Troubleshooting PayPal

When troubleshooting PayPal or generally wanting to get a handle on your PayPal activity, one resource MemberMouse provides is the PayPal IPN Log. The PayPal IPN Log registers the details of all IPN communication between PayPal and MemberMouse, and can be drilled in to view those details as well as sorted by various criteria. This article, Using the PayPal IPN Log, discusses this feature in more detail.

In this article we provide answers to the most common questions customers have when integrating with PayPal:

• Why are there accounts in Pending Activation status?
• PayPal button is not being displayed on the Checkout page
• Accounts are not being activated even after a payment was made

Why are there accounts in Pending Activation status?

When a customer clicks the button on the checkout page to pay with PayPal they are immediately redirected to PayPal's website to make a payment for what they're purchasing. At this point, MemberMouse has created an account for this customer and set the status of the account to Pending Activation (accounts in Pending Activation status are indicated by a ‘blue clock' icon when viewing the Manage Members screen). While the account is in Pending Activation status the customer will not be able to login or access protected content.

The account will remain in Pending Activation status until the customer has successfully completed the purchase on PayPal. Once confirmation of the payment has been received by MemberMouse, the account will be put into Active status.

So an account in Pending Activation status simply means that the customer clicked to checkout via PayPal but never completed the purchase. If the customer made a payment and their account has not been activated, see the Accounts are not being activated section of this article for further troubleshooting steps.

PayPal button is not being displayed on the Checkout page

This is a CSS styling issue and can be easily resolved as follows:

 Use the MemberMouse PayPal Button

The default MemberMouse Checkout page uses the following SmartTag™ to output payment buttons:

[MM_Form_Button type='all' label='Submit Order' color='orange']

When the Checkout page is rendered, this SmartTag™ outputs the PayPal button as follows:

<a href="javascript:mmjs.checkoutx('PAYPAL', true);" class="mm-paypalCheckoutBtn"></a>

Notice that the CSS class is set to ‘mm-paypalCheckoutBtn'.

In order for the PayPal button to be displayed on the screen, the MemberMouse CSS needs to be loaded on the page. In order for that to happen, you need to ensure that the Checkout & Redeem Gift item is checked in your Core Page CSS Settings. Read this article to learn how to change your core page CSS settings.

 Use a Custom PayPal Button

If you want to customize how the PayPal button should look on your Checkout page, you'll need to use the following on your Checkout page:

<a href="[MM_Form_Button type='submit' paymentMethod='paypal']">Pay with PayPal</a>

Now you can style the button any way that you'd like and even use the MemberMouse button styles.

Once you've added that to your Checkout page, you can safely remove the default SmartTag™ for outputting payment buttons:

[MM_Form_Button type='all' label='Submit Order' color='orange']

Accounts are not being activated even after a payment was made

In order for anything to happen in MemberMouse as a result of something that happens on PayPal (i.e. a payment), PayPal instant push notifications (IPNs) are used. So if there's a problem with MemberMouse being updated as a result of something happening on PayPal this means there are problems with the IPNs.

This is usually the result of one of the following:

 IPN Configured Incorrectly

The first thing to check is that you have the IPN configured correctly in PayPal. Here are the steps for configuring the PayPal IPN.

 IPNs Being Blocked

After you've confirmed that your IPN is configured correctly in PayPal, perform the following steps to find out where the problem is:

1. On your Payment Settings > Payment Methods screen in MemberMouse, make sure that PayPal is not in Test Mode.
   
   
2. Create a PayPal test product in MemberMouse. You can make it a one-time purchase product for $.05 (you'll be purchasing this product so you don't want it to be too expensive).
   
   
3. Copy the static purchase link for the new PayPal test product.
   
   
4. Go to a browser where you're not logged into your WordPress/MemberMouse site as an administrator and paste in the purchase link.
   
   
5. Click the PayPal button to checkout using PayPal and complete the purchase on PayPal.
   
   
6. Log into PayPal and go to the IPN History page. You should see the IPN relating to the purchase you just made at the top of the list with a status of ‘Sent'.
   
   • If the IPN doesn't show up in the list then check your IPN configuration and specifically ensure that you have IPNs enabled.
     
     
   • If the IPN shows up but the status is ‘Failed' then you'll want to reach out to your hosting provider to understand why IPNs from PayPal are being blocked.
     
     
7. If the IPN in the PayPal IPN History log had a status of ‘Sent', log into your WordPress/MemberMouse site and go to Logs > PayPal IPN Log. At (or near) the top of the list you should see the IPN logged from your test transaction.
   
   • If the IPN doesn't show up in the list then you likely have caching affecting your site. Just disabling a caching plugin won't necessarily disable caching. Your hosting provider could also use server side caching. Read this article to learn about configuring caching with MemberMouse.
     
     
   • After Configuring Caching on Your Server, install a fresh copy of the MemberMouse plugin, which can be downloaded here, and then run a test PayPal transaction again to see if the issue is resolved.
     
     
   • If the IPN shows up but the associated account is still Pending Activation in MemberMouse then you'll want to reach out to the MemberMouse customer success team for further assistance. When you do this, please provide a screencast video that demonstrates you going through the 7 steps listed here and WordPress admin credentials.