IPN stands for Instant Payment Notification and in short it is needed for Event Espresso to be notified about the transaction in order to complete the registration on the website.

When setting up PayPal to work with Event Espresso you need to change the settings in the Plugin and in your PayPal account.

Plugin Settings

There are two types of settings, testing (also known as Sandbox or Debugging) and live.

With the testing settings you will first need to have a PayPal Sandbox account and enter your merchant email address in the PayPal ID option and make sure that the Use the Debugging Feature and the PayPal Sandbox option is ticked.

Any registrations taking place will now head to the Sandbox where no actual money changes hands. You will need to use a Sandbox buyer account details to make a purchase.

For live settings, add your own PayPal email address to the PayPal ID option and make sure that the Debugging Feature and the PayPal Sandbox option is turned off.

PayPal Settings

1) Login to your account on PayPal.com

2) Look for the person icon in the top right corner and click on it

3) Then click on Profile and Settings

4) On the next page, look for the My Selling Tools in the left menu and click on it

5) Then click the Update link for Instant Payment Notifications

6) On the next page add the URL for your Event Espresso transactions page. Here is an example:
http://www.yoursitename.com/transactions/

7) Make sure Receive IPN messages (Enabled) is enabled and click Save.

8) Set the PayPal button language encoding, see the next section.

Do the steps above look unfamiliar? Your PayPal account may still be using the old layout. Here is an alternative setup guide for the PayPal IPN.

PayPal button language encoding

1) Look for the person icon in the top right corner and click on it

2) Then click on Profile and Settings

3) On the next page, look for the My Selling Tools in the left menu and click on it

4) Scroll to the end of the page and look for the More Selling Tools section. Then click on PayPal button language encoding

5) Click More Options

6) Set the language encoding that matches your website’s database encoding. Many WordPress databases are UTF-8, but you can verify the encoding if you’re not sure by checking with your web host.

Server Firewall Settings

If necessary, add PayPal’s IP addresses to any list of trusted IP addresses needed by your firewall or other network devices. Here is the current list of PayPal IP addresses.

Troubleshooting PayPal IPN

• Make sure your PayPal account is verified. If you have a PayPal Premier or Business account, then this process has already been completed.
• Make sure that the 4 required pages in WordPress admin –> Event Espresso –> General Settings are correct and have the correct short codes in them.
• Make sure that the 4 required pages in the WordPress admin –> Event Espresso –> General Settings are publicly viewable and not set to private, draft, or password protected.
• Make sure there are no maintenance mode type plugins active.
• EE3 only: Please only enable the “Force HTTPS on Return URL” feature if you have an SSL certificate installed for your domain. In most cases, you can order an SSL certificate from your hosting provider for a fee.
• Deactivate the WP Spam Shield plugin. There are a number of alternatives that do not block PayPal.
• If you are running the Bad Behavior plugin, you will need to whitelist the IP addresses of PayPal servers, and keep an eye on the Bad Behavior logs to stay up to date in case PayPal gateway adds or changes the IP addresses they use to notify your site.
• EE3 only: If you are experiencing problems with incomplete payments, try the Simplified Transaction template. This can be added to your theme and activated on the Transactions page via the Page Attributes option. There is more information and a download link under “Incomplete Payment Issues”.
• EE3 only:Check to see if you have outdated or incorrectly modified gateway files in wp-content/uploads/espresso/gateways directory. If so, temporarily rename that directory to force Event Espresso to use the default gateway files.
• EE3 only: You can check the IPN log file for errors. The IPN log file is located on your server in the /wp-content/uploads/espresso/logs directory. You can FTP in or view the file using your host’s c-panel file manager.
• You contact your host and ask them to verify that your server meets PayPal’s new security requirements.

Give it Some Time
It sometimes takes a bit of time, sometimes several hours for PayPal to post a response to the server. Another possibility is that PayPal sent a response back to your server, but the response bounced or the server was unresponsive for a short period of time, therefore not capturing the data from PayPal.

IPN History / Resend IPN
You can also view your PayPal Instant Payment Notification history and/or try resending the IPN notifications by logging into your PayPal account, then visit this URL: https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-ipns-history

You should see something like this:

http://www.screencast.com/t/EFum7nKeY

Incomplete Payment Issues

If you are experiencing problems with incomplete payments, most often it has to do with problems reaching your Transactions page ([ESPRESSO_TXN_PAGE]) from the payment gateway.

You can download our special stripped down Transactions page template in the link below. Included in the zip file is a quick readme with installation instructions.

