Specific post/page email not sending

We’re restricting specific post/pages with s2Member. Recently, user’s stopped receiving an email from s2Member when they purchase access for a restricted post/page.

Under s2Member > general options > email settings I see the following notification:

Conflict warning: You have another theme or plugin installed that is preventing s2Member from controlling this aspect of your installation. When the pluggable function wp_new_user_notification() is handled by another plugin, it’s not possible for s2Member to allow customization of New User Emails. This is NOT a major issue. In fact, in some cases, it might be desirable. That being said, if you DO want to use s2Member’s customization of New User Emails, you will need to deactivate one plugin at a time until this conflict warning goes away.

The problem we’re having is for specific post/page sales (NOT new registrations), but I’m wondering if the issues are connected. We have not recently changed any plugins that effect email, but all along we have been using these plugins that involve emails:

1. New User Email Setup (http://epicalex.com/new-user-email-set-up/)
2. SMTP (http://hel.io/wordpress/smtp/)
3. WP Better Emails (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-better-emails/)

#2 and #3 have a test function which allows me to send a test email successfully. So from what I can see, these plugins are behaving normally.

EDIT: Here the most recent entries from the log files.

paypal-rtn.log:

PHP v5.2.17 :: WordPress® v3.4.1 :: s2Member® v120703 :: s2Member® Pro v120703
Memory 29.99 MB :: Real Memory 30.25 MB :: Peak Memory 30.08 MB :: Real Peak Memory 30.25 MB
www.streetofwalls.com/?s2member_paypal_return=1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:12.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/12.0
array (
  'subscr_gateway' => 'paypal',
  's2member_log' => 
  array (
    0 => 'No Return-Data. Customer must wait for Email Confirmation.',
    1 => 'Redirecting Customer to the Home Page. Customer must wait for Email Confirmation.',
    2 => 'Note. This can sometimes happen when/if you are offering a free Trial Period. There are times when a Payment Gateway will NOT supply s2Member with any data immediately after checkout. When/if this happens, s2Member must process the transaction via IPN only ( i.e. behind-the-scene ), and the Customer must wait for Email Confirmation in these cases.',
    3 => 'array (
  \'s2member_paypal_return\' => \'1\',
)',
  ),
)

paypal-api.log:

PHP v5.2.17 :: WordPress® v3.4.1 :: s2Member® v120703 :: s2Member® Pro v120703
Memory 33.47 MB :: Real Memory 34.00 MB :: Peak Memory 33.52 MB :: Real Peak Memory 34.00 MB
www.streetofwalls.com/membership-options/?XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:13.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/13.0.1
-------- Input vars: ( Wed Jul 11, 2012 4:28:02 pm UTC ) --------
array (
  'METHOD' => 'DoExpressCheckoutPayment',
  'TOKEN' => 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX',
  'PAYERID' => 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX',
  'PAYMENTREQUEST_0_PAYMENTACTION' => 'Sale',
  'PAYMENTREQUEST_0_DESC' => 'COUPON 100% off. ( Now: $0.01 ) ~ ORIGINALLY: Purchase Investment Banking Behavioral Guide:',
  'PAYMENTREQUEST_0_CUSTOM' => 'www.streetofwalls.com|839',
  'PAYMENTREQUEST_0_INVNUM' => '4ffda96f48001~184.161.55.14',
  'PAYMENTREQUEST_0_CURRENCYCODE' => 'USD',
  'PAYMENTREQUEST_0_ITEMAMT' => '0.01',
  'PAYMENTREQUEST_0_TAXAMT' => '0.00',
  'PAYMENTREQUEST_0_AMT' => '0.01',
  'L_PAYMENTREQUEST_0_QTY0' => '1',
  'L_PAYMENTREQUEST_0_NAME0' => 'COUPON 100% off. ( Now: $0.01 ) ~ ORIGINALLY: Purchase Investment Banking Behavioral Guide:',
  'L_PAYMENTREQUEST_0_NUMBER0' => 'sp:1117:4380',
  'L_PAYMENTREQUEST_0_AMT0' => '0.01',
  'VERSION' => '71.0',
  'USER' => 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX_api1.gmail.com',
  'PWD' => 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX',
  'SIGNATURE' => 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX',
)
-------- Output string/vars: ( Wed Jul 11, 2012 4:28:05 pm UTC ) --------
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

