: If imports fail, first verify that all API Keys and Access Tokens are entered correctly and that the necessary permissions were granted during the “Need Authentication” step.

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FAQ