Tips and Tricks HQ Forum » Forum: WP eStore F.A.Q.

Tips and Tricks HQ Forum » Forum: WP eStore F.A.Q. - Recent Topics http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/forum/wp-estore-faq Support Forum for Tips and Tricks HQ Products en-US Thu, 09 Sep 2010 12:26:37 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 <![CDATA[Search]]> q http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/search.php amin007 on "How to display buttons or shopping cart in the sidebar widget" http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/how-to-display-buttons-or-shopping-cart-in-the-sidebar-widget#post-7450 Tue, 07 Sep 2010 02:21:01 +0000 amin007 7450@http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/ WP eStore comes with many shortcodes that you can use in a Text Widget. Simply add a "Text Widget" to your sidebar from the widgets menu and place the shortcode in it. Some of the shortcodes may NOT WORK when used in a text widget but not to worry as eStore has corresponding functions for every shortcode that you can use. All the available shortcodes and functions are documented here: <a href="http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/ecommerce/wp-estore-shortcodes-and-functions-reference-460" rel="nofollow">http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/ecommerce/wp-estore-shortcodes-and-functions-reference-460</a> If you are calling the PHP function from the theme's template file (sidebar.php, header.php, footer.php etc) then you are fine but if you need to use the functions from the widget then the text widget option won't work as the text widget cannot execute PHP code. Fortunately, there is a nice workaround: 1. Download and activate the Executable PHP code plugin if you don't have it already (any other PHP executable plugin will work too): <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/php-code-widget/" rel="nofollow">http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/php-code-widget/</a> This plugin lets you call php functions from the widgets (it's similar to the Text widget but it allows you execute PHP code too). 2. Go to the widgets menu and add a 'PHP Code' widget to the sidebar (where you want to display the 'Add to Cart' buttons or shopping cart). Now you can enter HTML and PHP code here to display whatever you want to show. For example, entering the following line will display the shopping cart: <code><?php echo eStore_shopping_cart_fancy1(); ?></code> You can also place custom text/message above or below this PHP function call. amin007 on "Why Configure Every Product Separately When Used with NextGen Gallery" http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/why-configure-every-product-separately-when-used-with-nextgen-gallery#post-2345 Thu, 04 Mar 2010 23:24:35 +0000 amin007 2345@http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/ The simple answer is security. If you are planning to deliver a digital copy of the same image (the same file) that you are displaying in NextGen gallery then ask yourself the following question? "Why would anyone buy the digital image when they can simply copy it from the browser?" The image you display in NextGen gallery can easily be copied which is why you want to display a lower resolution and watermarked version of the actual image in NextGen gallery and configure eStore to deliver the proper image (stored somewhere else) after the purchase. This is what I do... 1) Resize the images I display using the NextGen Gallery to a smaller size. 2) Apply watermark to the image using the NextGen Gallery "Effect" option. This prevents stealing of images from the preview you display on the NextGen Gallery. I store the real high res and watermark free version on a separate location and use them as my deliverable. Once the purchase is complete the encrypted download link for the original image (1920×1200 resolution and no watermark) is emailed to the buyer. Now, this means more work for you as you have to configure every product but it's more secure. Most of the time your digital images will have similar details and variation so you can just create one product then use the "Copy Product Details" feature to copy and create a new product in one click then change the name and the URL of the image to be delivered. amin007 on "Images Appear Too Big/Small/Stretched on Thesis Theme" http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/images-appear-too-bigsmallstretched-on-thesis-theme#post-3193 Wed, 07 Apr 2010 06:51:25 +0000 amin007 3193@http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/ If the button and shopping cart images appear too Big or Small on the Thesis Theme then read the following: The Thesis theme specifies the width of the input field in it's CSS which makes the images to have a specific size and causes this issue. You can override this CSS by adding the following to the custom CSS file that doesn't specify the width so the button image size is the actual size of the image: <pre><code>.custom .format_text input { border-width:0.067em; padding:0.2em; width: auto; }</code></pre> So all you have to do is click on the "Custom File Editor" menu from your "Thesis Options" menu and paste the above piece of CSS code. amin007 on "Can I Put Multiple Images and