Paid Subscriptions Problems

[Erwin]

FWIW, the Paypal sunscription has been working for me since Beta 3 via IPN. It's working brilliantly in RC2. I'm a verified overseas Paypal user.

[akiy]

Hi Scott,

akiy, do you have cURL or sockets available on your server?

Yes, it has curl support. I even went and recompiled mod_php4 with curl and socket support, but no go.

However, I do believe I've tracked down my problem.

I'm currently using PayPal to handle my "shopping cart" on my site. One thing I had to do was to specify sales tax on the merchandise I'm currently selling -- this is set on the PayPal site itself.

As is allowed with PayPal, I have been testing paid subscriptions out with a test user using my personal PayPal account (which is different from the one I'm using with IPN -- which is my business account). Because the address on my personal one is the same as the one on my business account, PayPal then added on sales tax on top of the to the subscription price.

Looking through the code, I see the following chunk in paypal.php:

if ($_POST['mc_gross'] == $cost[strtolower($_POST['mc_currency'])])
{                
        build_user_subscription($subscriptionid, $userid['userid']);
} 

Because of the sales tax, $_POST['mc_gross'] (which includes the sales tax) does not equal $cost[strtolower($_POST['mc_currency'])] (which does not include the sales tax). So, making sure that the following is included in the form will negate sales tax will work around this.

You can do this by adding the following in includes/functions_subscriptions.php:

After (line 314):

                $form['hiddenfields'] = " 

Add:

                        <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"tax\" value=\"0\" /> 

This effectively gets rid of sales tax on paid subscriptions.

Doing the above code modification now lets paid subscriptions work on my test server.

Observation, though. Due to all of this testing, I noticed that PayPal's IPN server contacts the paypal.php script when I issue a refund through their system. I'm imagining that it's sending information that the payment has been refunded from the PayPal server to paypal.php. Issuing a refund at this point, though, doesn't revoke the new subscription automatically; I have to manually change the person's subscription status. Maybe this could be automated in paypal.php in the future?

Thanks for everyone's attention in this issue. I hope the developers will include the above bug fix in the next release...

[Brandy]

paid subscription not changing usergroup

Hi,
I've read through this thread a bunch of times and I can't seem to find the answer to my problem - can someone please clarify?

I have a usergroup: "Registered User"

I have a paid subscription usergroup: "Contributing Member"

But when a registered user pays the subscription price through PayPal IPN (paypal works fine, I get username and email, no ID#s), the user does not move to the "Contributing Member" usergroup.

I have tried it with the paid subscription set to "Registered User" as the primary usergroup and "Contributing Member" as the secondary usergroup.

I have also tried it with the paid subscription set to "Contributing Member" as the primary usergroup and "Registered User" as the secondary usergroup, to no avail.

I am a verified PayPal member.

How can I get this to work?
Thanks much
Brandy

[Brandy]

I figured it out.

I have another store that I use a separate IPN URL in. It was reading that IPN URL. I had to hardcode vbulletin's IPN URL to get it to work. http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...71912#poststop

[deagledan]

brandy:

say you don't use any IPNs in any other part of your site, will that edit fix the problem you posted about here?:

But when a registered user pays the subscription price through PayPal IPN (paypal works fine, I get username and email, no ID#s), the user does not move to the "Contributing Member" usergroup.

I have tried it with the paid subscription set to "Registered User" as the primary usergroup and "Contributing Member" as the secondary usergroup.

I have also tried it with the paid subscription set to "Contributing Member" as the primary usergroup and "Registered User" as the secondary usergroup, to no avail.

[Brandy]

brandy:

say you don't use any IPNs in any other part of your site, will that edit fix the problem you posted about here?:

But when a registered user pays the subscription price through PayPal IPN (paypal works fine, I get username and email, no ID#s), the user does not move to the "Contributing Member" usergroup.

I have tried it with the paid subscription set to "Registered User" as the primary usergroup and "Contributing Member" as the secondary usergroup.