array (
  'TOKEN' => 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX',
  'SUCCESSPAGEREDIRECTREQUESTED' => 'false',
  'TIMESTAMP' => '2012-07-11T16:28:05Z',
  'CORRELATIONID' => 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX',
  'ACK' => 'Success',
  'VERSION' => '71.0',
  'BUILD' => '3242673',
  'INSURANCEOPTIONSELECTED' => 'false',
  'SHIPPINGOPTIONISDEFAULT' => 'false',
  'PAYMENTINFO_0_TRANSACTIONID' => '59U52951VS895311B',
  'PAYMENTINFO_0_TRANSACTIONTYPE' => 'cart',
  'PAYMENTINFO_0_PAYMENTTYPE' => 'instant',
  'PAYMENTINFO_0_ORDERTIME' => '2012-07-11T16:28:04Z',
  'PAYMENTINFO_0_AMT' => '0.01',
  'PAYMENTINFO_0_FEEAMT' => '0.01',
  'PAYMENTINFO_0_TAXAMT' => '0.00',
  'PAYMENTINFO_0_CURRENCYCODE' => 'USD',
  'PAYMENTINFO_0_PAYMENTSTATUS' => 'Completed',
  'PAYMENTINFO_0_PENDINGREASON' => 'None',
  'PAYMENTINFO_0_REASONCODE' => 'None',
  'PAYMENTINFO_0_PROTECTIONELIGIBILITY' => 'Ineligible',
  'PAYMENTINFO_0_PROTECTIONELIGIBILITYTYPE' => 'None',
  'PAYMENTINFO_0_SECUREMERCHANTACCOUNTID' => 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX',
  'PAYMENTINFO_0_ERRORCODE' => '0',
  'PAYMENTINFO_0_ACK' => 'Success',
)

• This topic was modified 4 years, 6 months ago by  Brett Adcock. Reason: Added log info

Hi Brett.

Well, there may be a conflict with s2Member, since s2Member also lets you edit the New User email. [hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› General Options -› Email Configuration -> New User[/hilite]

This article may help: Knowledge Base » Troubleshooting Email Delivery Problems

Also, did you check if this problem is related to the one you posted about in your other thread? http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/custom-capabilities-stopped-working-recently/

Hi Christián,

I tried deactivating the New User Email plugin and the result was the same (no specific post/page email). I wonder, do the logs I posted tell us anything useful? I’m not entirely sure what to look for, but I thought this part might tell us something:

0 => 'No Return-Data. Customer must wait for Email Confirmation.',
1 => 'Redirecting Customer to the Home Page. Customer must wait for Email Confirmation.',
2 => 'Note. This can sometimes happen when/if you are offering a free Trial Period. There are times when a Payment Gateway will NOT supply s2Member with any data immediately after checkout. When/if this happens, s2Member must process the transaction via IPN only ( i.e. behind-the-scene ), and the Customer must wait for Email Confirmation in these cases.',

Also, the other post you asked about is not connected to this issue.

Thanks,
Emerson

For what it’s worth, my (uninformed) impression of the logs suggest that there’s a problem between s2Member and the PayPal API. If this is true, it might explain why this problem suddenly started happening without any changes in our site setup… I noticed that PayPal’s site changed a few weeks back. I wonder if this also coincided with changes in their API.

Has anyone else reported this problem? If my theory is correct, I’d image this problem to be pretty wide-spread, and not just isolated to my installation.

Here’s the ipn log after my most recent test, just in case it’s useful:

PHP v5.2.17 :: WordPress® v3.4.1 :: s2Member® v120703 :: s2Member® Pro v120703
Memory 34.20 MB :: Real Memory 34.50 MB :: Peak Memory 34.23 MB :: Real Peak Memory 34.50 MB
www.streetofwalls.com/?s2member_paypal_notify=1&s2member_paypal_proxy=paypal&s2member_paypal_proxy_use=pro-emails&s2member_paypal_proxy_verification=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxd&s2member_paypal_proxy_return_url=
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
array (
  's2member_log' => 
  array (
    0 => 'Unable to verify $_POST vars. This is most likely related to an invalid configuration of s2Member, or a problem with server compatibility.',
    1 => 'If you\'re absolutely SURE that your configuration is valid, you may want to run some tests on your server, just to be sure $_POST variables are populated, and that your server is able to connect/communicate with your Payment Gateway over an HTTPS connection.',
    2 => 's2Member uses the `WP_Http` class for remote connections; which will try to use `cURL` first, and then fall back on the `FOPEN` method when `cURL` is not available. On a Windows® server, you may have to disable your `cURL` extension; and instead, set `allow_url_fopen = yes` in your php.ini file. The `cURL` extension (usually) does NOT support SSL connections on a Windows® server.',
    3 => 'Please see this thread: `http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/ideal-server-configuration-for-s2member/` for details regarding the ideal server configuration for s2Member.',
    4 => 'array (
  \'s2member_paypal_notify\' => \'1\',
  \'s2member_paypal_proxy\' => \'paypal\',
  \'s2member_paypal_proxy_use\' => \'pro-emails\',
  \'s2member_paypal_proxy_verification\' => \'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx8c7d\',
  \'s2member_paypal_proxy_return_url\' => \'\',
)',
  ),
  's2member_paypal_proxy' => 'paypal',
  's2member_paypal_proxy_use' => 'pro-emails',
  's2member_paypal_proxy_verification' => 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx698c7d',
)

