HELP! All Orders Get Stuck

I am running a digital scrapbooking site so I am selling files (zipped). After payment through paypal customers are supposed to be redirected back to their account page where they can access download links to the files they just bought...

The problem is that after someone is taken back to their order to get their download links are not there. They are getting stuck in the database and the store isn't releasing the links until I go in and tell it to using the view stuck orders menu. This has been happening to 1 in every 6-7 orders since I set up my site 3 months ago but since yesteryday it is happening to EVERY single paid order.

This is my site
https://www.peppermintcreative.com

If ANYONE can offer some insight it would be greatly appreciated.

What version of Zen Cart are you running?

unix or windows server?

What version php?

What version MySQL?

What version of Zen Cart are you running? 1.2.7 - database patch level 1.2.7

unix or windows server? unix

What version php? 4.4.2 (Zend: 1.3.0)

What version MySQL? MySQL 4.0.27-standard

what changes have you made?
what change has your host made?

Do you mean upon installation or in the last 2 days. All day yesterday orders were getting stuck - at about 4am my site went dead and all I got was an error messsage when I went to the URL. I contacted my host and they said that mySQL had died (no idea what that means) and then they said they fixed it and the site was back up...however orders are still all stuck...

Plus this was happening (although less frequently) since day one....

I contacted other site owners using zen cart who are also running site very similar to mine (selling same types of files etc) and they have no experience with this problem. It makes me think I did somehting wrong at set up?

one of the issues is paypal sends the ipn ONCE. if there is an oopps anywhere in the connection you dont get it.

Sounds like there was a server issue yesterday
try going into paypal.com and refunding 1 penny on an order and see if that dosnt fix it

I understand what you mean by the oops factor. I refunded someone's purchase - the entire purchase but the next 3 orders still got stuck. Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant? Otherwise, it didn't work.

AGH!

by refunding 1 cent of the order you can trigger the IPN to respond

Alright I tried it, I refunded a penny - no dice. The order stayed stuck.

manually navigate to your ipn page see what you get

I don't seem to have a record of any payments made after the 13th of this month even though there were many and not all of them got stuck..only some.

It's the last two days that everything is stuck!

I mean go to
https://www.yourstore.com/ipn_main_handler.php
see what you see

I see nothing. I get a white page - completely blank.

Let me preface this next message by saying that I am not very technically inclined, I had someone install zen-cart for me, and he is not willing to look into this issue for me, so I am so sorry if I'm asking questions that have seemingly simple answers...

At this point the site is running and everything is still getting stuck. Paypal contacted me, 4 times in the last few days with this email:

Please check your server that handles PayPal Instant Payment Notifications (IPN). IPNs sent to the following URL(s) are failing:

http://peppermintcreative.com/ipn_main_handler.php

If you do not recognize this URL, you may be using a service provider that is using IPN on your behalf. Please contact your service provider with the above information. If this problem continues, IPNs may be disabled for your account.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this issue.

So I sent it to my host who don't seem to know what I am talking about.
They said:

Do you have any setup instructions for this portion of your site? We have fairly limited doccumentation on file for paypal scripts and the paypaldev docs online are 41 pages of random support requests. I would be happy to look into it for you, but I don't really have any information to go off of, so setup instructions would be extremely helpful. If not, I fear you will have to contact paypal for more information/support since we can't very easily support their software.

Now I don't even know what they want from me...setup instructions? I told them that 4 days ago my site was inaccessable and all I got was an error message. My host told me "my SQL" died...ha said he reset it, the site was then running so that was that. I guess whatever they did screwed something with my orders, and now a different guy from my host company sends me this:

How can you verify that paypal is sending the content back to your page?
Do you have records showing that it has reached the server?

I am not sure what you are referring tp when you say "mysql died".

Did this url load anything in the past or did it always just load a blank page?
When I go to the page it does not produce any errors so I cannot tell what the issue is without more information.

I am scratching my head over here - no one seems to know what is going on!
I have no idea what to do at this point.

What am I supposed to see on the IPN page of my site?

Sounds like this is related to your other post on PayPal where your hosting site is causing the issues ...

Perhaps you can keep all of this in one thread as it is very confusing to people trying to follow the problems ... thanks! :smile:

Sorry for the confusion. I will continue to post in the other thread. Thanks for your help ;)

For the sake of future readers of this thread, this wiki article talks about the configuration settings in detail:
http://www.zen-cart.com/wiki/index.php/Admin_-_Modules_-_Payment#How_Do_I_Set_Up_The_PayPal_Payment_Module.3F