It is recommended that you try this template after verifying that IPN is turned on, your account is verified, you have a standard or business account (if using PayPal) and — most importantly — that your Transactions page is visible to the internet.

If you have confirmed these four things and you are still having issues with incomplete payments, you can try the download below.

Download Transaction Template

Page Caching

When using caching plugins (or server caching) you will need exclude all Event Espresso critical pages from caching. If your transactions page is set to cache the PayPal IPN’s will load a cached version of this page and no updates will be made to the transaction.

Click here to setup nocache exclusion rules for Event Espresso

Internal Server Error

If you see Internal Server Error message like this one after hitting the PayPal button on the Event Espresso Payment page, it’s likely because the email address entered in PayPal settings does not match the PayPal ID for your PayPal account. You can verify the email address that’s entered in Event Espresso > Payment settings is the same email address that was used to sign up for the PayPal account.

WordPress is an amazing open source platform. With that strength comes the possibility of many plugins and themes. These can achieve different goals and are written by different people to wildly different standards.

So when problems strike, the first thing that needs to be done is some basic troubleshooting. This is useful not only for issues with Event Espresso, but any other plugins and themes that work with WordPress.

Check the Version Number of Event Espresso

This step is important because the issue you are seeing may be something that was fixed in a recent update of the software. You can check to see which version of Event Espresso is on your website by viewing the WordPress plugins page. The top of this page displays the current version number of Event Espresso 4. If you need help with updating please see this guide.

Check for a Theme Conflict

You can check if the issue is caused by a conflict or a bug within your theme by previewing the default WordPress theme in the Customizer (Twenty Seventeen at the time of writing).

If you cannot preview the default theme using the Customizer, you can use the Theme Test Drive plugin to test the theme without your visitors being aware.

Check for a Plugin Conflict

Deactivate all the plugins you have with the exception Event Espresso and see if the issue is resolved. If not try the theme option as well.

If the issue is resolved, start activating your plugins, one by one, testing for the problem each time. This systematic approach will help you find the plugin that is causing the issue/conflict. Once the plugin is identified we will be able to examine it in more detail or you can simply keep the plugin deactivated.

We maintain a list of known plugin and theme conflicts that you can check here: https://eventespresso.com/wiki/known-third-party-plugin-theme-conflicts/

Activate WP_DEBUG mode

You can make the following edit to your site’s wp-config.php file. This will log all errors, notices, and warnings to a file called debug.log in the wp-content directory. It will also hide the errors from displaying on screen so they do not interrupt page generation.

// Enable WP_DEBUG mode
define( 'WP_DEBUG', true );
if ( WP_DEBUG ) {
        @ini_set( 'display_errors', 0 );
        define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true );
        define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false );
}

Check for a JavaScript Conflict

Some conflicts with Event Espresso can be related to Javascript where there’s a library that is either being loaded incorrectly, or an old version of a library is being forced to load, or something has stopped JavaScript from running. If you use Chrome or Firefox you can use the developer tools Console to pinpoint any JavaScript errors.

Also read here, for more JavaScript troubleshooting.

Specific error messages and their solutions

Nothing in your event queue is an error message that will display on the registration checkout page if there’s a problem with caching or if the session data gets deleted by a plugin like NextGen Gallery.

You can follow this guide to ensure that Event Espresso’s checkout pages are not served from a cache.

If you use the NextGen Gallery plugin there’s a workaround solution posted here.

The maximum number of inputs on this page has been exceeded is an error message that will display on the event editor page when the server’s max_input_vars limit is exceeded. You can contact your host to ask for instructions for how to raise this limit.

Page not found when viewing an events page. This will happen if the site’s rewrite rules were reset too early or too late in a request. This can be fixed by visiting the site’s Settings → Permalinks page, which will flush the rewrite rules at just the right time.

No configuration section has been provided while attempting to save “_Config” is an error message that will display if the “Event Slug” option in Event Espresso > Events > Templates setting is changed to event. The Event Slug setting must not be changed to event. See also: How to change the event slug for Event Espresso events.

Help Us Help You Troubleshoot your Issue

If you have gone through the steps above and your issue is still occurring, then please open a support ticket in our support forums:

https://eventespresso.com/support/forums/

Please include the following information in your support post:

• Your version of Event Espresso (e.g. Event Espresso 3 or Event Espresso 4)
• A brief explanation of the issue
• Also let us know any steps that you have tried to fix the issue

It will also help to include the site URL (website) and/or some screenshots.

