Specific Post/Page Access – broken

Hello,

I have been selling access to specific pages using Paypal Specific Post/Page (Buy Now) Buttons (and access links) for almost a year without any trouble. However, I recently went into my admin to add new pages and buttons and discovered the following problem:

Although I am packaging 2 or 3 pages together, the access link – whether purchased or generated through the customer service link generator – only gives access to ONE protected page (the first i.d.# from the button code, or the “Leading” post/page).

I have upgraded to the latest versions of WP and S2member, and also modified my htaccess file as suggested (to prevent GZIP conflicts), but it still doesn’t work.

Any insights would be greatly appreciated!!

Hi Bianca.

Could you confirm that the page IDs are mentioned there when you do the checkout? Or post the URL to the page where the button is and I’ll take a look.

Do you have logging enabled? I’d like to see the entries related to the transaction with the problem, from all the logs in your s2member-logs folder. [hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Options -› Account Details -› Logging[/hilite]

Did you change something that may have started this problem? Do you remember any installations/updates (plugins/theme) close to the time when you noticed this problem started happening?

Hi Cristián, thanks for the quick response!

The two page IDs do show on the checkout (paypal) page – e.g. “Item number: sp:96,130:168”

(as for the access links i generate –via the customer svc link generator– i don’t know how to check]

I just noticed, however, that in the URL for the landing page (after purchase) only the first ID shows. (is that normal?) Also:

* If i leave the landing page then try to access it again through the menu, i’m locked out (i can only view it by going back via browser).

* Apparently the link expiration function is amiss. I found and opened the confirmation email from our last bundled sale – dated September 8, link set to expire in 1 week. It still gives access to the first page. No access to second page. I think it must have been working when he bought it, though, as I’m not aware of a complaint.

Here’s the URL: http://www.stephengilligan.com/downloads/?page_id=2 (look at button for “Trance Camp 2011 Weeks 1 & 2”)

The only thing i did before i noticed this problem was i installed a plugin called Event Registration. I tested it briefly on this site, then decided to use it in a separate wordpress installation (to avoid conflicts). I recently deactivated it, and have now deleted it. But I do have it running on another wp site/install in its own folder on the same domain (http://www.stephengilligan.com/registration/)…. could this be the culprit?

Yes, i have logging enabled. In my s2member-logs folder i see 2 files – paypal-rtn.log & paypal-ipn.log. How do i find and show you the right entries?

Bianca

The two page IDs do show on the checkout (paypal) page – e.g. “Item number: sp:96,130:168″

Good.

(as for the access links i generate –via the customer svc link generator– i don’t know how to check]

What is “svc”? Do you mean the link generator here [hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Buttons -› Specific Post/Page Access Links[/hilite]?

I just noticed, however, that in the URL for the landing page (after purchase) only the first ID shows. (is that normal?)

I don’t know. I’d think both IDs would be shown if one is… I’d like to see the log entries.

* Apparently the link expiration function is amiss. I found and opened the confirmation email from our last bundled sale – dated September 8, link set to expire in 1 week. It still gives access to the first page. No access to second page. I think it must have been working when he bought it, though, as I’m not aware of a complaint.

I’m not aware of the SP links not working… Were you logged in to your admin account when you tried the link?

The only thing i did before i noticed this problem was i installed a plugin called Event Registration. I tested it briefly on this site, then decided to use it in a separate wordpress installation (to avoid conflicts). I recently deactivated it, and have now deleted it. But I do have it running on another wp site/install in its own folder on the same domain (http://www.stephengilligan.com/registration/)…. could this be the culprit?

I don’t think it is, if you already removed it and still have the problem.

Yes, i have logging enabled. In my s2member-logs folder i see 2 files – paypal-rtn.log & paypal-ipn.log. How do i find and show you the right entries?

You should be able to recognize the entries by the time, for example. But if you have a hard time, then try moving the existing logs out of that folder and do a new test transaction to generate new log files for it.

Hi Cristián,

Yes, I meant the link generator for ‘customer service’ (Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Buttons -› Specific Post/Page Access Links).

Okay, I have the transaction logs, but how do i get them to you without posting them here (they contain private info)? Is there some way to send a private message?

Update – OH NO! someone just purchased access to 2 pages and the link isn’t working (i tried it)! i need to figure this out ASAP! I’ll get the logs for this transaction too…

bianca

YIKES – IT’S WORSE THAN I THOUGHT!!

I’m not aware of the SP links not working… Were you logged in to your admin account when you tried the link?

I am NOT logged in, and yet every supposedly expired link i try (going back to sales made a year ago) – goes straight through to the protected page! And then it denies access to the very same page if I click on its name in the menu, and denies access to the second page (if it was a ‘bundle’). Here’s an example purchase confirmation dated 9/15/11 – check it out:

Thank you for your purchase of ————- 1 & 2.
Your order can be retrieved here:
http://tinyurl.com/6g5x3wt#www.stephengilligan.com
( link expires in 1 week )

• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by  bianca sivan.

