IPNs are failing

I received this notice from PayPal. Could you please tell me what I need to do to fix the problem.

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

http://artbiz.ca/school/?s2member_paypal_notify=1

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.

Thanks

I have recently integrated eShop into this same site. Would that have anything to do with this?
I am using PayPal Standard not Pro, if you need to know this.

Update: I have isolated the problem. I use PayPal buy now buttons on my main site for clients to pay invoices, etc. PayPal is trying to notify s2member of these payments, which of course have nothing to do with s2member.

Now I just need to figure out how to over ride that in PayPal???

• This topic was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by  Kim Bruce.

Hi Kim,

When you create your PayPal buttons, you can go into the Advanced Variables section and add notify_url= variable to define which URL the button should notify. Please see this thread for more information: http://www.primothemes.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=309#p1333

But these buttons have nothing to do with s2member. They are buy now buttons that I use for clients to pay invoices, etc. They have been on my site for a long time, before I even installed s2member.

Why would PayPal notify s2member? I mean, if it fixes the problem, I will, but will that not mess things up on s2members end?

Hi Kim,

Can you confirm that the IPN URL listed in Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Options -› PayPal® IPN Integration matches exactly the IPN URL configured in your PayPal account?

The message from PayPal indicates IPN messages to the configured IPN URL are failing. If you haven’t configured any of your old PayPal buttons with a notification URL, then they’re probably not what’s causing the problem.

Yes, to confirm the IPN URL within s2member and PayPal are exactly the same.

I had a look at the IPN History and the two failures were triggered by 2 payments received for other services outside of s2member.

I do not have any advanced variables filled in for these older buttons, but s2member is still being notified. I wonder if I need an advanced variable that could overide the notification from being sent to s2member? If so what would it be?

s2member is in another WordPress install, in a separate directory, but on the same domain, if that means anything to you. But I also just installed the eShop plugin for selling downloadable PDF’s. I forsee that I might have a IPN failure there as well.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Kim, then what you could do is have your IPN URL be something else in your PayPal account, whatever your other service needs it to be, and let s2Member set the right URL for itself on each transaction. Please read the documentation under these:

[hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Options -› PayPal® IPN Integration -> More info[/hilite]
[hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Options -› PayPal® PDT/Auto-Return Integration -> More info[/hilite]

I hope that helps. :)

Thanks for the info. So if s2member can handle its end of things with the PDT and since I do not require an IPN for my standard Buy Now buttons or for eShop, can I safely turn off the IPN at Paypal? Will s2member still be able to do its job without it?

Yes. The one you enter in PayPal becomes the default, but the s2Member transactions will set their own as explained in those sections I pointed you to.

Okay. Just to be clear, this is what I’m going to do.

I am going to turn OFF the IPN at PayPal since I do not need an IPN for my other PayPal buttons.

And by doing so, s2member transactions will still function using the PDT.

Sorry to be going a bit back and forth here, but I am new to all this and not really a code junkie.

I’m not sure if turning IPN off will make the IPN set by s2Member to stop working too, though. You can try it, but as a test, don’t go live without making sure that it works properly.