Subscriptions on a Beta site

[Mike Gholson]

Hi guys,

After making a duplicate of my production site, I was able to get it upgraded with IPB 5 beta1.  However, I noticed that emails are being sent to members (from the beta site).  Is there a way I can totally disable emails on the beta site?  It turns out that all forums and PM's are reset to a "new" status so the emails are flooding.

Also, does running a copy of my production site also charge users for subscriptions?  I want to know if I will need to disable something else to prevent this.

Thank you!

[Marc]

I would suggest deleting payment gateways entirely so its not charging, as you are indeed correct there. As far as emails, you can put them in debug. To do that, you would create a constants.php file and add the following

<?php
define('EMAIL_DEBUG_PATH', '/dev/null');

 

[Mike Gholson]

Thank you, I disabled email using the constants.php.

However, I get an error when I try to remove payment types.  See below.

TypeError: IPS\File::get(): Argument #2 ($url) must be of type IPS\Http\Url|string, null given, called in /var/www/vhosts/classiczcars.com/beta.classiczcars.com/applications/nexus/sources/Gateway/Gateway.php on line 441 (0)
#0 /var/www/vhosts/classiczcars.com/beta.classiczcars.com/applications/nexus/sources/Gateway/Gateway.php(441): IPS\File::get()
#1 /var/www/vhosts/classiczcars.com/beta.classiczcars.com/system/Node/Controller.php(1372): IPS\nexus\Gateway->delete()
#2 /var/www/vhosts/classiczcars.com/beta.classiczcars.com/applications/nexus/modules/admin/payments/gateways.php(211): IPS\Node\Controller->delete()
#3 /var/www/vhosts/classiczcars.com/beta.classiczcars.com/system/Dispatcher/Controller.php(128): IPS\nexus\modules\admin\payments\gateways->delete()
#4 /var/www/vhosts/classiczcars.com/beta.classiczcars.com/system/Node/Controller.php(117): IPS\Dispatcher\Controller->execute()
#5 /var/www/vhosts/classiczcars.com/beta.classiczcars.com/applications/nexus/modules/admin/payments/gateways.php(61): IPS\Node\Controller->execute()
#6 /var/www/vhosts/classiczcars.com/beta.classiczcars.com/applications/nexus/modules/admin/payments/paymentsettings.php(86): IPS\nexus\modules\admin\payments\gateways->execute()
#7 /var/www/vhosts/classiczcars.com/beta.classiczcars.com/system/Dispatcher/Controller.php(128): IPS\nexus\modules\admin\payments\paymentsettings->__call()
#8 /var/www/vhosts/classiczcars.com/beta.classiczcars.com/system/Dispatcher/Dispatcher.php(169): IPS\Dispatcher\Controller->execute()
#9 /var/www/vhosts/classiczcars.com/beta.classiczcars.com/admin/index.php(15): IPS\Dispatcher->run()
#10 {main}

Is there another method I can use to disable these automatic payments?  I'm afraid the system will charge people twice for their subscription (production site and beta site).

Thank you!

Mike

[Mike Gholson]

TBH, it would be nice to add a enable/disable function to the payment methods.  This way we can shut off the gateway in times like this.  I noticed the system tried reaching out to Paypal to cancel all the subscriptions but it failed (probably due to the domain name).  So hopefully my production site wasn't affected by a bunch of cancelations.

[rnorth6920]

24 minutes ago, Mike Gholson said:

Is there another method I can use to disable these automatic payments?  I'm afraid the system will charge people twice for their subscription (production site and beta site).

Thank you!

Mike

There is usually an option for "test" or "sandbox" within your payment gateway provider.  Just put the test payment info in your admin payment section and you should be fine. I'd prefer and on off switch built into IPS, but doubt we'll ever get that.  So the previous option is the best option that I'm aware of. 

[Richard Arch]

You can also add the following to a constants.php file which will give you a new test payment gateway.  Then swap your products/subscriptions over to use this instead.

\define( 'NEXUS_TEST_GATEWAYS', true );

As Mike said I too would love a method to enable/disable the payment methods.

[Mike Gholson]

Yeah, looks like by attempting to delete my payment gateways from my beta site, I canceled them on my production site.  Whatever you do, don't delete the gateways from a beta site if you are running a direct duplicate of your production site.  RIP

 

[Mike Gholson]

Apparently deleting a payment gateway sends a message to Paypal telling them to shut off every single recurring subscription. 

I also recommend some kind of confirmation dialog or an opt-out of this process.  

Mike

[Marc]

4 hours ago, Mike Gholson said:

Apparently deleting a payment gateway sends a message to Paypal telling them to shut off every single recurring subscription. 

I also recommend some kind of confirmation dialog or an opt-out of this process.  

Mike

Indeed paypal will, but your site doesnt charge out PayPal. Only stripe would actually call out for payment, so had assumed it was stripe you were referring to there unfortunately. When deleting paypal, it does say there that it will remove them

Im pretty sure thats done on a task, so I would delete that copy of the site if they are still running, as it may not have actually cancelled them all yet

[Richard Arch]

Could those reoccuring cost tasks be disabled on a test site?

[Marc]

9 hours ago, Richard Arch said:

Could those reoccuring cost tasks be disabled on a test site?

No, as that may well be exactly what you are testing

[Joel R]

I would like to nominate this topic to be memorialized in the Beta upgrade information.  

There is some great information in here. 

[Mike Gholson]

Yeah, I *HIGHLY* advise against making any decisions to run a copy of your live site like I did.  There's no easy method to control the Paypal gateway.

This mistake is costing me monthly revenue to the tune of ~$600/month in lost revenue (~$7,200/yr).  Probably enough to kill my community. 

I am working with Paypal to see if I can get mass-command reversed but they are not easy to deal with AT ALL.

[Gary]

There is always a chance of things not working on communities, especially when upgrading to alpha or beta versions on your production site. If you have an established community that has been running for a long time, it is not ideal to upgrade until at least a release.

I only upgraded my community as it is new and very vanilla, with no addons or modifications.

There is a strong recommendation of not upgrading on the Beta Information tab of this club for production instances of Invision Community.

I do hope you manage to get the issue resolved though. Losing any amount of stream of revenue is not ideal in any case.

[Mike Gholson]

Thanks Gary.  Yeah, I knew about the risk to my main website which is why I created a duplicate.  Problem is creating the duplicate also brings over all data including the transactional connections / API keys.  When I deleted the payment method on my duplicate/beta site, it sent a command to Paypal killing all subscriptions.  There is no disable function (that I could find).

I thought maybe Paypal would help me out because the command came from a different URL, however, it was actually a command sent through the API key.  They weren't able to re-initiate the recurring subscriptions.  They told me the customer needs to re-initiate it.  Good thing is the IPB software wasn't affected and it will ask the member to renew their subscription on their renewal date.

I'll find a way to get through it.  I've already created an emergency fundraiser post so we'll see how it goes.  I'm only posting here because I think this is serious enough that others can learn from my bad luck.  I was contacted by IPB immediately and happy to see the developers / managers jumped in to help.

Mike

[Gary]

That's good news! At least there is a way to get things back on track instead of losing it altogether. Best of luck.