One curious thing is that the previous log entry DOESN’T show these warnings, but the email logs don’t show a specific post/page email getting sent to any users whatsoever. Only new user registration emails.

This just in!
This post describes the exact same problem I’m having:
http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/specific-post-page-email-link-not-being-sent/

Although (unlike the OP) I don’t have line breaks and bold-faced type in my shortcode, I am generating my shortcodes programmatically with a template, so it’s possible that the s2member shortcode has evolved and the shortcode in my template needs to be updated.

The OP sounded like a dickhead (why gripe at the support team that’s helping you??), and never responded to confirm the solution you and Jason offered, but it sounded promising.

Here’s the line that builds the shortcode in my template files:
$shortcode = ‘[s2Member-Pro-PayPal-Form sp="1" ids="'.$guide_ID.'" exp="'.$time.'" desc="Purchase '.get_the_title($guide_ID).':" ps="paypal" lc="" cc="USD" dg="0" ns="1"'.
' custom="'.$domain.'|'.$current_user_id.'" '.
'ra="'.$price.'" accept="paypal,visa,mastercard,amex,discover,maestro,solo" accept_via_paypal="paypal" coupon="" accept_coupons="1" default_country_code="" captcha="0" /]‘;

Do you see anything problematic?

Hi Brett,

That code looks fine to me and should work. Have you tested it?

It’s the code that’s currently live on our site. It seems to work fine, with the exception of the confirmation email (with the access link) not getting sent.

Did you have a look at the logs? I’m really hoping you or Christián can take a look because I suspect there’s useful information there, but I’m not entirely sure what to look for.

Thanks!

Hi Brett,

Looking at your logs there are two things I’d recommend:

1) Please download this Server Check Tool, upload the PHP file to your WordPress directory, and then load the URL to the file in your browser. It will run a bunch of tests to determine if there’s anything amiss on the server-side that might cause problems receiving $_POST data from PayPal.

2) Did you install the Email Log plugin as recommended in Knowledge Base » Troubleshooting Email Delivery Problems? The email log plugin will show you a log of the emails that WordPress sent, so you can check if the Specific Post/Page email is being sent and just not received.

Hi Raam,

I have followed the email troubleshooting tutorial and installed the Email Log plugin. It shows other emails being send (like new registrations) but NOT specific post/page emails.

I ran the php script that you provided and all tests were “passed”.

I just noticed that the second and third pages were clipped off in my previous post. They were all “[PASS]”. I’ll look into the two notices at the top, but they don’t seem relevant to my current issue.

Do you have any other suggestions for why this might be happening?

I raised the PHP memory limit to 64MB, just to be safe. Although it’s still showing 32MB in the server check script, I know it’s at 64MB because I have a phpinfo() in the same directory, which shows the limit to be 64MB.

Just to keep you up to date, I’ve checked in google apps (who hosts my site’s mail), and I also ran a test using my host’s server (instead of gmail) by disabling the SMTP plugin. In both cases, the email is NOT getting sent. I see this again in the ipn log:

PHP v5.2.17 :: WordPress® v3.4.1 :: s2Member® v120703 :: s2Member® Pro v120703
Memory 34.20 MB :: Real Memory 34.50 MB :: Peak Memory 34.23 MB :: Real Peak Memory 34.50 MB
www.streetofwalls.com/?s2member_paypal_notify=1&s2member_paypal_proxy=paypal&s2member_paypal_proxy_use=pro-emails&s2member_paypal_proxy_verification=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx98c7d&s2member_paypal_proxy_return_url=
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
array (
  's2member_log' => 
  array (
    0 => 'Unable to verify $_POST vars. This is most likely related to an invalid configuration of s2Member, or a problem with server compatibility.',
    1 => 'If you\'re absolutely SURE that your configuration is valid, you may want to run some tests on your server, just to be sure $_POST variables are populated, and that your server is able to connect/communicate with your Payment Gateway over an HTTPS connection.',
    2 => 's2Member uses the `WP_Http` class for remote connections; which will try to use `cURL` first, and then fall back on the `FOPEN` method when `cURL` is not available. On a Windows® server, you may have to disable your `cURL` extension; and instead, set `allow_url_fopen = yes` in your php.ini file. The `cURL` extension (usually) does NOT support SSL connections on a Windows® server.',
    3 => 'Please see this thread: `http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/ideal-server-configuration-for-s2member/` for details regarding the ideal server configuration for s2Member.',
    4 => 'array (
  \'s2member_paypal_notify\' => \'1\',
  \'s2member_paypal_proxy\' => \'paypal\',
  \'s2member_paypal_proxy_use\' => \'pro-emails\',
  \'s2member_paypal_proxy_verification\' => \'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx698c7d\',
  \'s2member_paypal_proxy_return_url\' => \'\',
)',
  ),
  's2member_paypal_proxy' => 'paypal',
  's2member_paypal_proxy_use' => 'pro-emails',
  's2member_paypal_proxy_verification' => 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx698c7d',
)

It seems pretty clear that the break-down is occurring between s2member and PayPal. Can you confirm this much? Is this a known bug? I’m not sure what, if any, additional info I can provide to move this along, but I’m getting a little bit desperate because my site is selling digital content to non-members. Without this email, the customers can’t access their purchase. Even if you don’t have a solution/fix yet, I would really appreciate any insight you can provide on this situation.

Could you please send us your information via the Private Contact Form so we can login and diagnose this further?

I haven’t heard from you guys in a few days, after submitting the info via the private contact… but the email notifications JUST started working. Coincidence? I doubt it. Can you catch me up on what’s going on?

Hi Brett.

I wasn’t following your ticket, but now that Raam is away for some days I took a look. I don’t think that Raam or Jason saw your email yet, if either one had, they’d have answered here with their findings.

I’m glad that notifications started working again, that’d indicate that transactions are now happening without an error like the one you showed in the log entry.

So it’s working fine now or do you still need some help with this? If you do, let me know and I’ll go look for the email you sent and see what I can find. :)

Hi Christián,
Thanks for getting back to me…

As for our specific post/page email problem…
We HAVE suddenly started receiving emails. Which is WEIRD because they weren’t happening for at least a month, and I didn’t do anything. The emails started working properly RIGHT after I submitted the private contact details, which is why I assumed that Raam or you had done something to fix it. Since you didn’t, I’m even MORE confused about what’s going on.

I do still see one of those error messages at the bottom of the log file. It’s hard to know what it’s connected to because the problem/error entries don’t include what time they happen. So it’s hard to go back and figure out what should have happened at that time.

=e

Yeah, I see what you mean.

Well, the emails seem to have been failing because transactions were failing, so it never got to the point where the email got sent. Or were transactions happening normally and the only thing off were emails?

In any case, keep logging enabled and let me know if you see something odd happen again, please. And check all the log files, not just the IPN one, since you may find more clues in the other ones too.

Thanks. :)

Or were transactions happening normally and the only thing off were emails?

This is exactly what was happening. The users were able to access the purchased pages/posts normally too. The only missing piece was the confirmation email (both to the client and the notification to the admin).

Did you see the other two logs included above? Were those instructive at all?

Brett,

I didn’t login or do anything on your server. In fact, I looked for your Private Contact Message but it looks like we haven’t received it. Did you submit it using a different name/email?

The “Unable to verify $_POST vars.” message in your log file shouldn’t be something to worry about IF you’ve passed all the checks with the Server Check Tool (as your screenshot earlier shows you have). So, from the logs you posted, there doesn’t appear to be anything wrong.

The emails magically working again would confirm my suspicion that this problem is related to your server sending emails. There are lots of different reasons emails from your server may be caught by outgoing servers and fail to be received on the other end. (Spam filters, servers with blacklists, network connectivity/routing issues, etc.) And it may not be all emails, but only emails with specific headers/words/addresses/etc.

In situations where a rare issue is preventing emails from going through, the problem is usually “suddenly resolved” by the email server admins somewhere in the background between you and the recipient server fixing the issue.

All I can suggest is to continue monitoring the logs and if you have the email issue again to let us know.