COWOA (for ZC v1.5.x)

[picandnix]

Um...I think maybe I didn't make myself clear. I DON'T want the person logged off. I want them to be able to stay logged in until they've been able to download their product.

Hello again
would you not simply set the configuration to False? Have you tried that yet?

[DivaVocals]

Um...I think maybe I didn't make myself clear. I DON'T want the person logged off. I want them to be able to stay logged in until they've been able to download their product.

What's happening is, they're receiving their confirmation e-mail, and trying to log in to get the books...and getting an error message. One poor fellow tried for 3 days to log in, before finally giving up and contacting my client. By that time, he was understandably spitting mad and demanding a refund. And he's not the only one; she's contacted me several times because customers tried to download their books immediately upon receiving their e-mails, but were already being blocked from the site.

How can I set things up so that people DON'T get booted off, until after they've had a chance to download their books?

Ummm you were clear.. did you even LOOK at the setting I referred to??? Do you see what the "true" setting means.. do you understand what the "false" setting means..

Hello again
would you not simply set the configuration to False? Have you tried that yet?

EXACTLY!!!!

[DivaVocals]

Um...I think maybe I didn't make myself clear. I DON'T want the person logged off. I want them to be able to stay logged in until they've been able to download their product.

What's happening is, they're receiving their confirmation e-mail, and trying to log in to get the books...and getting an error message. One poor fellow tried for 3 days to log in, before finally giving up and contacting my client. By that time, he was understandably spitting mad and demanding a refund. And he's not the only one; she's contacted me several times because customers tried to download their books immediately upon receiving their e-mails, but were already being blocked from the site.

How can I set things up so that people DON'T get booted off, until after they've had a chance to download their books?

and BTW.. the confirmation e-mail should provide them instructions/means to get in to get their downloads.. If that's NOT happening it would help if you provided the error message..

[Scully]

I have tried setting it to True and to False. It doesn't seem to have made a big difference.

Please remember that this seems to be an intermittent problem. Many customers have used the COWOA without incident. But when it does happen, here's what happens:

The e-mail is sent, giving the message:

Thanks for shopping with us today!
The following are the details of your order.

Order Number: 4155
Date Ordered: Friday 25 October, 2013
Click here to check the status of your order

When the customer clicks on the link, the page comes up showing the books that were ordered. When he clicks on the books, he gets this error message:

Whoops! Your session has expired.
Are you a Registered Customer?

If you were placing an order, please login and your shopping cart will be restored. You may then go back to the checkout and complete your purchase.

If had completed an order and wish to review it, or had a download and wish to retrieve it, please login and go to your My Account page to view your order.

Are you a Guest Customer?

If you were placing an order, your shopping cart will not be restored and you must start over.

If had completed an order and wish to review it, or had a download and wish to retrieve it, you must go back to your Order Status E-Mail and click the link to review your order again.

Clicking on the Order Status E-Mail link just does the same thing, over and over and over.

Sometimes this happens within minutes of finalizing the purchase, so that the customer is already locked out by the time they get their e-mail confirmation and try to purchase their books. What I want to do is change that time limit, so that they can download what they paid for.

[Scully]

Does anyone have any suggestions? The same thing happened again today, and the site owner is so frustrated that she's just about to ditch Zen Cart completely. I'd hate to see that happen, because I think it's a good shopping cart...but I have to admit that this is really getting frustrating.

[DivaVocals]

Honestly the problem seems unique to this store.. it is difficult to troubleshoot an issue that has not been reported before.. we would be guessing at best, and I don't have a good guess as to why sessions are expiring for your guest customers.. the easy solution for the moment is to turn off guest account features. Then if it was my client, I would setup a test/dev store to test and troubleshoot.. you need to see what these failed orders have in common in order to develop a pattern to get to the reason for the issue. You need to try and see if you can re-create the recurrence..

Does anyone have any suggestions? The same thing happened again today, and the site owner is so frustrated that she's just about to ditch Zen Cart completely. I'd hate to see that happen, because I think it's a good shopping cart...but I have to admit that this is really getting frustrating.

[Scully]

The only common occurrence seems to be that...well...there really is no common occurrence. Most of the time it works, sometimes it doesn't. But when it doesn't, it's always for the same customers. Those who have used the COWOA without issues before, continue to do so without problems.

I used to do beta-testing, in a previous life, because if there was a bug somewhere in the program, I could bank money on being able to stumble across it. Looks like the curse hasn't lifted yet. LOL

A friend suggested that maybe I could adjust settings on the server itself, to keep sessions from timing out so quickly? I was thinking, at the time, about the idiotic 15-minute limit that forces me to constantly log back into the zencart admin site. But it occurred to me that maybe the same solution could apply here?

My client really wants the COWOA left active, because a lot of customers just don't want to register an account, so she loses sales when they turn around and leave again. Sales have definitely picked up for her since I installed the COWOA on her site. But if it needs to be deactivated, is there a way to turn it off without having to uninstall everything?

[picandnix]

You can simply set it to false in admin (configuration).

p.s I was beginning to wonder if it's a server issue too.

[Scully]

Problem is, I don't have a clue how to modify the server.

[DivaVocals]

The only common occurrence seems to be that...well...there really is no common occurrence. Most of the time it works, sometimes it doesn't. But when it doesn't, it's always for the same customers. Those who have used the COWOA without issues before, continue to do so without problems.

I used to do beta-testing, in a previous life, because if there was a bug somewhere in the program, I could bank money on being able to stumble across it. Looks like the curse hasn't lifted yet. LOL

Right.. so now you know where the pattern lies. Make a duplicate of the site, and start running some test sales to compare and contrast what is happening.. Login using the accounts that do not work, login using the accounts that do.. Then try creating sales with both perm and guest accounts.. Bottomline is you need to fully re-create what is occurring so you can SEE the issue in action.. Doing that I am POSITIVE you are going to discover that the issue is related to something unique to your store or host.. Not sounding like a "pure" COWOA issue. COWOA just appears to be illuminating the issue instead..

My client really wants the COWOA left active, because a lot of customers just don't want to register an account, so she loses sales when they turn around and leave again. Sales have definitely picked up for her since I installed the COWOA on her site. But if it needs to be deactivated, is there a way to turn it off without having to uninstall everything?

You can simply set it to false in admin (configuration).

Exactly!

p.s I was beginning to wonder if it's a server issue too.

A friend suggested that maybe I could adjust settings on the server itself, to keep sessions from timing out so quickly? I was thinking, at the time, about the idiotic 15-minute limit that forces me to constantly log back into the zencart admin site. But it occurred to me that maybe the same solution could apply here?

Problem is, I don't have a clue how to modify the server.

And this is probably a question best directed to your webhost.. or create a new thread to inquire.. Though the session functions for guest accounts that are used by COWOA are using the default session functions in Zen Cart. (which has NOTHING to do with the admin 15 minute inactivity limit) However, before you start throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks, I think that you really do need to do some testing as I suggested to see if you can replicate the problem on your own and see it in action..