Videos In the Fancy Display?" http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/can-i-put-multiple-images-and-videos-in-the-fancy-display#post-7241 Mon, 30 Aug 2010 01:48:20 +0000 amin007 7241@http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/ Fancy displays are a neat and compact way to display a product in your products/store page. Fancy displays are very compact so you will never have enough space to put all your product info/images/videos in it. It's not the purpose of a fancy display to replace your sales page. You should have a separate post or page (your sales page for a product) where you place the full details of this product along with all the images and videos for it. You have complete freedom in designing this page. When you are done simply use the URL of this page in the "Product Page URL" field of the product and the fancy display will automatically link the product name to this page. Now when your visitors are browsing your store page if they are interested in one product they can click on the name and it takes them to the sales page that has the full details of the product. For example, you can checkout my "Products" page that has a list of all the products displayed in fancy display and you can click on the product name or "more info" link to get more details for that product: <a href="http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/products" rel="nofollow">http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/products</a> amin007 on "Download Directory Protection" http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/download-directory-protection#post-606 Tue, 08 Dec 2009 00:34:10 +0000 amin007 606@http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/ I get a lot of questions around protecting the downloads directory so just wanted to clarify one point... the "downloads" directory inside the plugin folder exists as a placeholder for your downloadable files but it doesn't mean that you have to put your downloadable files inside that directory. In most situation the downloadable files for your digital product will be in a different location. For example, the downloads for my premium plugins come from a URL like the following: <a href="http://www.my-secret-server.com/my-downloads/xic800xac/YYicI89C/iu8vxQ/98ciodiuO/eStore/my-plugin-name.zip" rel="nofollow">http://www.my-secret-server.com/my-downloads/xic800xac/YYicI89C/iu8vxQ/98ciodiuO/eStore/my-plugin-name.zip</a> I bet you didn't have any clue about this when you downloaded the plugin after purchase, did you? :) All you saw is a link similar to the following: <a href="http://www.my-domain-name.com/wp-content/plugins/plugin-dir-name/download.php?file=GTR89MDVwgy8rYmwCOP98Jckdi98CDI" rel="nofollow">http://www.my-domain-name.com/wp-content/plugins/plugin-dir-name/download.php?file=GTR89MDVwgy8rYmwCOP98Jckdi98CDI</a> When you clicked on it you got the download. So, you can see that my downloads are well protected even without putting any other methods of fancy password protection simply because no one but the plugin itself knows where the file is truely located. With that said, the download directory comes with a .htaccess, .htpasswd and an empty "index.php" file by default so someone just won't be able to browse the "downloads" directory. If you create sub-directories inside the downloads directory for your different products then you should copy these files and put it inside every sub-directory so these sub-directories are not browsable either. wpCommerce on "Paypal says "Your shopping cart is empty"" http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/paypal-says-your-shopping-cart-is-empty#post-7131 Thu, 26 Aug 2010 01:19:27 +0000 wpCommerce 7131@http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/ If you are getting the "Your shopping cart is empty" error while checking out through PayPal then it could be for one of the following reasons: 1. The PHP Session on your server is not working correctly. 2. Your site URL and WordPress blog URL are not specified the same in the General settings of WordPress. Now let's have a quick explanation of the two issues and how to identify them: 1. PHP Session Issue If you are having a PHP session issue on your site then the plugin won't be able to keep the item information in the session variable (even if you see the items are being added). So anyone clicking on the payment button and checking out through PayPal will get the error as the shopping cart could not submit any item information to the gateway. How to identify if you are having this issue? a) Add a product to the shopping cart. b) Check to make sure that the item appears in the cart. c) Now, navigate away from this page and go to another post or page. d) Navigate back to the page where you have the shopping cart displaying the items in your cart. e) Can you still see the items in the shopping cart? If you can't then it means the item information got lost which indicates that you may have a PHP session not working related issue. The shopping cart stores the item information in the PHP session so if your session is working correctly then the items shouldn't have disappeared. How to Solve this issue? Simply contacting your hosting provider should be good enough to get your PHP session issue fixed. Here is another post that might be of some help with this: <a href="http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/php-session-not-working-correctly" rel="nofollow">http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/php-session-not-working-correctly</a> You can easily point out this issue by navigating away from the page (after adding a product in the cart) and again coming back to the same page. If the item is still not in the cart means you have the PHP session issue. You need to contact you hosting provider to fix this. 2. Incorrect server setup Say, you have specified the following in the "General Settings" of your WordPress dashboard: Site URL: <a href="http://www.example.