How to take Screenshots

Screenshots are helpful in describing an issue when the site URL can’t be shared or a link to the site is not available (e.g. you are working on the site locally on your computer). Here are tips on how to take screenshots on various platforms:

Mac

To take a screenshot of the entire screen, press the following keys: command + shift + 3
To take a screenshot of the a specific area of the screen, press the following keys: command + shift + 4. Then select the area that you would like to capture.

You can then upload your screenshot to WP Media on your site and then share a link in your support post. Another option is to use a screenshot service such as TinyGrab, Cloudup, Monosnap, Cloudapp, Snipboard, or an equivalent screenshot sharing service. Then you can share a link in your support post.

Windows

To take a screen of the entire screen, press the following key: prtscn
To take a screen of the current window only, press the following key: alt + prtscn

You can then upload your screenshot to WP Media on your site and then share a link in your support post. Another option is to use a screenshot service such as TinyGrab, Monosnap, Cloudapp, Snipboard, or an equivalent screenshot sharing service. Then you can share a link in your support post.

iOS (iPad, iPhone) 

To take a screen of the entire screen, press the following on your device: power button + home button

You can then email your screenshot to your email address and / or upload it to a service like Dropbox from your device. Then you can share the screenshot to one of the screenshot sharing services mentioned above for Mac or Windows.

The Event Espresso team develops using best practices and follows WordPress coding standards, in order to limit any conflicts caused by our plugin. Other third party plugins have been known to cause issues with Event Espresso, due to varying reasons, so we have listed all known conflicts here.

Most of these plugins, themes, etc issues have been brought to our attention via the community or in limited cases by our own testing.

Whilst we try to keep this list up to date we cannot guarantee how up to date it is.

Plugins

404 Redirected

Turn off the automatic redirect/force current permalinks setting

Accordion Shortcodes

Breaks TinyMCE editor in Event Espresso 4 events and venues editor screens

All In One WP Security & Firewall

Uncheck both settings that break the CSV report feature.

• WP Security > Firewall > Additional Firewall Rules > Bad Query Strings > Deny Bad Query Strings (uncheck to deactivate)
• WP Security > Firewall > 6G Blacklist Firewall Rules > Enable legacy 5G Firewall Protection (uncheck to deactivate)

Conflicts with the datetime and ticket editor’s date & time fields. The following code snippet can be added to remove the conflicting script:

add_filter('acf/settings/enqueue_datepicker', '__return_false');

You can add the above to a functions plugin or, if available, into your WordPress child theme’s functions.php file.

Bad Behavior

The Bad Behavior is a plugin that is used on a lot of WordPress sites, and it does a great job of blocking communication from other sites. In practice, that’s a good thing, except when you’re expecting to receive communication from other sites like PayPal so you can receive an instant payment notification.

If you’d like to continue using Bad Behavior and receive IPN notifications from the payment gateway, you can whitelist the IP addresses of the payment gateway’s servers, and keep an eye on the Bad Behavior logs to stay up to date in case the payment gateway adds or changes the IP addresses they use to notify your site.

If you activate the Bad Behavior plugin, you can look at the log of blocked IP addresses under Tools>Bad Behavior log. Look for all blocked records that are associated with the payment gateway, and copy the IP addresses from the payment gateway’s servers and paste them into the Bad Behavior whitelist.

Divi Booster

Breaks the Event Espresso admin pages. You can fix the conflict by going to the Divi Booster plugin’s settings page, then look under “Page Builder”. Then you uncheck the box for “Enable Page Builder for posts and custom post types” and save.

Events Made Easy

Breaks the Event Espresso registration process

EventON (CodeCanyon)

Conflicts with Event Espresso 4 as it uses the same events page slug ‘events’ by default. This can be changed via myEventON -> Settings -> Events Paging

Juiz Social Post Sharer

Workaround: Disable Display counter of sharing? setting to avoid JavaScript errors when using the Safari browser

Log Emails

Breaks the venue editor and contact editor routes in the EE4 admin. Symptom “Cannot Load espresso_venues”. We recommend to use this plugin instead: WP Mail Logging.

