• Resolved texins5

    (@texins5)


    All of our donations get stuck on “pending” in GiveWP, even though the transaction goes through in PayPal. So the donations are happening and ending up in our PayPal account, but the donor does not show up in the Donors list, and the donation itself is marked as “pending” and then “cancelled”. This means we can’t keep track of our donations in the dashboard, and even worse, no admin emails or donor receipts are being sent by the system. I was hoping maybe this would be fixed when I changed from PayPal Standard to PayPal Donations in my payment gateway settings, but the same thing is still happening. If I go in and manually mark a donation completed, then the emails get sent, but we should not have to do this.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
  • Plugin Support Ginger Coolidge

    (@gscoolidge)

    Hello there,

    Glad you reached out, happy to help.

    Every time a donation is made on your site – or attempted, GiveWP creates a new entry in the logs section on the dashboard that gives us further information on what is happening. I suspect the entries might say the same thing, so you don’t have to send them all, just one “set” if there is more than one per donation.

    The error logs are accessed by going to GiveWP >> Tools >> Logs. Can you navigate there and click on the “eyeball” icon on the right of the log to expand it to view the contents please?  After that, copy/paste the complete log into your next reply. (Note: a screenshot will not show us enough information. Here’s a screencast on how to get the error log content for us: https://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/c3eD0AVFgVG.

    We look forward to guiding you to a solution here! 🙂

    Thread Starter texins5

    (@texins5)

    Ok, I’m pasting what I found in the one for today. It’s not much, but it’s all that was in there:

    { “log_content”: “Payment log info”, “log_parent”: 1490, “log_type”: “sale”, “log_date”: “2025-05-06 16:25:00”, “log_date_gmt”: “2025-05-06 16:25:00”, “form_id”: “902”, “price_id”: 0 }

    Plugin Support Ginger Coolidge

    (@gscoolidge)

    Hello @texins5

    Sorry about the delay in replying.

    Hmm, I would expected to see an error log, that log is a standard “Info”, successful donation log.

    I see the donation form here https://seniorspets.org/donate/, and it goes to an external PayPal page, is this a temporary workaround, or has this always been the configuration?

    Also, can you send us your system info so we can have a better idea of your setup? To do this, navigate to GiveWP > Tools > System Info (tab), click the button to Get System Report and copy/paste ALL of the text in your reply to us here.  This is a (silent) screen video showing you were to find this information in your WordPress admin: https://www.loom.com/share/28139090d53c4fb5a26ea11dd04d0227

    Thanks in advance!

    Thread Starter texins5

    (@texins5)

    Ok, I am super confused when you say that URL is going to an external PayPal page. I’m attaching a screenshot of what I see on that page of our website, which is an embedded GiveWP form. I tried a small test donation again today after making sure I’ve updated to the latest version of GiveWP. It brought up the PayPal interface, I completed my donation, and I even hit the link to return to the SPAN website. I got the thank you page, which shows my donation as pending, even though I completed the payment AND got a receipt from PayPal showing that my transaction went through. I’m attaching a screenshot of the thank you page as well. Our Donations page shows my donation as pending. And when I go to Logs, there is no log for my donation today. There are no logs for any of the donations made since the last one I made, and I believe the only reason that one showed a log was that I went in and marked my donation complete manually. The donations are going through on PayPal, and we are getting the money in our PayPal account, but they never show as Complete in our GiveWP admin dashboard. Every one of them is stuck on Pending, even though they went through.

    Here’s the system info, copied today:

    WordPress Environment

    Home URL: https://seniorspets.org
    Site URL: https://seniorspets.org
    WP Version: 6.8.1
    WP Multisite: –
    WP Memory Limit: 768 MB
    WP Debug Mode: –
    WP Cron: ✔
    Language: en_US
    Permalink Structure: /%postname%/
    Show on Front: page
    Page on Front: Home (#6)
    Page for Posts: Unset
    Table Prefix Length: wp_
    Table Prefix Length: 3
    Table Prefix Status: Acceptable
    Admin AJAX: Accessible
    Registered Post Statuses: publish, future, draft, pending, private, trash, auto-draft, inherit, request-pending, request-confirmed, request-failed, request-completed, refunded, failed, revoked, cancelled, abandoned, processing, preapproval, upgraded Server Environment

    Hosting Provider: DBH: 127.0.0.1, SRV: seniorspets.org
    TLS Connection: Connection uses TLS 1.3
    TLS Connection: Probably Okay
    Server Info: Apache
    PHP Version: 8.2.28
    PHP Post Max Size: 256 MB
    PHP Time Limit: 120
    PHP Max Input Vars: 3000
    PHP Max Upload Size: 256 MB
    cURL Version: 8.9.1, OpenSSL/3.2.4
    SUHOSIN Installed: –
    MySQL Version: 8.0.39
    Default Timezone is UTC: ✔
    fsockopen/cURL: ✔
    SoapClient: ✔
    DOMDocument: ✔
    gzip: ✔
    GD Graphics Library: ✔
    Multibyte String: ✔
    Remote Post: ✔
    Remote Get: ✔ GiveWP Configuration