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.example.com</a> WordPress blog URL: <a href="http://example.com" rel="nofollow">http://example.com</a> Notice that one is missing the "www"? That's the problem. Both of them should use the same value. So you can either use "http://example.com" in both fields or use "http://www.example.com" in both fields (Just don't mix them). The following URL will explain this in full details as to why this is an issue: <a href="http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/incorrect-server-setup-related-to-url-rewriting-cause-and-effect" rel="nofollow">http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/incorrect-server-setup-related-to-url-rewriting-cause-and-effect</a> amin007 on "Selling Items for $0.0 (Giving products for Free)" http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/selling-items-for-00-giving-product-for-free#post-7101 Wed, 25 Aug 2010 01:48:01 +0000 amin007 7101@http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/ If you are trying to sell products for $0.0 essentially giving the product for free then there are two options for you: Option 1) Use the manual checkout so the customer can bypass the payment gateway (for example, PayPal). Payment gateways won't let a $0 transaction to go through so you can instruct your customers to use the "Manual Checkout" option. Make sure to check the "Send Product Download Links in the Email" option in the manual checkout settings menu so the customers can get the link as soon as they submit the checkout form. Option 2) Use a squeeze page form. This is how most people build their email list. The following URL explains how you can use a squeeze page form to give products for free: <a href="http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/ecommerce/how-to-make-a-squeeze-page-using-the-wordpress-estore-plugin-126" rel="nofollow">http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/ecommerce/how-to-make-a-squeeze-page-using-the-wordpress-estore-plugin-126</a> amin007 on "What to do if the Debug file is empty" http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/what-to-do-if-the-debug-file-is-empty#post-2099 Sat, 20 Feb 2010 04:42:40 +0000 amin007 2099@http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/ If you are trying to troubleshoot a problem by running the plugin with the debug enabled option but not getting any output in the debug log file (ipn_handle_debug.log) then follow the steps outlined in this post. Not sure what "Enable Debug" mean? Read this post first that explains what enable debug option does: <a href="http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/how-and-when-to-enable-debug-and-what-does-it-do" rel="nofollow">http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/how-and-when-to-enable-debug-and-what-does-it-do</a> Debug File Empty Troubleshooting Checklist Step 1: First, check to make sure that you have turned debug on from the settings menu of the WP eStore plugin. If the "Enable Debug" checkbox is not checked then the plugin won't write to the log file. If step 1 is not the issue then move to step 2. Step 2: Check that the "Use Automatic Post Payment Processing" checkbox is checked in the settings menu of the eStore plugin. If this option is not checked then the plugin won't tell PayPal to send the IPN and no post payment processing will happen, hence no debug output. If this is not the issue then continue to step 3. Stpe 3: Now lets check to make sure that the plugin is not facing any permission issue when trying to write to this file. Access the "paypal.php" file that is stored in this plugin's directory (wp-cart-for-digital-product) directly from a browser. The URL should be something similar to the following: <a href="http://www.yoursite.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-cart-for-digital-products/paypal.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.yoursite.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-cart-for-digital-products/paypal.php</a> change "yoursite.com" to the domain name of your site. When you enter that URL in the browsers address bar you should see the following line: <code>Debug is enabled. Check the ipn_handle_debug.log file for debug output.