suddenly my orders fail to post in orders admin (hosted on GoDaddy)

"(7) couldn't connect to host" means that when your webserver tried to connect to the PayPal server to start the transaction, it couldn't find PayPal's server.
That's something your hosting company has to fix, because it's a problem with the server configuration. You'll find thousands of references to that generic error message if you search for it in Google ... and it always means the server can't find or connect to the website it's trying to reach.

Direct your hosting company to this URL for their testing: http:// your_site.com/extras/curltester.php?paypal=1
If it doesn't come back with the first line saying "COMMUNICATIONS TEST OKAY" then the server can't connect, and the rest of the info on the page will be what your host needs in order to fix the problem.

My website is doing the same thing I had a customer place an order last night 07-15-2011 at 12:02am, had no idea there was an order since I did not received the order confirmation in my email or the creat account email.,until she sent me email asking about her order?

I use Authorize.Net as my credit card processor.

The last order that I was notified on was July12, 2011. What ever happened is not just for Paypal Accounts.

DrByte,
I commend you for your ongoing assistance with my Zen Cart orders issue. Your last input led to my finding someone at my host that knew what they were doing and found the missing link as to why it failed, and repaired it. We'll see when it propgates in 24-hours.

Meanwhile, again your input is very much appreciated. Nice to have you here in the forum. :yes:

Glad I was able to offer some insight that it was not just a paypal problem, hopefully it gets fixed soon:smile:

I'm just trying to figure out how zencart works and everyone on here has been helpful, have never done a website before and it was created for me by someone else, just trying to figure out what to do and how everything works, I keep thinking I"m way in over my head but slowly things are making a little sense.

valerie, does your order show up inside the Zen Cart admin?

If it does, then this is not the same problem. You should check your email settings and make sure emails are being sent and received properly.

addlink, could you post the solution here in case others need it? Your propagation comment makes me think there is a DNS error, can you elaborate what your host is doing to fix it?

DrByte,
Well, this issue remains uresolved. Whatever changes my hosting company made they thought would fix it, did not. I still get back error (7) from PayPal saying it could not connect to the host.
Yet my Hosting support ran the test you suggested, (http:// your_site.com/extras/curltester.php?paypal=1) and got back (and emailed me the result_ it returned "Communications Test Okay"

Yet, the problem persists. When I place an order, it goes nowhere in ZenCart, just loops over and over to the checkout tab. For each attempt, I get a new email from PayPal with the error (7) cannot connect to host.

My hosting company insists everything is correct on their end and that the problem is a scripting error within ZenCart.

So mysterious is that I have made no addons or changes to Zen Cart, yet my store just stopped working after June 11, 2011. I am beside myself trying to troubleshoot this. :blink:

Alright. Riddle me this. The Zen Cart software is something YOU have sole control over. There is NO connection between the Zen Cart developers and your site. The software is something that you put on your server, and you control it.
And, you said that it's worked just fine up until June 11. Which means that the Zen Cart software that you put on your server prior to that date works just fine.
So, unless you or someone at your hosting company, or a hacker, has changed Zen Cart files on your server, there's nothing wrong with Zen Cart.
So, assuming you AND your hosting company AND hackers didn't make any changes to the Zen Cart software on or around June 11, then the problem does not lie in the Zen Cart software.
So, thus the wildcard then is the server upon which your Zen Cart software sits. That server is what's responsible for running the software and brokering all communications inbound and outbound for your site. About 90% of the time someone reports a "suddenly broken" problem it points directly back to a change made to the servers by the hosting company, whether they admit it or not. About 5-10% of the time it's something the storeowner did and has forgotten about or won't connect the dots to. And occasionally, (although more often with older versions) it might be hacker activity that's interrupting normal server or software operation.

There is NOTHING I can do from here to fix your server's ability to talk to external services, whether it be PayPal or anyone else. That's entirely in the control of your hosting company. Error message "(7) cannot connect to host" always points to a server communication problem. I've already explained that in technical detail.

And without a URL for your site all I can do is point you back to the people in control of server communications: your hosting company. The Zen Cart software is working just fine on tens of thousands of websites who do NOT have "(7) cannot connect to host" errors.

