Support

July 29, 2019 at 3:20 am

Hi there,

In short, the above is not how the shortcode is intended to be used and will not work. You need to replace the above text (not just the shortcode) with [ESPRESSO_PAYMENTS].

With EE3 there is only a single page that should use the [ESPRESSO_EVENTS] shortcode and it’s the page that is set in Event Espresso -> General Settings -> Page Settings -> Main registration page.

That’s the page used to process registrations, the thank you page uses the [ESPRESSO_PAYMENTS] shortcode and that’s the page used to confirm the registration.

July 30, 2019 at 8:01 am

So I’m assuming you are using PayPal standard?

Did you make a payment and then automatically redirect back to the thank you page?

If you check the registration now, does it still show as incomplete? (PayPal IPN’s are known to often have delays before hitting you site, so you may have arrived back at your site before the IPN hit)

July 31, 2019 at 2:53 am

When I finished paying with PayPal, there’s a button (within the PayPal site) that says “return to merchant” which I clicked on, and the Thank You page is the page on the site that I returned to.
I don’t even know any other way for the Thank You page to come up for the customer to see.

You can turn on PayPal’s auto return feature and have them do it for you:

https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/how-do-i-use-paypal's-auto-return-feature-to-redirect-customers-back-to-my-website-faq3651

In the URL field for that setting, add the URL for your thank you page. EE overrides the value set anyway for each payment, but yo need a valid URL set for PayPal to enable the feature.

Yes, I went into my WP Dashboard, into Event Espresso and clicked on the event then Attendees. It does show that my payment is complete.

Ok, then yes, you arrived back at the site before the PayPal IPN hit your site.

If this is a a PayPal IPN issue (slow response?), then maybe I need to include some content on that Thank You page reflecting this? Are you aware of anything others have done?

We’ve seen other users add content to the thank you page stating if something like:

‘If you have paid using PayPal but you registration still shows incomplete, please refresh this page after 2 minutes’

The page will update if the user refreshed after the IPN has hit the site.

EE4 was designed to handle this better and updates automatically, although we don’t use PayPal Standard in EE4 anymore it uses PayPal Express (you don’t need anything different on your PayPal account to use it).

You’re site currently uses EE3, is there a reason why you can’t switch over to EE4?

(Note they are different systems and output events/details differently, so we advise testing EE4 on a development copy of your site before doing so live to confirm it suits your use case)

July 31, 2019 at 2:21 pm

We’ve been so impressed with EE3 we haven’t even looked at changing to EE4. Would this be an upgrade?

I’m glad EE3 has been working well for you.

Can you define upgrade in this context, please? EE3 is an ‘upgrade’ to EE4 in that it’s the newest version, but I’m not sure if thats what you are asking?

Would this simply mean uploading/installing EE4 as a new plugin? Or would this simply be an update? Would we need to start from scratch setting it up? or would the settings from EE3 be carried over?

EE4 is a different system to EE3, there’s a little more to switching over than just installing the plugin so I’ll group these together and try to break it down a little.

To switch over to EE3 you de-activate EE3 (and all of its add-ons) and install EE4. When you first activate EE4 it will ask if you want to migrate your EE3 data over, if so you click yes and follow the onscreen instructions (there will be mulitple ‘migrations’ you need to run through). EE4 then pulls as much data from your EE3 install as it can, Events, Registrations, Settings, whatever it can.

However, again note that EE4 is a very different system to EE3, it works in a different way so not all of your EE3 settings will actually apply to EE4.

You don’t need to ‘start from scratch’ as it will import the events etc, but it does work differently and so your front end out may be different than your used to and it relies more on your theme, meaning if your theme isn’t doing things according to the WP standards, sometimes you can run into issues. It’s for that reasons that we recommend install EE4 on a development copy of the site first to confirm if it works on your site and suits your needs (you, as an EE3 license holder, have access to EE4 in your downloads so that you can choose to switch over and test it whenever you prefer).

If it were me, I’d not upgrade to EE4 on the live site whilst I had active events, especially if you haven’t tested it out first and got to know the new system. So before moving forward, the best question I can ask you is do you have a staging/development copy of the site?

July 31, 2019 at 6:48 pm

It wouldn’t be a problem to not have SSL on the dev site. The site will function the same without SSL, it just won’t be a secure connection like on the live site.

August 1, 2019 at 1:35 pm

The only difference it can make is that some payment providers require SSL for them to connect to the site, however, most of them are strict on this requirement when using debug mode to connect to their staging sites.

For example PayPal with PayPal Sandbox, which does not ‘require’ you use SSL connections.