Paypal/Manual payment featuring not working properly

Hello!

We seem to be having a major problem with the Payment features in our OJS installation (http://submission.scielo.br/).

If the PayPal option is active, the author is unable to go to the PayPal link that the journal provided. Upon submission, after the author clicks on the link that is supposed to redirect you to PayPal, it takes a long time and then finally it gives a “server not found” error. If you refresh the page or try again, eventually it works. The strange thing is that if you simply copy and paste the PayPal URL in another browser window, the link opens with no problem – which makes me think that the problem relies on the bridge between OJS and PayPal.

Another issue lays with the manual payment feature. When selected, the author is unable to conclude the submission. On the final step (confirmation), the author is prompted to send an e-mail to the journal claiming that the payment was done. However, after this step, the author cannot finish the submission and the only options available are: a) send another e-mail notification b) go back to the previous steps or c) cancel.

On the journal side of things, since the paper is not submitted yet, there is no way the journal can manually approve the payment for it.

After this screen:

It goes back to this screen:

And then we are stuck in this endless loop.

Is this a known issue or are we doing anything wrong?

Hi @alexxxmendonca,

Which version of OJS are you using?

Have you configured PayPal for production use, i.e. set the PayPal URL to https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr in PayPal Settings?

And have you enabled IPN for your PayPal account?

Cheers,
Michael

We are using version 2.4.5.0.

I don’t know about the other questions because we only manage the system.
I’m gonna have to ask the journal about it. We don’t have access to the
journal’s PayPal account.

Regardless of that, shouldn’t the Manual Payment feature be working
properly?

Hi @alexxxmendonca,

Re: the manual payment option, you should see an additional checkbox where the author can confirm that they have sent payment to the journal. Once this checkbox is selected, you can then click on the “Finish Submission” button to complete the submission (please see attached screenshot)

Can you please try another submission test, but this time upload an actual submission file in Step 2 so that your summary of documents in Step 5 includes the submission file.

Cheers,
Michael

This is what appears to me:

I already clicked on the “PAY NOW” button, I already sent the e-mail notification and then it returned to this page.

I don’t see that “Already Paid” topic that appears in your screen.

The journal replied to me and they told me that yes, they have enabled the IPN for their PayPal account.

This is the URL that was generated from the PayPal button: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=QQ3URGEG584QL

Hi @alexxxmendonca,

Has the journal made any local modifications to the step 5 template (in the OJS source)?

For example, I notice that the waiver text below the payment description and the waiver checkbox is also missing.

Re: PayPal, can you please ask your server admin if there are any errors in your web server log? Does your web server have php with curl installed?

Cheers,
Michael

Hi @mfelczak, thanks for the help so far!

Has the journal made any local modifications to the step 5 template (in the OJS source)?

Not that I am aware of. Is there any way you could verify this for us? Or tell me how I can do it myself?

For example, I notice that the waiver text below the payment description and the waiver checkbox is also missing.

I noticed that too. But I don’t think we’ve changed the templated specially since we’ve never used the payments plugin before.

Re: PayPal, can you please ask your server admin if there are any errors in your web server log? Does your web server have php with curl installed?

I talked to my server admin and he found no errors in the server log. As for your second question, the answer is yes, our server has php with curl.

Would you like to try submitting a paper yourself? Maybe it can help you understand the problem…

The journal with the PayPal problem is this one: http://submission.scielo.br/index.php/esa/user/register
The journal with the Manual payment problem is our test journal: http://submission.scielo.br/index.php/demo/user/register

Hi @alexxxmendonca,

Check the following file on your server and compare it against the default version in OJS 2.4.5:
templates/author/submit/step5.tpl

For the journal PayPal account, can you please confirm that it’s a Merchant account, not a personal account?

Cheers,
Michael

Hi @mfelczak!

We compared the files and they look exactly the same. No changes have been made on the template file.

For the journal PayPal account, can you please confirm that it’s a Merchant account, not a personal account?

Merchant account.

Cheers,
Alex

Hi Alex,

Thanks for the confirmation.

Have you tried to enable the debug settings in your config.inc.php to see if there are any errors being reported in your browser or server logs?

Try setting display_errors = On

Cheers,
Michael

Hi Michael,

We enabled it temporarily just to see if there were any error messages but there were none. We disabled it now.

Hi Alex,

Can you please try the following as the PayPal URL in your Payments settings:

Cheers,
Michael

It worked!

Could this be the problem? The extra parameters in the URL? ?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=QQ3URGEG584QL

We still have a problem with the Manual Payment, though.

Cheers,
Alex

Hi Alex,

Thanks for the confirmation.

For the manual payment, can you please enter some text into the waiver policy text box in Payment settings.

This looks to be a bug whereby the Already Paid checkbox is not being displayed if the waiver text is missing.

Cheers,
Michael

Bingo! That’s really it!

I’ve added a “This is a test” in the English interface.

So this is a bug and until is fixed the journal must enter a waiver policy otherwise it won’t work?

Cheers
Alex

Hi Alex,

Yes, that’s correct.

Or you can apply the following patch which fixes the issue.

Cheers,
Michael

Hi Michael,

Thank you very much for all your help in solving this case, it was very helpful.

Cheers,
Alex