Bianca, you can send me the info through the Contact Form. I can get the logs from the FTP and I can take a look at your configuration in WP admin too. s2Member® » Private Contact Form

http://tinyurl.com/6g5x3wt#www.stephengilligan.com
( link expires in 1 week )

The link worked for me. Is that link older than 1 week (i.e. it should not work), or did you just create it?

Ok, thanks. i sent the info through the contact form.

that link above was generated on 9/15/2011 – so it should have stopped working over a year ago!! and ALL my old links are doing this!! what in the world could i have done wrong??

I see, that’s way off then. :P

I got your email. Just logged in to the admin area and generated a link to expire in a few hours. I’ll try it again later today to see if it still lets me in or not. I’ll post an update then.

thanks for checking out the link expiration thing, but the major / urgent problem is that the links are denying access to the second (packaged/bundled) product (in this case a protected page with downloads on it). can you please see what’s causing this?

you’ll see in the logs, we just made 3 of these ‘bundled’ sales in the last 24 hrs – and these customers won’t be able to gain access to half of what they bought!!! specifically – they paid for “Trance Camp 2012 weeks 1 & 2” (these are 2 different pages on my site – “week 1” and “week 2”) but their purchase confirmation link only lets them open “week 1”. they need to be able to open/access “week 2”!!! i have a link on the week1 page (near the bottom) for them to click to go to week2, or they can click on week2 in the menu. this used to work perfectly, but now it sends them to “Store” (my Membership Options page) – as though they haven’t paid.

again, can you PLEASE, PLEASE look at this ASAP, as my client will have a lot of disgruntled paying customers?

thank you so much; i really appreciate your help.

Okay, the link I created still gives me access…

I’m looking at the problem with the link not giving all the access now.

Thank you sooo much!

In the meantime, to avoid problems with your customers that paid for the bundle, generate a new Specific Post/Page access link for the bundled page that they’re not being able to access with the link they got on purchase, and send it to them by email. You can wait until they email you about this problem, or just send it to them before they notice. [hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Buttons -› Specific Post/Page Access Links[/hilite]

thanks for checking out the link expiration thing, but the major / urgent problem is that the links are denying access to the second (packaged/bundled) product (in this case a protected page with downloads on it). can you please see what’s causing this?

I was able to reproduce that with a generated link bundling two protected pages. The landing page can be accessed, but not the other one. I did that same test in my own site and the access worked correctly for the two pages I bundled, so it works in a clean s2Member installation.

I reviewed the logs, but they look okay.

You say you didn’t have this problem before, so I’m suspecting a plugin may be causing this behavior, or you didn’t sell bundled pages before and that’s why you didn’t notice it. It’s also very possible that the continued access after the expiration time is caused by the same thing.

I know you said you didn’t change anything there, but it’s work testing it quick. To test fast, after doing a full backup of your installation, please deactivate all the plugins except s2Member, and test the link again. Can you now access the two pages it should give access to? How about expired links? If they work correctly now, activate the plugins back one by one, testing after each, until the links stop working correctly again.

I’ll wait for your update. :)

Hi again,

We have sold bundled pages in the exact same way since we launched the site a year ago and the double page access links did used to work, so it isn’t a matter of not noticing the issue.

I tried deactivating all the plugins except s2member, then testing the links, and they still didn’t work correctly… so apparently none of my current plugins is causing the problem.

I still wonder if back in July when I installed the plugin “WP Event Registration”, it somehow messed things up in s2member. I deactivated it and deleted it, but could it have left some hidden files behind, or changed the code somewhere or something?

For now, we are generating and sending each customer (who buys a ‘bundle’) an additional access link so he/she can open the second page, but this is time consuming and requires us to be sort of ‘on call’ – which is exactly what we were avoiding by the using the (awesome) s2member plugin… so I really hope I can get it working again soon ):

Blessings,
bianca

We have sold bundled pages in the exact same way since we launched the site a year ago and the double page access links did used to work, so it isn’t a matter of not noticing the issue.

Understood.

I tried deactivating all the plugins except s2member, then testing the links, and they still didn’t work correctly… so apparently none of my current plugins is causing the problem.

Thanks for testing it.

I still wonder if back in July when I installed the plugin “WP Event Registration”, it somehow messed things up in s2member. I deactivated it and deleted it, but could it have left some hidden files behind, or changed the code somewhere or something?

It’s a possibility.

