Matheus Martins

Hi, @jakestpeter.

Glad you reached out.

​We’ve investigated it and found that you’ve uncovered an edge-case issue with our PayPal Donations integration. What is happening is that, when making a one-time donation via the Hosted Fields, the first and last name of the donor, for some reason, doesn’t show up in PayPal. It’s just completely empty. It seems like we’re not passing the name to the Order or something.

I’ve escalated this to our development team so they can work on a fix. You can follow up on the progress of the fix here https://feedback.givewp.com/bug-reports/p/the-donor-name-for-donations-made-via-hosted-fields-should-show-up-in-paypal.

​​We are actively tracking user issues to make sure our dev team is aware of them and can get them fixed. You can use the link to check in for updates or to provide additional details of your own.

Give the post above a look, and let me know if you would like me to add any additional details. I want to ensure your need is as accurately reflected as possible, and I’m happy to include an internal note to our teams with any specific information you would like them to have.

If this is crucial for you, I encourage you to use a different payment gateway like Stripe.

While we work on a fix, feel free to message us if you have further questions or need any additional assistance!

• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by Matheus Martins.

Hi, @midvith.

I accessed your website but I could not find the donation forms. Can you let me know if the issue persists?

I apologize for my slow turnaround on this one. Looking forward to helping you get to the bottom of this!

Hi, @loremipsum123.

Glad you reached out.

Warning messages like this display when your site has “Debug Mode” turned on. Debug mode is a method for developers to use to find issues in their code and compatibility problems with different versions of PHP (the server language WordPress uses). Debug mode is usually only used on development sites or non-live sites.

In the meantime here’s how you can hide those warnings: in your wp-config.php file (which you can get to via SFTP or through your web host’s file manager) look for a line like this:

define(‘WP_DEBUG’, true);

Replace it with the following lines:

define(‘WP_DEBUG’, true);
define(‘WP_DEBUG_LOG’, true);
define(‘WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY’, false);
@ini_set(‘display_errors’, 0);

Again, this method is normally only used for development, not on live sites.

If you need assistance with that, your web host should be able to help. Also, there is some official documentation on that: https://codex.wordpress.org/WP_DEBUG

Please let us know if you have further questions or need additional assistance!

Hi, @kenryan.

Glad you reached out.

Since the PDF Receipts is a premium add-on, we are not allowed to support it here. However, as a paid user, you can reach us out via Priority Support.

Please send us a message from here https://givewp.com/priority-support/ and our team will get back to you.

Thanks for using GiveWP! Have a great day.

Hi, @r5innsol.

I can explain what you are seeing here.

You’ve uncovered an issue that we are investigating here: https://feedback.givewp.com/bug-reports/p/paypal-order-id-missing-error-should-not-prevent-donations-using-paypal-donation. You can use the link to check in for updates, and I’ve also linked your ticket internally, so when the issue is resolved we can reach back out to update you.

This particular error has been a bit of a white whale for our teams, in part because it is generated by PayPal, and in part because we are unable to reliably replicate it. The PayPal order id is sent as a part of the response to the call to PayPal, so it’s sent by PayPal itself. We’ve made repeated efforts to reach out to PayPal to get more information from their side, but they haven’t responded to those attempts thus far. With this being the case, it leaves us unable to troubleshoot, because it become an issue they need to correct from their side of things. We never like to send our users to other support folks, but in this case we are left with very little information and an inability to replicate the problem in a way that will lead us to a fix.

That doesn’t mean we are ignoring this issue! Our teams are continuing our investigation in an attempt to make that necessary forward progress. At the moment, our best recommendation is for PayPal Donations users who are experiencing this error to switch to PayPal Standard. This error isn’t present there, and PayPal Standard is a great option for non-profits. We also highly recommend Stripe as an alternative gateway whenever possible.

I know this was quite a bit of unhappy information to share, and I wish that weren’t the case. My goal is to make online donations as successful and seamless as possible for you, so please let me know if you have any questions about this, I’m happy to help as much as I possibly can. If you’d like more information or a walkthrough for the workarounds I mentioned, I’m happy to field any questions you have about those as well.

Hi, @mdlcfrs.

I have some recommendations that will help with that issue you are seeing.

The fix here is a bit technical so I’ll include as much detail as possible, but you may need to reach out to your web developer or web support person to implement these recommendations.

Your issue here is caused by some caching happening somewhere in the process. If you’re not familiar with caching, it’s a method of saving server resources by storing copies of a page, resource, query, or site so that the next visitor’s visit doesn’t trigger a call to the server at all, they just get the copy that was saved. Basically instead of the site needing to recreate the page from scratch, it sends up a copy which allows it to load faster.
We put together this deep dive into what caching is and how it can cause problems: https://givewp.com/documentation/resources/caching/

Caching works really well for speeding up sites, but when a saved copy of the site has sensitive information in it (like donor info) it’s important that GiveWP not share that with the next visitor. If GiveWP is not convinced that the browser requesting the data is the correct one, it defaults to not showing the data.

Caching is handled differently on various sites and web hosts. This could mean a caching plugin, or caching could be in a security solution. Hosting providers also have settings for caching at the server level, and they can help make adjustments for you there.  Most caching solutions have a setting or section for excluding specific URLs or parts of URLs (called “slugs”) from caching. At the very least, you should exclude the following slugs from caching:

/donations/
/donation-confirmation/
/donor-dashboard/
*any page with a donation form on it
Also, the following query strings (if your caching solution has a setting for them):
give-embed=donor-dashboard
giveDonationFormInIframe=1

Your host or the caching plugin/solution you are using can help with that. Some of them may require what’s called a “wildcard” like /donations/* to capture all subdirectories under the /donations/ folder.

Some folks prefer to customize the URLs to their site pages, so you may find that your URLs don’t have the slugs mentioned above, even though they contain the same content. In cases like those, we recommend whitelisting the page, not just the slug, that way the pages with those essential pieces of information are still excluded from caching. This is especially important for URLs of pages with donation forms on them.

One helpful tip: Check in with your hosting provider. Most hosts have caching at the server level, and they will be able to adjust this for you. You can also temporarily disable caching on the site to confirm that the uncached site isn’t showing the problem. 
Many security solutions include options for caching as well, so be sure to give those settings a look.
While fine-tuning cache falls outside the scope of the support we’re able to provide, your success with online donations is our number one priority, and we’re happy to provide any tips.

Lastly, make sure you disconnect and connect your PayPal account again.

I know this was quite a bit of information to share. If you have any questions about this, let me know, I’m happy to help.

I’m glad to hear that, @stronganchortech.

We’d love to get a public review about what you think of GiveWP both from a product standpoint as well as how it is to deal with our team. Here are some options:

https://reviews.capterra.com/new/286934/89e00484-d257-4f08-ad39-f8f2ab7461d7?lang=en
https://wordpress.org/support/view/plugin-reviews/give
https://g.page/givewp/review?rc
https://www.facebook.com/pg/wpgive/reviews/

The reviews help others to decide if it’s worth doing business with us!

Have a great day!