IPN sent to the plugin (example, WP eStore) are failing

[amin007]

If you receive an email similar to the following from PayPal then it means that something on your server is blocking the IPN notifications from PayPal:

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Please check your server that handles PayPal Instant Payment Notifications (IPN). IPNs sent to the following URL(s) are failing:

http://www.your-domain-name.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-cart-for-digital-products/paypal.php

If you do not recognize this URL, you may be using a service provider that is using IPN on your behalf. Please contact your service provider with the above information. If this problem continues, IPNs may be disabled for your account.

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What is an IPN?

If you do not know what an IPN (Instant Payment Notification) is then you should check the following URL:

WordPress e-Commerce Knowledgebase

WP eStore uses the IPN feature of PayPal to verify and deliver the digital product after a payment.

Possible Solutions to Fix IPN Failure

Everytime a customer checks out via eStore, it will tell PayPal to send an IPN to the plugin after the payment. If the IPN that PayPal sends after the payment gets blocked, PayPal will send you the above mentioned email.

You have a few possible ways to fix this:

1) Contact your web hosting to find out why they are blocking PayPal’s IPN (maybe they have a firewall which is doing it). Maybe you are using a plugin that is blocking it (The bad behavior plugin is known to do this). Deactivate this plugin.

2) Check to make sure you do not have any security or firewall type plugin that is blocking the PayPal IPNs. It is best to do this test:

https://support.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forums/topic/test-to-identy-a-conflicting-theme-or-plugin

3) Turn off the IPN feature from WP eStores settings menu (This will mean that all the “post payment” functionality will stop working). This is not really desirable.

4) Change your hosting provider and get a good one (there are plenty of good and cheap ones out there)

http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/find-out-which-web-hosting-company-offers-the-cheapest-and-reliable-web-hosting-solution-387

I prefer option 1 and 2

PayPal is a well known payment gateway so I don’t know why some servers or plugin block IPNs from PayPal.

[prologic77]

Hello,

I contacted the Godaddy webshosting support and they told me that the problem was not from their side. Since I do not know much of programming, I have no clue as to what’s going on. One quick question if I go to this URL [http://rescuelightsmusic.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-cart-for-digital-products/paypal.php] I get a blank page. What does that mean?

Thanks,

Mayu

[amin007]

I am not certain if the problem is with Godaddy or some other software that you are using on your server but from PayPal’s point of view they are having issue reaching your server.

I tried to send a test IPN from PayPal sandbox to your server and it gave me the following error:

“IPN delivery failed. Unable to connect to the specified URL. Please verify the URL and try again.”

The URL you mentioned is the URL where paypal sends the payment notification (The plugin then reads it and does it’s post payment stuff)

Basically, something is blocking PayPal from reaching your server… if you happen to have another hosting from some other company you can quickly prove this theory by setting up the eStore on that server.

[prologic77]

Hey Amin,

Thanks for the reply. I did some googling regarding godaddy not allowing IPN and went through a few URLS. Can you please have a look at these and let me know if I can add anything to the script? Here is the link http://forums.oscommerce.com/topic/233097-official-paypal-ipn-godaddy-issue-topic/. I am not sure of my client will want to change hosting companies. Is there any other solution that you can suggest?

Thanks,

Mayu

[amin007]

Just had a look at that URL. The workaround suggested in there doesn’t apply to our scenario as the eStore doesn’t use CURL for IPN validation.

Your client shouldn’t need to change the hosting company… Godaddy should be able to investigate why PayPal is having issue contacting their server and address it. There must be thousands of Godaddy users who uses PayPal so I am sure they allow PayPal IPN… there must be some server configuration/setup issue on your client’s server (Godaddy does have a bad reputation for it’s hosting side of things)

[prologic77]

I Googled ‘IPN godaddy’ and it seems like a lot of people are having trouble with IPN and GoDaddy. I don’t understand why Godaddy doesn’t fix there server configuration!!

Would this URL help me at all with getting back on track? http://pr0gr4mm3r.com/php/paypal-ipn-and-godaddy-hosting/

Thanks,

Mayu

[amin007]

The example code in that URL is missing code after line 40. Not sure if it will help but if the example code was complete I could put together another IPN handling script for you to see if it makes a difference.

[prologic77]

Hi Amin,

I played around a bit more with the plugin. I tried to do a transaction and it sent me (the buyer)a receipt of payment but I did not get an email that has an encrypted download link to the digital product that my client is selling. Would it help you if I gave you the account details so you could see if I have configured it properly? Until Feb 2, 2010 everything was working perfectly fine.

Thanks.

[prologic77]

My problem of not getting an encrypted link in the email is still not solved. Nor does it go in spam folder. Could you please help me out with that?

Thanks.

[amin007]

Sent you an email to arrange site access.

Update: Turned out that Godaddy was limiting the emails sent from this client’s accounts!

[wood]

I am just getting rolling and have a pretty tight timeframe to get rolling in. I came across this post and it seems to be regarding a similar problem that I am having. I’ve gone through the various to-do lists for troubleshooting and hit a wall when I come to the IPN simulator. I receive the message “IPN delivery failed. HTTP error code 403: Forbidden”

Anyway, my client is also hosting their site at GoDaddy and I’m wondering if anything was learned from prologic77’s experience.

Thanks in advance for any insight.

[amin007]

When PayPal can’t deliver the IPN to your server resulting in the following error then there is nothing you can do unless your server fixes the issue:

“IPN delivery failed. HTTP error code 403: Forbidden”

Basically the server is rejecting the IPN so unless that gets resolved PayPal is not going to be able to deliver the IPN.

[wood]

Bah! Sorry, just figured it out… it was that Bad Behavior plugin that you mentioned earlier in this post. Thanks!

[Chris YCF]

I’m fighting the same issue (godaddy client). Just to avoid misunderstandings:

The only thing I gave WP eStore to interact with Paypal was my Paypal email adress, stored in the payment getaway settings.

But IPN seems to be something different. Paypal requires to enter this as an URL in its own settings.

How to deal?

[Chris YCF]

Add:

In my case it’s definitely not the plug-in-problem (I’ve deactivated them all). GoDaddy should also not be to blame.

Helpless!

[Author]

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