I have also tried it with the paid subscription set to "Contributing Member" as the primary usergroup and "Registered User" as the secondary usergroup, to no avail.

Yes, if you follow the instructions at http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...71912#poststop

it should work for you. BUT - you also MUST have IPN enabled at PayPal. To do that, go to your PayPal account, click on Profile and then "Instant Payment Notification Preferences" You will need to turn that on, and there you will need to put http://www.yoursite.com/forums/subscriptions/paypal.php
Actually, if you have that in your PayPal profile information, you shouldn't need to hack vb.
Clear as mud?
Let me know if it doesn't make sense.

[deagledan]

yeah, i already enabled IPN at paypal and included the link in there as well. i even 'hacked' that file in the includes section, and i'm still having the same problem. the newly subscribed user stays as a 'registered' member...

i currently have the primary usergroup set as 'contributor' and with nothing checked below (i have two available subscriptions).

[deagledan]

i'm currently waiting for a reply from brandy (who's been kind enough to respond to my email), but if someone else could offer their advice, it would be greatly appreciated as well...

ok, here are the vitals:

• i'm running vbulletin 3.0.0. release candidate 3 / mediatemple server
• i setup (2) subscriptions: donator (monthly) and donator (yearly) that are supposed to change 'registered users' to 'donator' (i set it up so that both subscriptions should change the user to the same 'donator' group, in other words)
• usergroup 'registered users' has 'YES' checked under where it says: 'Allow Users to have Member Groups'
• usergroup 'donator' has 'NO' checked where it says: 'Allow Users to have Member Groups '
• under subscription manager, i have both accounts set up as Primary Usergroup = 'Registered Users,' and i have 'Donator' checked right underneath.
• i set up paypal IPN correctly (and yes, i am verified) as i receive reports of when users subscribe...i notice that their accounts remain under 'registered user' and no subscriptions get added under the subscription manager's 'view user' section. i'm currently updating both things manually.
• i do not use IPN in any other part of my site

could someone please tell me what i'm doing wrong here?

p.s. under the donator group, i specified for it to be bold the person's name as well, and that's not happening, even after i manually checked off the donator subgroup and entered their subscription info.

[Brandy]

• i'm running vbulletin 3.0.0. release candidate 3 / mediatemple server
• i setup (2) subscriptions: donator (monthly) and donator (yearly) that are supposed to change 'registered users' to 'donator' (i set it up so that both subscriptions should change the user to the same 'donator' group, in other words)
• usergroup 'registered users' has 'YES' checked under where it says: 'Allow Users to have Member Groups'
• usergroup 'donator' has 'NO' checked where it says: 'Allow Users to have Member Groups '

Change your "donator" usergroup so that is has "yes" checked where it says "allow users to have member groups"

• under subscription manager, i have both accounts set up as Primary Usergroup = 'Registered Users,' and i have 'Donator' checked right underneath.
• i set up paypal IPN correctly (and yes, i am verified) as i receive reports of when users subscribe...i notice that their accounts remain under 'registered user' and no subscriptions get added under the subscription manager's 'view user' section. i'm currently updating both things manually.
• i do not use IPN in any other part of my site

could someone please tell me what i'm doing wrong here?

p.s. under the donator group, i specified for it to be bold the person's name as well, and that's not happening, even after i manually checked off the donator subgroup and entered their subscription info.

regarding your p.s.
This part kind of sucks, but in order for them to be recognized in the forums as a donator (ie. bold HTML Mark-up), they will have to go to their usercp and click on the link "group memberships" and choose to be recognized as their secondary usergroup.

There is no way for them to intuitively know this. So what I did was to create a message for donators on the home page via http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=64189 that displays their musername (username with HTML markup) and tells them that if it isn't bold, to go to www.yourdomain.com/forums/profile.php?do=editusergroups to choose to be recognized as a donator.

Hope this helps.