Migrating from The Events Calendar

If you are already running The Events Calendar (TEC) or Event Tickets, you do not have to start over. Tickets Please detects existing TEC data at activation and offers a migration wizard that maps your events, venues, organizers, tickets, and attendees to the Tickets Please data model. Both plugins can run side by side during the transition, so your site stays live the entire time.

How Auto-Detection Works

When you activate Tickets Please on a site that has TEC data, the plugin scans for existing tribe_events, tribe_venue, and tribe_organizer posts. If it finds any, a migration notice appears at the top of the Events admin pages with a link to the migration wizard.

The detection is read-only. It does not modify your TEC data. You can dismiss the notice and migrate later, or never migrate at all if you want to evaluate Tickets Please on new events first while keeping TEC for existing ones.

What Gets Migrated

The migration wizard handles five categories of data:

Events — all tribe_events posts, including titles, content, dates, featured images, and event meta. TEC-specific meta keys (like _EventStartDate, _EventEndDate, _EventVenueID) are mapped to the Tickets Please equivalents.

Venues — all tribe_venue posts with addresses, coordinates, phone numbers, and website URLs. The address field mapping is direct since both plugins use the same post type.

Organizers — all tribe_organizer posts with contact details. Organizer-to-event relationships are preserved.

Taxonomy Terms — all tec_event_category terms, including hierarchy (parent-child relationships). Since Tickets Please uses the same taxonomy slug, terms transfer cleanly without changing any frontend URLs.

Tickets and Attendees — if you have Event Tickets or Event Tickets Plus installed, the wizard maps ticket and attendee records to the Tickets Please equivalents. Paid ticket data includes price, capacity, and WooCommerce product links. Attendee records preserve their status and event associations.

Running the Migration

Follow these steps for a smooth migration:

Back up your database. This is non-negotiable. Use your host’s backup tool, a plugin like UpdraftPlus, or export directly from phpMyAdmin. If anything goes wrong, you need a restore point.
Install and activate Tickets Please. Do not deactivate The Events Calendar yet. Both plugins can coexist.
Go to Events > Migration (or click the migration notice link). The wizard opens with a summary of detected TEC data: event count, venue count, organizer count, ticket count, and attendee count.
Run the dry run first. Click Dry Run to simulate the migration without writing any data. The wizard processes every record and reports what it would do: how many events, venues, organizers, tickets, and attendees would be migrated, and any issues it found (missing venue references, orphaned tickets, etc.). Review this report carefully.
Start the migration. When you are satisfied with the dry-run results, click Migrate. The wizard processes records in batches with a progress indicator. For a site with a few hundred events, this takes under a minute. Larger sites with thousands of events may take several minutes.
Verify the results. After migration completes, check a handful of events in the WordPress admin and on the frontend. Confirm that dates, venues, organizers, and tickets look correct. Check the events archive to make sure calendar views display properly.
Deactivate The Events Calendar. Once you are confident everything migrated correctly, deactivate TEC. Tickets Please takes over all event display and functionality.

URL Redirects

TEC and Tickets Please use similar URL structures since they share post type slugs. In most cases, your event URLs remain unchanged after migration.

Where URLs do differ — for example, TEC’s calendar view URLs (/events/month/, /events/list/) vs. Tickets Please’s view URLs — the migration wizard sets up 301 redirects automatically. This preserves SEO value and prevents broken links from external sites, social media, or search engines.

The redirect rules are stored as WordPress rewrite rules and activate when you deactivate TEC. You can review them under Events > Settings > Permalinks.

Template Compatibility During Transition

While both plugins are active, Tickets Please defers to TEC for frontend template rendering. Your existing TEC templates, customizations, and theme overrides continue to work. Tickets Please only takes over frontend rendering after TEC is deactivated.

If you have custom TEC templates in your theme (in a tribe-events/ directory), review them after switching. Tickets Please uses a similar template hierarchy but some file names and variable names differ. The migration wizard generates a compatibility report listing any theme template files that need updating.

Both Plugins Running Together

During the transition period, keep these things in mind:

Admin menus — both plugins add items under the Events menu. Tickets Please labels its pages clearly to avoid confusion.
Create new events in Tickets Please — once you start migrating, use Tickets Please for new events. This avoids duplicate data.
TEC add-ons — if you use TEC Pro, Community Events, or Filter Bar, check their data after migration. Most add-on data migrates cleanly, but some Pro features (like custom recurring event patterns) may need manual review.
Shortcodes — TEC shortcodes ([tribe_events], [tribe_events_list]) continue to work while TEC is active. After deactivation, Tickets Please provides equivalent shortcodes or block-based alternatives.

Common Questions

Can I migrate only some events? The migration wizard processes all detected TEC data by default. If you want to migrate selectively, you can trash or unpublish specific TEC events before running the wizard. Only published and draft posts are included in the migration.

Does migration delete my TEC data? No. The migration copies data to Tickets Please’s format. Your original TEC posts and meta remain untouched. You can deactivate Tickets Please and reactivate TEC to go back to your previous state.

What if I have thousands of events? The wizard processes records in batches to avoid timeouts. For very large sites (10,000+ events), consider running the migration during low-traffic hours. The batch size is configurable in the wizard’s advanced settings.

Will my Google Analytics tracking break? If your event URLs stay the same (which they do for most standard TEC setups), your analytics data stays continuous. The 301 redirects for changed URLs pass analytics credit to the new URLs.

Can I re-run the migration? Yes. The wizard tracks what has already been migrated and only processes new or changed records on subsequent runs. This is useful if you kept both plugins active for a while and created new events in TEC during the transition.

What about TEC REST API consumers? If you have external integrations hitting TEC’s REST API (tribe/events/v1), Tickets Please uses the same namespace and similar endpoint structure. Most API consumers work without changes. Test your integrations after migration and check the REST API reference for any differences.

How do I roll back if something goes wrong? Restore your database backup. The migration does not delete TEC data, so you can also just deactivate Tickets Please and reactivate TEC without a backup restore. But a backup is still recommended in case of unexpected issues.

Do I need to update my theme? Only if you have custom TEC template files in your theme’s tribe-events/ directory. Standard themes that use TEC’s default templates work with Tickets Please out of the box.

Next Steps

Core Concepts — understand the Tickets Please data model now that your data is migrated
Settings Reference — configure Tickets Please settings that may differ from your TEC setup
Managing Events — explore event features that may work differently from TEC