Support

March 3, 2015 at 5:09 pm

Hi Dee,

Your site is on an old version of Event Espresso 3. I recommend backing up your WordPress (https://eventespresso.com/wiki/how-to-back-up-your-site/) and updating to the current release.

You can view a list of changes in 3.1.37.0 here:

https://eventespresso.com/wiki/change-log/

Let us know if you have any questions about upgrading your site.

Thanks

—
Lorenzo

March 4, 2015 at 3:10 am

Hi Dee,

What that template does is remove all of the formatting from your theme on the transactions page so that once the IPN is received it can be process as quickly as possible. The transactions page is not a page users should visit and therefore does not need any visuals.

If you already have the Transaction template in place, you do not need to update it. If you are currently not using it, then I would recommend doing so.

Did the user actually pay twice through PayPal?

For example did they pay and then were returned to the site, then returned to PayPal again?

If you go to Event Espresso -> Payment Settings -> PayPal setting.

Is ‘Bypass Payment Overview Page’ set to Yes?

March 4, 2015 at 6:11 am

Any ideas what to do to stop this happening?

Disable the ‘ByPass Payment Overview Page’ setting.

The problem is the user is being directed back to the site before the IPN has been received to update the registration, it is a problem from delayed IPN’s from PayPal’s servers.

Because the registration is incomplete, the payment options are being shown and because that option is enabled the user is being re-directed back to PayPal straight away.

Disabling that option means your users will need to select PayPal as their payment method when registering and if the IPN hasn’t been received when they return to the site the thank you page will simply show ‘Incomplete’. If they refresh a few seconds later, the status will be complete.

Are you currently using the simplified Transactions page template?

March 4, 2015 at 6:51 am

It’s a standard Page Template as opposed to one within Event Espresso.

If you view the Transactions page, do you just see a white screen, or do you see a themed page? For example here is the transactions page on one of my sites:

Without the template – http://take.ms/jdTV5
(Notice the twentytwelve theme)

With the template – http://take.ms/DJjE0

Also if you edit the page and look within ‘Page Attributes’ the template selected would be ‘txn page’ – http://take.ms/b7J9H

March 4, 2015 at 2:00 pm

Hi Dee, you should see something like this in the page editor:

http://cl.ly/image/1b0G3a2U0F2m

The middle option is for the template.

Can you post of screenshot of what you are seeing?

https://eventespresso.com/wiki/troubleshooting-checklist/#screenshots

—
Lorenzo

March 5, 2015 at 3:47 am

Hi Dee,

Thank you, that’s enough information.

Its means you currently are not using the transactions template, you can download that from HERE, open the zip file and extract the txnpage.php file.

Now upload that via FTP to your sites theme (wp-content/themes/*your theme name*)

Then when you edit the transactions page the template dropdown should be available and you can select the txnpage template.

March 5, 2015 at 8:39 am

Ok, the problems with double payments is mainly caused by the laggy IPN’s from PayPal and having the Bypass setting enabled.

PayPal needs to send a message from their servers to yours to say the payment has been made, this needs to be quick otherwise the user is directed back to the site before the IPN is received.

The massage (IPN) is sent to your ‘Transactions’ page. So the reason for the template is to load that page as quickly as possible once the IPN has been received. It doesn’t fix a bug with EE per say, but allows EE to do its job as quickly as possible, once it has the info from PayPal.

So the elephant in the room is PayPal, if their servers delay the IPN too long the same will happen again and unfortunately there is very little we can do to prevent it. So with that said:

So, now we’re using txnpage.php, can I bypass the payment overview page again?

You can, but if PayPal IPN’s are still laggy, exactly the same will happen with the user being directed back to PayPal so personally I would leave that disabled.

It is an inherent issue with off-site payment gateways, they all need to send a messages, PayPal is well known for laggy IPN’s.

Ultimately to prevent these kinds of issue we recommend switching to an on-site payment gateways such as Stripe.

Also, now that the users see the payment overview page, is there any way to edit it?

You can but depending on what you would like to change depends on how. What would you like to change?

To note: EE4 was also written in a way to try and help reduce issues, I notice you are using the EE3 Ticketing Add-on, is this to be used with the mobile apps at the event?

March 6, 2015 at 9:08 am

On the payment overview page, I’d like to change the text which says ‘Please choose a payment option’ to something like ‘Please select the Paypal icon below to be taken to the Paypay site for payment’ – in other words take the choice away yet still request user to click the icon.

The easiest way is to ‘translate’ that phrase to suit. We have a guide on doing so here:

https://eventespresso.com/wiki/how-to-change-wording-with-poedit/

I grabbed the function within that page and added the strings you mentioned to it here:

https://gist.github.com/Pebblo/348c67446db6b2b453d3

Simply place that function within your themes functions.php file or a Site Specific Plugin to change that string to match this – http://take.ms/Z8Ti2

To answer your second question, yes, we will be using the EE3 Ticketing Add-on with the mobile apps at the event, as we did last year. Is there any problem you foresee with that?

No I was simply going to recommend upgrading to EE4, however whislt EE4 does have a Ticketing Add-on it does not have a mobile app to allows scanning tickets. You would need to use a barcode scanner, you can use this with a mobile device is you purchase a bluetooth scanner but it works differently from an app.