Have you tried re-uploading the s2Member files? It’s worth a shot, in case one of them got corrupt for some reason… Create a backup of your site, make sure you have the Deactivation Safeguards enabled, and then re-upload the s2Member folder via FTP.
[hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› General Options -› Deactivation Safeguards[/hilite]
s2Member® » Framework » Install/Upgrade Instructions

trouble is, the s2member files on my computer are identical to those on the server. i download/replace them often to keep them synced/current (maybe i shouldn’t be doing that? and instead create separate file backups. i do have database backups). or do you mean i could upload ‘fresh’ files from somewhere? no i guess that would be like doing a new installation…

If you upload/download the files often, it’s quite possible that some of the files were corrupted during one of the uploads that you did.

You can download a fresh copy of s2Member from within your s2Member account. Those files have been tested, so unless the files are continuously getting corrupted during an upload to your site, they should be fine.

hi :)

i rarely– if ever– upload files to my s2member site using my FTP client; i only download them every so often to my computer (to have a current backup). i’m pretty sure the only thing i did outside the WP/s2member admin was to modify my htaccess file (as suggested, to prevent “GZIP conflicts”).

if i upload fresh s2member files (via FTP) to my site, will i have to go through and re-enter my data / reconfigure everything? the site is very active right now with customers buying and downloading, and my client is already quite unhappy about the link failure problem (to put it mildly), so it’s a really bad time for me to risk breaking the site even more. maybe you can suggest certain files that are safe to replace, or files that i should avoid replacing?

i’m really a newbie when it comes to development stuff (more experienced on the visual/design side) so please excuse my ignorance!

thanks,
bianca

or do you mean i could upload ‘fresh’ files from somewhere? no i guess that would be like doing a new installation…

Right, I meant uploading the files fresh from the s2Member distribution zip file.

I understand you don’t want to risk a problem with the live site. One thing you can do to test safely would be to do a clean test installation of WP in a subdirectory of your site, add s2Member, create a couple of pages, protect them with the Specific Post restriction, bundle them in a link and try if the access works. If it does, you now know it’s something added to your live site that’s causing the problem. Then you can start adding to the test install, the plugins you have in the live one, one by one, trying a new bundle link after each until it breaks. If you add all the plugins and it still worked, then it may be that one of the files in your live installation got corrupt, it must be different in some way from the originals you just used in the new installation for the tests.

Let me know how it goes. :)

Thanks for the heads up on this thread…
~ and thanks for reporting this important issue.

Update – OH NO! someone just purchased access to 2 pages and the link isn’t working (i tried it)! i need to figure this out ASAP! I’ll get the logs for this transaction too…

This issue has been investigated, and we determined the issue was occurring only on installations attempting to use Specific Post/Page Access Links, and only when the site was configured NOT to use fancy permalinks.

A short term fix for this issue (and always our recommendation), is to configure your WordPress permalink options in this section of your WordPress Dashboard: WordPress -> Settings -> Permalinks.

See also: http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

The absence of any formal permalink structure on your site is causing issues for the current release of s2Member, when it comes to Specific Post/Page Access Links. s2Member’s systematic routine will need to be adjusted to accommodate this scenario, which we have addressed already for the coming maintenance release.

Here is an excerpt from the Changelog (coming soon).

* (s2Member / s2Member Pro) **Bug Fix**. A bug related to s2Member’s `is_site_root()` method, when fancy permalinks are NOT in use; has been corrected for compatibility with the latest version of WordPress.

@bianca sivan

We’ve had your installation of s2Member patched ahead of time, so you won’t have to wait for the next maintenance release to correct this issue. Please let us know if you have any further trouble.

Also, please be sure to log out of your site before testing any access links, and be sure to clear your cookies prior to testing any behavior associated with one or more access links. This will help you to avoid any confusion from the administrative perspective. In other words, you want to see what your customers experience.

Thanks for helping us work through this important issue.

OH MY GOSH – THANK YOU SOOOOOO MUCH FOR FIXING THIS!!!!!!!!

i had a hunch that starting all over with a new install wasn’t going to help me, and i’ve already put so many hours into dealing with this issue (at my client’s expense) that i hesitated to do any more.

A short term fix for this issue (and always our recommendation), is to configure your WordPress permalink options in this section of your WordPress Dashboard: WordPress -> Settings -> Permalinks.

See also: http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

i looked at my WP permalink settings (set to “default”) and at the suggested article above, and i really don’t understand it at all…. which setting should i choose? do i have to choose “custom structure” and learn what that means and how to do it?

blessings,
bianca

which setting should i choose? do i have to choose “custom structure” and learn what that means and how to do it?

You can definitely customize the permalinks, but it seems it won’t be necessary to fix the problem discussed here. He mentions it’s a fix, but he also said he patched your installation so you don’t have to wait for the coming update of s2Member. Check first if you still have the problem but, from what Jason said, it’s solved in your site. :)