    GiveWP Version: 4.2.1
    GiveWP Cache: Enabled
    Database Updates: All DB Updates Completed.
    Database Updates: All Database Migrations Completed.
    Database Tables: ✔ wp_give_donors✔ wp_give_donormeta✔ wp_give_comments✔ wp_give_commentmeta✔ wp_give_sessions✔ wp_give_formmeta✔ wp_give_sequential_ordering✔ wp_give_donationmeta✔ wp_give_revenue✔ wp_give_migrations✔ wp_give_log
    GiveWP Cache: Enabled
    GiveWP Cache: ✔New Donation✔Donation Receipt❌Donation Processing Receipt❌New Offline Donation❌Offline Donation Instructions✔New User Registration✔User Registration Information❌Donation Note✔Email access
    Upgraded From: 4.2.0
    Test Mode: Disabled
    Currency Code: USD
    Currency Position: Before
    Decimal Separator: .
    Thousands Separator: ,
    Success Page: https://seniorspets.org/donation-confirmation/
    Failure Page: https://seniorspets.org/donation-failed/
    Donation History Page: https://seniorspets.org/donor-dashboard/
    GiveWP Forms Slug: /donations/
    Enabled Payment Gateways: PayPal Standard, PayPal Donations
    Default Payment Gateway: PayPal Standard
    PayPal IPN Notifications: N/A
    Donor Email Access: Enabled
    Stripe Webhook Notifications: N/A Active GiveWP Add-ons Other Active Plugins

    All in One SEO: by All in One SEO Team – 4.8.2
    FooBox Image Lightbox: by FooPlugins – 2.7.34
    FooGallery: by FooPlugins – 2.4.30
    Gravity Forms: by Gravity Forms – 2.9.8
    Gravity Forms PayPal Checkout Add-On: by Gravity Forms – 3.9.0
    ManageWP - Worker: by GoDaddy – 4.9.23
    MetaSlider: by MetaSlider – 3.98.0
    Smush: by WPMU DEV – 3.18.1
    Speed Optimizer: by SiteGround – 7.7.2
    UpdraftPlus - Backup/Restore: by TeamUpdraft, DavidAnderson – 2.25.5.26
    Wordfence Security: by Wordfence – 8.0.5
    WP Mail SMTP: by WP Mail SMTP – 4.4.0 Inactive Plugins Active MU Plugins

    ManageWP - Worker Loader: by GoDaddy – Theme

    Name: Divi Child Theme
    Version: 1.0.0
    Author URL: https://www.worldwidedeb.com
    Child Theme: Yes
    Parent Theme Name: Divi
    Parent Theme Version: 4.27.4
    Parent Theme Author URL: http://www.elegantthemes.com
    Thread Starter texins5

    (@texins5)

    Any thoughts on this? I’m afraid I’ll have to look for a different solution for donations if we can’t get this figured out.

    Plugin Support Robin Joshua Del Mundo

    (@robindelmundo)

    Hi Texins,

    Please excuse the slow turnaround here.

    Looks like you’re using PayPal Standard, and there are no IPN URL Notifications. This is why donations are getting stuck in “Pending”.

    For context, here’s the order of how GiveWP works with the payment gateway to process the donation:

    1. The donor fills out the donation form and submits the donation.
    2. A donation (and subscription, if applicable) is created on the GiveWP side and set to “pending.”
    3. All the information is sent to the gateway to process the transaction.
    4. The gateway processes it and notifies the site (via the webhook or IPN) that it went through.
    5. GiveWP processes that webhook/IPN and sets the donation to complete.

    With that said, you can follow our guide in here for troubleshooting IPN issues — https://givewp.com/documentation/core/payment-gateways/paypal-standard/troubleshooting-ipn-issues/.

    I also see that you have PayPal Donations as another active payment gateway. With that, I would recommend just switching to the PayPal Donations gateway, as that will be our payment gateway for PayPal moving forward. You can follow our guide in here for migrating to the PayPal Donations gateway — https://givewp.com/documentation/core/payment-gateways/how-to-migrate-paypal-standard-to-paypal-donations/.

    Please let me know if you have further questions.

    I’m always happy to help!

    Plugin Support Robin Joshua Del Mundo

    (@robindelmundo)

    Hi @texins5 ,

    It’s been a while since we’ve heard back, and I know troubleshooting needs a little extra time. I’m marking this as resolved for now, but if you still have questions, you can send them along right here, and I’ll be happy to hop back in.

    Have a great day!

    Thread Starter texins5

    (@texins5)

    Ok, I did as you suggested and removed the Standard PayPal gateway and kept PayPal Donations as my only active gateway. And then when I tried to do a test donation and it got to the PayPal part, I got a message that says “This organization’s page is broken.” So I tried a different donation plugin, just to see if that would work, and although it let me donate, my donation is again stuck on pending. I am stumped. If I go with the PayPal Donations gateway in GiveWP, I can’t accept donations at all, so for now, I’m leaving the other plugin active, but I would prefer to go back to GiveWP. Do you know what it means when I’m using your plugin and get the “This organization’s page is broken” message?

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

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