Magic Liquidizer Responsive Table

Breaks the EE4 ticket selector when selecting tickets on mobile browsers

Memphis Documents Library

EE4: Highjacks the session resulting in “Nothing in Your Event Queue” and “Your form data could not be applied to any valid registrations” errors. You can set its “Disable Sessions” option (check the box) on the Memphis Docs > Options > Settings page like so:

Participants Database
Changes the timezone for times displayed on events. There’s a solution outlined here:
https://xnau.com/date-shifting-and-other-timezone-related-issues-in-participants-database/

Shortcodes Ultimate

Shortcodes Ultimate will remove the standard WordPress auto formatting and replace it with its own custom formatting. This will alter the appearance of the registration pages because it adds paragraph and break tags into the markup. Workaround: You go to the Shortcodes Ultimate settings page and set the option where you can disable its custom formatting. When you disable the custom formatting it will no longer add the extra paragraph and break tags everywhere.

Themify Portfolio Posts plugin

Breaks the venue editor route. Error message is “Cannot load espresso_venues” when saving a venue post.

Web 2.0 Directory

Breaks the Registrations CSV report feature

WEN’s Responsive Column Layout Shortcodes

Causes a problem with EE4’s checkout notification pop ups. Poorly targeted JavaScript strips out the P tags from our messages making them blank.

WordPress SEO by Yoast

Strips away Venue information from venue pages in Event Espresso 4. You can work around this if the Facebook and Twitter meta tags features are disabled. Alternatively you can set a custom excerpt on each Venue.

WP E-Commerce

The main WP query object gets destroyed by WP E-commerce during the pre_get_posts hookpoint. This is a known issue and reported elsewhere in the WordPress.org forums. We found a workaround that involves adding a little function to your custom functions.php file or into a site specific plugin:

function callback_that_does_nothing( $WP_Query ) {
    return $WP_Query;
}
add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'callback_that_does_nothing', 8 );

Under normal circumstances the above code does nothing, however, when WP Ecommerce destroys the WP Query object, the above code will restore said object.

WP SpamShield

Workaround: Use the “Disable anti-spam for miscellaneous forms” setting to allow registrations to process.

Themes

Divi (Elegant themes)
You can set the Blog Style Mode to “Enable” to allow content from the events to display on the event list page.

PageLines
The Footer Scripts setting needs to be enabled so registration checkout works in Event Espresso 4.
From your WordPress dashboard (WP-admin), go to PageLines Settings and then click on Advanced in the menu and then place a checkmark in the Footer Scripts setting and save changes by clicking on the Save Changes button.

Support Forum threads tagged with “themeforest”

3 Clicks (Themeforest)
Removes Event Espresso content from the single event posts. The solution is add this to your functions file

Central (Themeforest)
Breaks the javascript loading, making things only work intermittently. source. One possible fix is to turn off Page Transitions in the theme settings.

Driveme (Themeforest/jthemes)
Recommended to avoid because this theme:
Disables all plugin updates
Flushes rewrite rules on init

Purity theme (Themeforest)
Breaks registration process

Accent (Themeforest)
Breaks the calendar
Update: No longer available from Themeforest

Denoizzed (Themeforest)
Breaks the confirmation page due to using position:fixed on its grid system.

YellowProject Multipurpose Retina WP Theme (Themeforest)
Breaks toggle, datepicker and basically anything else that uses jQuery in the wp-admin

Fudge (Showthemes.com)
JavaScript conflicts
Januas (Showthemes.com)
Januas theme issue 1: JavaScript conflicts caused by the removal of the bundled version of the jQuery library. Recommended fix: Always use WordPress bundled version of the jQuery library. You can remove this code found in the /lib/januas.php file from the januas_enqueue_scripts() function:

wp_deregister_script('jquery');
wp_register_script('jquery', get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/lib/scripts/jquery-1.8.3.js');

Januas theme issue 2: Januas breaks the Event Slug option for Event Espresso. You can fix this by adding the following to a custom functions plugin, or a child theme’s functions.php file:

add_action('after_setup_theme', 'my_fix_januas_theme_breaking_ee_event_slug' );
function my_fix_januas_theme_breaking_ee_event_slug(){
    remove_filter( 'FHEE__EE_Register_CPTs__register_CPT__rewrite', 
        'januas_ee_event_slug', 
        10
    );
}

Then if you haven’t already done so, go to Event Espresso > Events > Templates and you can now change what’s set for the Event Slug option.

Hosting

Yes even your hosting environment can cause issues! If the servers are not set up correctly, or are overly restrictive, issues with Event Espresso and other themes and plugins can occur.

Not recommended:

• GoDaddy Hosting
• Yahoo
• Crazy Domains (Australia)
• HostPapa – forced server level caching with no option to disable or white list pages
• most Windows/IIS based servers

Please see our list of recommended hosts here: https://eventespresso.com/requirements/