No register-form after paypal.sanbox payment

[Janmi]

Hello!

We have set everything to test the plugin with our testing paypal.sandbox account on development enviroment.

PROBLEM: after proper payment, we press the "Back to the Site" button on paypal.sandbox. Now we are redirected to the homepage of our site (instead of than going to registration page) with these parameters:
http://WEBSITEURL/?auth=Ed40DTiqE7N4iqz ... rset=UTF-8

We have configured the plugin on this way:
- We are using Wordpress 2.9.2 (not wordpress mu) and buddypress 1.2.4.1
- We are using s2Member 3.0.2
- We have created a Paypal.sandbox bussiness account and configured on the plugin
- We have generated the paypal button
- We can access to paypal.sandbox with the previously generated button
- We pay from paypal.sandbox
- we see the "back to the site" button and pressed it
- We are redirected to site's home page with auth and form_charset parametes
- No registration form appears

Could you please help us?

Thanks and regards,

Janmi.

[rossagrant]

You shoudl have received a confirmation email which will contain alink to the registration page. check your inbox.
Ross

[Jason Caldwell]

This has been improved in s2Member 3.0.6+.
However, unless you're using s2Member Pro, this will continue to be a slight issue in certain cases.

What's happening is that PayPal does not send Auto-Return/PDT data whenever you are offering a free trial, or a subscription modification is taking place. So, my guess, is that you're offering a free trial. In more recent versions of s2Member ( the free version ), we deal with this by signaling to the Customer that they'll need to check their email, and then returning them to your home page in the mean time.

In either case, if you are offering a free trial, your Customer MUST check their email after checkout. Their email will contain a link for them; where they can continue with registration and gain access to what they purchased. This is not a huge issue, but it is annoying. I will continue to look for solutions.

Until then, or instead, I recommend s2Member Pro, as the Pro version circumvents all of these limitations, and puts the entire checkout process on your site ( combining registration/checkout together as 1 step ), under your complete control. You can also accept Visa, MasterCard, Amex, Discover, Maestro, Solo, and Customers will never leave your site. http://www.s2member.com/

[dfstorm]

what if no email is being sent? What do i need to do to s2member to make it send an email?

[Jason Caldwell]

Right now, it just sends them to the home page, and nothing happens.

We have a possible fix in place for this issue. A bug was found within s2Member's routines, that are affecting WordPress installations that use a different Home Page URL inside the Settings -> General section. In other words, if your WordPress installation is configured with a home page URL that is different from your actual WP installation URL; this bug can become an issue.

~ A fix will be released with s2Member v3.1.6+. ( coming very soon )
In the mean time, I recommend changing your Settings -> General Options so that both URLs are the same. Please report back on this topic if you can; it will be much appreciated.

[travisramsey]

I'm having the same issue. The problem is I can't get the email sent using sandbox as your notes say all over the place, that because I'm using sandbox I won't get the email. Yet the registration page won't show after successful paypal payment and return to site. So how can I test this process without using a live paypal account?

Also I've read through the documentation and I don't fully understand how it works.
You pay in paypal, and when it hits the ipn script an email is sent to the user. How does s2member track that the user paid? Where is the data saved? I don't see any table in the database that holds paid member info before they register. Is there a cookie? Or the special registration link is generated with the subscription transaction id of paypal and that's what is checked when they click to register? Meaning nothing is actually saved at all until they register?

Please explain and help with the issue if possible. Thanks!

[travisramsey]

Well I've done some research on how it works, looking at the code. It appears a tempory cookie is made to track the visitor. And this tracking code is stored in a transient que in the ipn processor which I guess is some file inside the plugin files that is edited and saved for each new ipn paypal call.

I can see the registration link is generated with the use of some function using the paypal subscriber id, custom values, and item number.

I think the email is sent when the ipn is hit by paypal, which means that registration tracking code wouldn't be generated unless ipn was hit by paypal.

So maybe my problem is that paypal ipn is not working with the sandbox.

When I log into my merchant sandbox test account I can't modify any ipn settings or anything. Seems limited settings in the profile because it's sandbox.