Who's your hosting company?

DrByte,
Wow. You are a trip. I'm surprised you haven't totally dismissed me as 'a total idiot' by now, thanks for not doing so.

Everything you wrote makes total sense.

My hosting company is wild west domains.

During my last conversation with support yesterday, they found a suspicious folder in my ZC folder, a period and a bunch of strange numbers and characters. There was nothing in that folder. They suspect my site may have been compromised by someone.

Under their advice, I deleted this suspicious folder, then changed my host account login password, made sure there is only one FTP user, ME, and changed the FTP password. So, given all that, I'm still not sure of the best course of action. I have all these 'CUSTOM' folders created in ZC per install instructions on previous setup. I have backed up my ZC database and stored it on my PC. Also, in reviewing my live site files and folders, I found no "modification dates" suspicious, everything is the same date of the original install date of 10-18-2010. If compromised, wouldn't those "mod dates" show up different? Should I,

A) just install the latest version of ZC versions 1.3.9h to my server from within my server, bite the bullet and rework all these 'CUSTOM' FILES, completely rebuilding my store from scratch, IMPORT my DB backup to it, or

B) Follow your guide '3 Easy steps to upgrade Zen Cart" ?

You suggested earlier I switch my payment module from Pay Pal IPN to EC, API. The problem there is I have more than one ZC store going to the same PayPal account, from different hosts, different stores. So, I need to stick with IPN, I guess as I'm told with EC you can have ONLY one seperate account per each ZC store. I'm told by other Zen Carters that IPN still works, and should be okay into the future. Comments?

Finally, what are 'changelogs' and would they show any suspicious "changes" made to my live store? Are these in the live store somewhere I can see them?

Hopefully, my delimma and your responses may assist others in better understanding what course of action to take in event they experience similar "orders not showing" issues.

Thank you again from the bottom of my heart for your due dilligence in attempting to help me best resolve this issue.
:clap:

DrByte,
BTW, you said "without a URL to my site" you can't do anything. Well, my ZC store at issue is http://www.alienworlds.com/store
if that helps at all.
Cheers.

DrByte,
Disregard my questions above about 'changelogs' I found it on the forum. I also found steps for upgrading, combined with your suggestions I'm just going to go ahead and do the upgrade steps and switch my Pay Pal payment module back to my previous IPN settings when it was working.

I will keep you and others informed as to the outcome.
Thanks again!

While not the Dr's spokesperson, I would say that the most frustrating part of this forum is dealing with those who do not read answers and decide to go at it other than suggested or pointed to in a wiki/tutorial/FAQ.

The Dr is trying to give sage advice while dealing with misconceptions you have and are apparently unwilling to give up even when he debunks them.

Please re-read each of the Dr's post without any skimming or rushing. If you have to, do the '50s thing and diagram the sentence. The Dr has pointed out that:

1. PayPal Express can manage as many accounts as you can throw at it. I have five sites going to one account.
2. The problem is you server and will probably not be fixed by an upgrade of Zen Cart.
3. An upgrade of PayPal to Express will probably help.
4. An upgrade ANYTIME to the latest version of Zen Cart is DEFINITELY recommended and instructions are located in the downloaded zip and the Tutorials/FAQ.
   Not mentioned by the Dr but added for general information:

• NEVER use any files to install or upgrade Zen Cart that do not come from zen-cart.com or sourceforge.com. Doing so WILL cause problems sooner or later.
  Now, get to reading and Google any terms you're not familiar with.
  :P

Using this as a prefix to every Google search will get your information from the forum versus the outside world.> site:https://www.zen-cart.comBe sure to follow it with a space as in "site:https://www.zen-cart.com PayPal Express multiple stores". Just that one search will get you over 7,000 responses:shocking:
The first listing on the page gives the yes answer and it's from 2008!:shocking:
So you see why we sometimes feel people are beating a dead horse when they ask the PayPal question.
I'm not saying take everything we say as gospel, but I would think the man that made PayPal work with Zen Cart just might know the answers.:yes:
Hang in there!

