Invalid Regular period. You must specify…

Hi,

We are receiving the following error when someone clicks on our PayPal button…

“Invalid Regular period. You must specify valid values for the A3, P3, and T3 parameters for a subscription.”

The shortcode being used is…

[s2Member-PayPal-Button level="4" ccaps="" desc="Online Yoga Classes Monthly" ps="paypal" lc="" cc="USD" dg="0" ns="1" custom="www.amazingyoga.net" ta="15.00" tp="1" tt="M" ra="15.00" rp="1" rt="M" rr="1" rrt="" rra="1" image="default" output="button" /]

The page where the shortcode is being displayed is http://www.amazingyoga.net/online-yoga-classes/

Looking at the source code of the page we see an error in how the shortcode is being rendered. The code we see is…

<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="business" value="info@amazingyoga.net" />
<input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick-subscriptions" />
 <!-- Instant Payment Notification &#038; Return Page Details --></p>
<input type="hidden" name="notify_url" value="http://www.amazingyoga.net/?s2member_paypal_notify=1" />
<input type="hidden" name="cancel_return" value="http://www.amazingyoga.net/" />
<input type="hidden" name="return" value="http://www.amazingyoga.net/?s2member_paypal_return=1&amp;s2member_paypal_return_tra=fnIyOjRUTHF1V3hxaTRzWENHclFoY2NkNjY5SkEzckdNYVNROjlmYWZkODc3MDQxYmEyNWRkMTk1MWU2MGNkZDc3YzE0fAK8QZAJ6TlSLR9L5p1a5zdWZ5yJLW_ThIqqvOrbPIpR480M7uZchDpC4BVWVzUVkw4xHL_Fg89ERrJP62L88jRGfhKTAqRCw3YqvHJP9nSo5w6LAuQbbifvz77osT9-1M5FR8h_bj6zySW6zK1ON5n9tDFeJhLx84pjdLFCVdLw_6xUdQ6TpfNDCv8RjDR9jEVUM8qpqEbcAPhWKAUNEW4MSqyqirBizA4q61eQtS-P0VpSJXmwNc_VGQ3ygX3mh30O3s8tLj33_7Su20YUix2MZQnQdoEmd_4bTvkn5a-LpyynLycwPEaGAYRfOUosnFfeLtdLy8TvSETcObTiGPYbUW0dpzgXYtPJI-bAZFQr1HWppNct8sRNqB_eQ-exZw" />
<input type="hidden" name="rm" value="2" />
 <!-- Configures Basic Checkout Fields --></p>
<input type="hidden" name="lc" value="" />
<input type="hidden" name="no_shipping" value="1" />
<input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="1" />
<input type="hidden" name="custom" value="www.amazingyoga.net" />
<input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD" />
<input type="hidden" name="page_style" value="paypal" />
<input type="hidden" name="charset" value="utf-8" />
<input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="Online Yoga Classes Monthly" />
<input type="hidden" name="item_number" value="4" />
 <!-- Configures s2Member's Unique Invoice ID/Code  --></p>
<input type="hidden" name="invoice" value="506b2834edccf~174.101.179.194" />
 <!-- Identifies/Updates An Existing User/Member ( when/if applicable )  --></p>
<input type="hidden" name="on0" value="Referencing Customer ID" />
<input type="hidden" name="os0" value="1" />
 <!-- Identifies The Customer's IP Address For Tracking --></p>
<input type="hidden" name="on1" value="Customer IP Address" />
<input type="hidden" name="os1" value="174.101.179.194" />
 <!-- Controls Modify Behavior At PayPal® Checkout --></p>
<input type="hidden" name="modify" value="0" />
 <!-- Customizes Prices, Payments &#038; Billing Cycle --><br />
 <!--<br />
<input type="hidden" name="amount" value="15.00" />&#8211;></p>
<input type="hidden" name="src" value="1" />
<input type="hidden" name="srt" value="" />
<input type="hidden" name="sra" value="1" />
<input type="hidden" name="a1" value="15.00" />
<input type="hidden" name="p1" value="1" />
<input type="hidden" name="t1" value="M" />
<input type="hidden" name="a3" value="15.00" />
<input type="hidden" name="p3" value="1" />
<input type="hidden" name="t3" value="M" />
 <!-- Displays The PayPal® Image Button --></p>
<input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_xpressCheckout.gif" style="width:auto; height:auto; border:0;" alt="PayPal®" />
</form>

The button was working and people joined with no problems, then we suddenly started seeing this error. No new plugins or themes were added or removed prior to the start of the problem.

Please advise.

Hi Sean.

Yeah, I see there are paragraph tags, line-break tags where there is an HTML comment in the code, and an HTML entity. Something is affecting the parsing of the shortcode, adding extra filtering that is causing you that problem.

I understand no plugins/theme were added or removed, but something must have changed if this wasn’t happening before. Probably a plugin or theme update, if you didn’t install a new one.

To find what is doing it, first test the theme changing the to the default one for a moment and refreshing the page with the button to test it. To test the plugins, deactivate them one by one, testing after each too.

Or try button encryption, maybe that prevents the problem, since there’ll be less code to affect by the parsing. [hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Options -› Account Details -› Button Encryption[/hilite]

I hope that helps. :)

Hi Cristián,

Thank you for the fast response.

We tried the Button Encryption option first and doing that made the PayPal Button invisible on our sales page, so we set that back to unencrypted.

We then switched from our current Theme to Twenty Eleven and the “Invalid Regular period.” PayPal error stopped.

So the Theme is a place to look, however we have not updated the Theme to a new version prior to this issue occuring. We have had some custom development work done to the Theme.

What exactly should we be looking for within a Theme that would be causing this? The more information we can give to our developer the quicker we can get this resolved.

Switching to another Theme is not an option as we have a custom design on this Theme and until recently it was working.

Please advise.

Thank You.

The best place to start is with any custom JavaScript added by the theme. This thread may be helpful for your developer.

Actually, it’s most probably something related to the content parsing, the theme seems to be doing the paragraph filter after the do_shortcode one, causing the output of the button’s HTML to be affected.

If you can’t fix the theme, you can try other things too:

– Use the TrueEdit plugin to remove the content filters, checking after each if the problem goes away. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/trueedit/

– Edit the button’s template and remove all newlines and HTML comments. /s2member/includes/templates/buttons/

– Uset a button created over at PayPal. Knowledge Base » Using PayPal created buttons

I hope that helps. :)

Hi Raam, thanks for the tip.

Hi Cristián, we were able to remove the filter. The issue has been resolved. Thank you.

Excellent! Thanks for the update. :)