Anyone else have random PayPal issues?

First -- AWESOME plugin. I don't think this is directly related to Joomdle at all, but I'm hoping you folks will have seen the behavior and can help me. I help with a site that has used Joomdle successfully for years. We register quite a few students each month using the PayPal integration. Recently we have started having just a few problems where the system sends the user to PayPal, but when they get to PayPal, the screen won't load. It is like the site is throwing the information and PayPal isn't catching it.
Two users can try at the same time, and one will get through and the other won't. Once someone loses the connection, just re-trying won't solve it. It will happen over and over to them, usually until they clear the cache. Sometimes they have to move to a different computer. Mobile phones don't seem to be affected, so that works around the problems for some.
I'd really like to get this sorted out so we can stop it happening, but I have no clue where to even begin to look. I'd appreciate any help you can give me.

Hi Lisa,

Your suspicion is correct - this issue will not be related to Joomdle as Joomdle does not know about Paypal or any other payment method. Joomdle will interact with your chosen shopping cart (Hikashop, VM, etc) and that cart will manage the payment options and processing. Once a confirmed order is placed, Joomdle will be called into action.

As a regular business user of Paypal for my 'real' business, I receive 10-15 orders per day and have not seen such as issue with Paypal. I use a very old version of VM to connect with Paypal. Personally, the first question I would ask, is what has changed? Something must have changed along the way somewhere - either on your server or with Paypal.

I guess the payment plugin we are using is from Moodle, then? I just wish I could track it down. I'm tracking backward from student reports of issues over the last about 2 months. It seems like our other PayPal plugin may even be having an issue. No one reported it, but I looked through the records and started noticing more uncompleted transactions starting almost a year ago and seeming to increase in frequency. It's only a guess that it is the same thing, though, as those users generally don't contact me. The students do, though, and that's where I thought maybe someone else on Joomdle might have seen it.

So. That rules THAT out. PayPal says nothing changed, says it is our site not sending the data. But it is the same routine that DOES send the data for the same people when they retry after clearing the cache. So it is inconsistent.

I've talked to the hosting company, but they're even more clueless than I am. (Grin) It seems like the script should either be working or not. But failing maybe 1 out of 5 times? We'll be going to SSL in a couple of months, but I'm not expecting that to "fix" it. (Make it worse, probably...)

Thanks for the info, though. That helps to rule out the Moodle component. (Rule out Moodle. Rule out PayPal. The hosting company says the server didn't change... gah! I'm definitely missing something.)

Hi again,

Confused by ... "Rule out Moodle. Rule out PayPal. The hosting company says the server didn't change."
- I would say yes it is not likely to be Paypal otherwise many would report it
- Not likely to be Joomdle because it does not talk to Paypal

It could be related to the Paypal plugin you are using in Moodle (assuming you are using the Moodle paypal plugin). Or the Joomla plugin if you are using a Joomla shopping cart. It also could be network related, cache, session timeouts, etc.

..........

Perhaps not a fix but an alternative which may remove the problem, give you more flexibility and offer you additional benefits.

Most people do not use the Moodle paypal option when integrated with Joomla. Instead they install one of the Joomla shopping carts such as VM, Hikashop, etc. The benefits are:
- You can use any of the shopping carts payment gateways (too many to mention) including Paypal various options
- Selling other products with or without Moodle courses such as supplementary or related books, etc.
- Using the numerous shopping cart extensions / plugins such as reporting, analytics, invoicing, purchase history, data integration, etc.
- Using Joomla (not Joomdle), content management solutions to integrate with the shopping cart

There are other solutions such as Payplans, which provides membership / subscription options integrated with Moodle. For example having course discussion groups that are available to students with memberships.

That said, if the problem is network related the above may still have problems.

That is a really interesting idea. I haven't tried integrating with a shopping cart. We use Document Seller -- makes the entire download process very easy. But I think VM has something similar. I've done a Hikashop integration on another site. Can't say I was thrilled with it. My only VM experience was that it seemed overwhelming.
Still -- being able to sell the things together and have the option of adding subscription based discussion groups in the future is a VERY powerful idea.
I'll look into it. We have a major update planned for December, so I could definitely plug things in then. I'm sure the customers would like a more streamlined experience.
And they would be SO grateful if I could get this resolved.
(Oh, and don't be too confused...I was just sharing my frustrations at not knowing where to look.)

I do wonder if it isn't network related, though. Maybe I'll do more research on the hosting company and see if anyone else there is having a similar experience.
Thanks again for talking through this with me. It helps.