rabbitseffort Posted November 13, 2005 Share Posted November 13, 2005 All I need to know on this one is which page should i have paypal redirect to once payment is made? I want to be sure my site logs the order and redirecting to the right page is a simple step in the battle, sorry If this is answered elsewhere, but I have looked and didn't find it. I currently have it going back to success, but I have to assume that isn't right due to the fact that my orders aren't logged on the site. Thanks in advance! "I must admit that I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings." ---Margaret Mead--- "The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer -- they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer. --Ken Kesey" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted November 13, 2005 Share Posted November 13, 2005 I run them back to checkout_process.php Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted November 13, 2005 Share Posted November 13, 2005 how do you guys set this up? is it through paypal or the oscommerce files? could you explain to me what you do to get them returned to their website after their purchase? (aside from installing paypal IPN, i already have held orders... and while it works, it can be kinda time consuming) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted November 13, 2005 Share Posted November 13, 2005 My Experience with osCommerce and Paypal: When I first opened my shop, everything looked fine until Paypal started sending me e-mail confirmations of payments and my store wasn't sending any records of sales. Credit card purchases were working fine. Two e-mails came for each order;one from my shop and the other from the credit card payment processor. In my Admin panel, the credit card orders were listed but not the Paypal ones. I could see a new customer with the same name as the Paypal payment, but how would I know what to ship? Here's the problem: When a customer is directed to Paypal by the store to complete a purchase, the dollar amount is sent with them. However, if that customer surfs away after making the payment instead of going back to your store, Paypal never sends the data back to your store. Payment has been made. The customer's cart remains full and they expect the products to be shipped. They surfed away because they thought they were finished and maybe they wanted to check their account balance or something. If this has happened and you have lost orders already, you can fix it without too much trouble. The trick is to do it without looking like a fly-by-night operation. You don't want your new customers to know you're mucking around with their information. Here's what I'd suggest. 1)Install a simple little Contribution called Master Password. Find it in the Contributions section. 2)Get your customer's e-mail address from the Admin Panel in the customers section. 3)Log in as if you were them by using their e-mail and the master password. 4)Change the e-mail address to your own. This is important. 5)Complete the order using the option to pay by check/moneyorder. 6)Change the e-mail address back to theirs. Don't forget to do this! Now, you should see the order in the admin panel, the customer's account is left just as it should be for next time they log in and they haven't received a strange e-mail about paying for their order by check (strange because they knew they paid by Paypal). Now, how do we keep it from ever happening again? Probably the best solution is to install one of several Contributions with names like Paypal IPN and Order Logging. These Contributions will make your store record the order before the customer leaves. If you are good at installing Contributions or just enjoy it, take a good look at these options. I don't know much about them since I opted for a different solution. I enabled a feature on my Paypal account called Auto-Return. It can be found in the section called Website Payments. Go to My Account, Profile and look under the Selling Preferences column at Website Payment Preferences (as of 6-16-2005). Turn auto-return on. Use the return URL of https://www.xxxxxxxx.com/checkout_process.php or https://www.xxxxxxxxx.com/checkout_success.php. Adjust the URL as needed. I use checkout_process.php but others have suggested checkout_success.php works for them. The options below on that page I leave turned off except to allow payments from customers who don't yet have Paypal accounts. Most customers who choose to pay by Paypal will already have accounts, but this option may help reduce cart abandonment slightly. Now, when a customer completes the transaction at Paypal, they will see a button that directs them to return to your site and a message saying it will happen in 5 seconds anyway. For almost all customers, this is enough to get them back to your store and, thus, complete the order. Every once in a while, one gets away and you just have to follow the steps outlined above. Why didn't I just install one of those Contributions? It only took a couple of minutes to change my Paypal account and it has worked for all but two Paypal orders through a very busy spring shipping season. I have also heard of plenty of troubles with the Paypal IPN Contribution. I'm sure this is just new shop owners having difficulty installing and configuring a Contribution but, in my opinion, the simplicity and effectiveness of auto-return outweigh the possible benefits of the Contributions in this case. Don't get me wrong. I believe the Contributions are the Lifeblood of osCommerce. I have dozens installed in my store. Sometimes simpler is just better. Best of luck with your on-line business and I hope this has been helpful to you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted November 13, 2005 Share Posted November 13, 2005 nice post brushwood :) sounds like many of my problems.. after emailing the first 2 or 3 customers i had with my new site, i thought "wow, this sounds like a little kid emailing people!" so i installed held orders contribution and just compared the name/email address to paypal. however, i noticed this isn't always smart. sometimes people order under their kids name, but paypal is in their name = 100% different sometimes... and if you got a lot of orders totalling the same amount.... well, that sucks. so in installed master password (probably the most useful contributions i installed)! but if you end up with a bunch of paypal orders at once and none of them finish checkout... then it becomes time consuming. so there is no way to TRULY avoid this? what do you suggest we state on checkout_process.php? per paypal's requirements, they require you to inform the buyer of what just happened, etc. etc. i leave nothing to the imagination for them.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted November 13, 2005 Share Posted November 13, 2005 There's no page for that file. It bumps on to success. I just have something about Your Order Has Been Placed Yada Yada. I remember rteading that they're pretty specific, but don't sweat it. As long as the landing page (checkout_success) is clear, you're covered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted November 13, 2005 Share Posted November 13, 2005 thanks :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted November 13, 2005 Share Posted November 13, 2005 Thank you so much for that post - just what I needed to sort out the problem with my very first order ! Luna Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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