USPS Error

[DrByte]

I am also having an issue. We had no problem with this at all until a few days ago. Now, nothing that I can do is working with USPS.

The most important part of that sentence is "we had no problem at all until a few days ago".
.. which begs the question: what happened a few days ago?

Did you change something?

Did you alter your Zen Cart site somehow?

I can tell you that Zen Cart does NOT mysteriously change itself.

So ... something happened.

And if it wasn't "you", then who?
Maybe your hosting company? Have you asked? Did they change something in their firewall? Maybe something in PHP? Maybe someone else on your same server got hacked and your hosting company silently implemented a bunch of changes to tighten things up, not realizing it's affecting others without notice.

Or ... were you hacked? Did someone make unauthorized changes to the files in your Zen Cart site? Have you checked that all your files are present and accounted for, and none have been altered without your knowledge? Ref: http://www.zen-cart.com/wiki/index.p...ing_From_Hacks

I am seriously ready to start looking into other shopping cart solutions as this has completely taken our store down.

I remind you: Zen Cart itself didn't suddenly just decide to refuse to work. Something caused it, and your job is now to find out what, and fix it, and prevent it from happening again. Changing software won't help anything if the real problem is a server security issue that needs fixing, or a hosting issue that can be fixed by the hosting company.

https://dragonherbarium.com/extras/curltester.php

The curltester.php script has revealed that it's not a general communications problem. So I suspect it's something wrong with unexpected changes made to your Zen Cart files.

I suspect your site is encountering numerous errors, some of which you can't see because they're being silently recorded in logs (so that hackers can't abuse the info that could otherwise be revealed in such error messages).
Two places to look are:
- your site's /logs/ folder ... as per http://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?124-blank-page
- your server's control panel, in the Apache Error Log area

[CygnusFTK]

Well, I am the only one AUTHORIZED to make changes but that doesn't mean that I am the only one who does. I have made no changes other than to get rid of Authorize.net as a payment module. I am not sure how that would have affected the USPS shipping module, however.

We actually did just start noticing some other errors, as well. The scariest is the 500 Internal Server Error that just started happening in check out. That was going to be the next issue that I am going to dig my teeth into but I guess these two are probably related.

Your last link was not relevant to this discussion, I don't think. I am not getting a blank page.

I am wondering. I think that the person I took this project over from started to upgrade but never finished it. I wonder if there is a versioning disconnect between the files and the database and if that could be causing an issue. Thoughts on that?

Guh. What a mess. Inherited projects...

[DrByte]

We actually did just start noticing some other errors, as well. The scariest is the 500 Internal Server Error that just started happening in check out. That was going to be the next issue that I am going to dig my teeth into but I guess these two are probably related.

Yes, to some degree they probably are. The Apache error log will give you the explanation of the "500" error.

Your last link was not relevant to this discussion, I don't think. I am not getting a blank page.

Perhaps not a blank page, but the article is more about learning to use the files in the /logs/ folder to discover ongoing PHP errors being triggered by your site. It's not only about blank pages, but blank (or partially-blank) pages are the most common entry point to that discussion.

I am wondering. I think that the person I took this project over from started to upgrade but never finished it. I wonder if there is a versioning disconnect between the files and the database and if that could be causing an issue. Thoughts on that?

Perhaps, but in what way does that intersect with this "sudden" usps problem?

I do agree that completing an upgrade is usually beneficial. But you probably want to fix the checkout problem first so that sales can resume. Unless the problem is truly related to a started-but-never-finished upgrade done directly on the live site, then I'd focus on fixing the "sudden" problem first.