"Wild West Domains" is GoDaddy. And that in itself explains the hosting headaches you're having. And could very well explain why things "suddenly" broke without warning. Their server management seems to be so out of control I doubt you could ever get a straight answer about any changes made to any server by anyone. I could be wrong, but the stars do seem to line up once in awhile.

Try going to Admin->Configuration->My Store->CURL Proxy Status ... set it to False.
It should already be set to False, but GoDaddy loves to do things differently.

DrByte:

And without a URL for your site all I can do is point you back to the people in control of server communications: your hosting company. The Zen Cart software is working just fine on tens of thousands of websites who do NOT have "(7) cannot connect to host" errors.

Who's your hosting company?

Probably not relevent, but over the weekend I had a few customers contact me about the ozpost shipping module which had suddenly stopped working. After a mad panic to see what had gone wrong I obtained the following data from the server

This request could not be forwarded to the origin server or to any parent
caches. The most likely cause for this error is that the cache administrator
does not allow this cache to make direct connections to origin servers, and
all configured parent caches are currently unreachable.

Your cache administrator is [email protected].

I also discovered that not only couldn't the affected stores reach the ozpost servers, they also couldn't reach PayPal or even the zen-cart server (for update notifications).

It was like this for about 3 days, and was only fixed yesterday.

As I say, probably not relevant in this case, but I mention it just in-case, and to also show that although it is easy to jump to conclusions into thinking zen-cart is the problem, it isn't the 'smart' thing to do ... More often than not such problems have nothing to do with ZenCart, but really are host related, even though nothing else seems amiss.

Cheers
Rod

DBLTOE,
Thank you for your input, but the statement "dealing with misconceptions you have and are apparently unwilling to give up even when he debunks them." is an understandable yet unfair assertion on your part. I am applying DrBytes pearls of wisdom as best I can under the circumstances.

I just rec'd an email from another zenner who told me DryByte told them there was a problem and it was being addressed. (?) However, they are apparently using v1.3.8, so maybe that applied only to that version. I have, as you suggest, very carefully read everything posted here. I am doing my best to apply it. The frustration is in getting it fixed as my hosting company insists it is ZenCart.

Rodg: Thanks for that input. Not sure what to do with it however.

DrByte: well hell, info about GoDaddy is not encouraging. :no:
Okay, RE: Curl Proxy Status was set to "true" changed it to "false" and got "Does your host require that you use a proxy for cURL communication?" I have no idea about that question, but left it "false" anyway per your suggestion. I'll let you know if this changes anything in my "orders" issue. Thanks again everyone!

EVERYONE: FANTASTIC. ISSSUE RESOLVED!

DrByte's suggestion on changing the CURL Proxy Status seems to have resolved my issues. I am using PayPal Express Checkout.
After all this, what a simple fix! It was not the host server, it was a setting in Zen Cart that changed everything (that affected the server apparently). At least it appears working for now. Hope it holds.

I placed a download order, got through PayPal, returned to the store with the download link, got email notice from the store on the order and paypal payment notice, everything is back where it was before June 12, 2011.

One change. Amazing.
Thank you DrByte, you are the man! Thanks to everyone else as well on all your fine input.
:clap:

addlink:

DrByte's suggestion on changing the CURL Proxy Status seems to have resolved my issues.
After all this, what a simple fix! It was not the host server, it was a setting in Zen Cart that changed everything (that affected the server apparently).
Actually, there is a very long ugly history with that. GoDaddy used to require a CURL Proxy be used for all CURL communications. So Zen Cart had to add that switch to turn on the CURL proxy.
Then GoDaddy changed their servers to no longer require the proxy.
But, GoDaddy left that setting turned on in their 1-click-install of Zen Cart, which evidently you used.

So, actually yes your problem really was your host server, exacerbated by a cludge that was added to Zen Cart to make it work with their systems, further complicated by their removal of all support for that cludge, thus resulting in your shop being broken.

One more reason why they're hated so much.

The Dr beat me too it

Very cool. You guys know your stuff.
Very interesting observation about GoDaddy (ugh):yuck:
Yes, I did install Zen Cart from within my hosting accounts "applications" back in October.

I sincerely hope this will help others who may have the same "broken store" issues involving GoDaddy.

The forum rocks, and saved the day for my store.
Thank you, thank you.
:D