After installing the Simple Shopping Cart Plugin, completing the basic setup, and creating your first add to cart button, you may want to test the transaction process.
On this page, we outline common pitfalls, conditions, and exceptions to be aware of when testing the payment/transaction process. Please carefully review the full document before testing a transaction.
Easiest Way to Test a Transaction
The easiest way to test the functionality of your payment button is to create a new payment button with an amount of $1.00 (or less). You will use this payment button just for testing purposes. This allows you to do a live transaction and test out the payment process as if you were a customer. You can issue a refund on that transaction after your testing is complete (so the payment gets reversed).
You can either use your credit card or request a family member or friend to use their PayPal account to purchase the item on your site for testing purpose.
If you are not a developer, sandbox testing (example, PayPal sandbox) can be a little confusing and time consuming as it requires you to setup your sandbox account properly before you can test and most of the time users fail to setup their sandbox account correctly.
Things to Keep in Mind When Testing a Transaction
- Before making a test purchase, you should enable the debug logging feature from the settings menu of the plugin. It can help you identify any issues with the transaction.
- When conducting PayPal sandbox testing, don’t anticipate receiving an email in your sandbox account. Sandbox email addresses are virtual, meaning they don’t handle actual emails. Thus, you won’t receive genuine emails in your sandbox email address (e.g., [email protected]).
- If you do sandbox testing then keep in mind that the setup of your PayPal sandbox account is not shared with your live PayPal merchant account. Therefore, it is advisable to perform a live PayPal transaction to ensure that everything is functioning properly even after doing sandbox testing.
- Keep in mind that emails and post-payment processing steps may not function properly when testing on your computer’s local server (e.g. using WAMP, LAMP, etc.). Live payment notifications from the payment gateway (such as PayPal) cannot be received by your local test server, which means that this part of the testing can only be carried out on a live server where your actual website is hosted.
- If you are using the standard PayPal checkout option, then make sure you have the PayPal IPN feature enabled so the plugin can get the notification after the transaction.
- If you’ve activated the PayPal payment button encryption feature in your PayPal account, you’ll need to deactivate it; otherwise, a shopping cart plugin’s transaction won’t function properly.
- If you encounter a “pending payment” notification while using the standard PayPal checkout option, consult this post to identify potential issues with your PayPal account.
Troubleshooting a Plugin or Theme Conflict
In rare cases, a conflict between plugins can cause transaction issues. Performing the following plugin and theme conflict test can be helpful.