</code> Accessing the "paypal.php" file directly will trigger the plugin to write something in the debug file so lets check the "ipn_handle_debug.log" file again. If the file is still blank then it would mean that the debug log file "ipn_handle_debug.log" doesn't have write permission. Give it write permission. On the other hand if you see some content in the debug log file then we do not have any file permission issue... move to step 4. Step 4: Now the options get narrowed down to... a) something is blocking the PayPal IPN. b) Your paypal profile is not set correctly to send the IPN. If you have a paypal sandbox account then we can rule out option a) by doing another simple test. Log into your paypal sandbox account and go to the IPN simulator test tools page at the following URL: <a href="https://developer.paypal.com/cgi-bin/devscr?cmd=_ipn-link-session" rel="nofollow">https://developer.paypal.com/cgi-bin/devscr?cmd=_ipn-link-session</a> Enter the URL from step 3 (URL of the paypal.php file) in the "IPN handler URL" field and select "Web Accept" from the transaction type drop down menu. Now hit send IPN button and see if you get any failure. If you receive an error message saying the "IPN sending failed" then that could mean that something on your server is blocking paypal's IPN (maybe your servers firewall or a plugin is blocking it). If the IPN was sent successfully then check the debug log file explained in step 3 and make sure that there is a new entry in the file for the IPN that was just sent to the plugin. Step 5: At this point there is only one possible cause left. You may have specified to not receive IPN in your PayPal profile. Please check the "Instant Payment Notification Preferences" settings in your PayPal profile to make sure you have IPN enabled in your account. See the following post to make sure your PayPal profile settings are correct too: <a href="http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/wp-estore-and-paypal-profile-settings" rel="nofollow">http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/wp-estore-and-paypal-profile-settings</a> amin007 on "WP eStore and PayPal Profile Settings" http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/wp-estore-and-paypal-profile-settings#post-608 Tue, 08 Dec 2009 03:05:12 +0000 amin007 608@http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/ The WP eStore is designed to work with the default values in your PayPal profile. So you should not need to make any changes in your PayPal profile to make the plugin work. If you have made changes to your profile then that's fine too but please make sure the following settings under "Website Payment Preferences" are at their default values in your PayPal Profile: Auto return: Off Block Non-encrypted Website Payment: Off PayPal Account Optional: On Return URL: Empty (You can specify this in the WP eStore's settings) Payment Data Transfer: Off Instant Payment Notification (IPN): On (you can enter any URL you like, eStore will override the value at checkout time) You will most likely be selling more products down the path from multiple domains and you don't want to tie these settings to one site. Keeping these settings at their default values allows greater design and operational flexibility across all your sites because the plugin/script you are using on a particular site can then override the settings as needed. If you are getting emails from PayPal about IPNs being failed then read the following post: <a href="http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/ipn-sent-to-wp-estore-are-failing" rel="nofollow">http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/ipn-sent-to-wp-estore-are-failing</a> If you have played around with your PayPal settings before and accidentally turned off IPN (Instant Payment Notification) in your account then this link should help you: <a href="https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_admin_IPNSetup" rel="nofollow">https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_admin_IPNSetup</a> amin007 on "Different Types of Payment Buttons and Their behaviour" http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/different-types-of-payment-buttons-and-their-behaviour#post-6816 Sun, 15 Aug 2010 02:07:07 +0000 amin007 6816@http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/ Some people get confused with the button behavior and button text or image. The button behavior refers to how the button acts when you click on it. The button's text or image refers to how the button looks... this has nothing to do with how the button behaves. There are three types of payment buttons that you can create when using the WP eStore plugin: 1. Add to cart (the item is added to the cart... useful for multiple item checkout) 2. Buy Now (takes directly to the payment page... useful for single item fast checkout) 3. Subscription (similar to buy now button but used for creating recurring/subscription payment) With that said, the following section should clarify the mystery of button behavior and button look & feel: Question: I have placed an "Add to Cart" type button but I have customized the text of the button to say the words "Buy Now". When I click on this button what will it do? Answer: It will add the item to the cart because the button type is "Add to Cart". How the button looks has got nothing to with how the button behaves. The ability to use an image for a button is there so you can customize how your button for a particular product looks. It does not dictate how the button behaves.