Membership Plugin

WordPress Membership Plugin

Payment Testing Checklist for Simple Membership

After installing the Simple Membership Plugin, completing the basic setup, and creating your first membership payment button, you may want to test the transaction process. This will help you ensure that everything runs smoothly and gain an understanding of the process that your customers will go through to complete a successful transaction on your website.

Table of Contents

Things to Keep in Mind When Testing a Transaction

When testing the functionality of a payment button, it is important to ensure the following:

  1. When testing a new user registration scenario, make sure you are not using an email address that already has an account on the site.
  2. To ensure that the email address is not already registered, you can go to the member’s menu on your site and search using the email address.
  3. To ensure that the email address is not already associated with a WordPress user account, navigate to the WP Users menu and search using the email address.
  4. To simulate the experience of a new member, perform the transaction from a web browser where you are not logged into the site as an admin user.
  5. Before making a test purchase, you can enable the debug logging feature which will help you identify any issues with the transaction.
  6. 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.

Clear Browser Cache and Cookies Before Testing PayPal Transactions

Before initiating a PayPal test transaction, it is highly recommended to clear your browser’s cache and cookies. This helps avoid potential issues caused by lingering PayPal cookies, especially when switching between multiple accounts during testing.

Testing the Payment Button

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 membership payment as if you were a customer. You can issue a refund on that transaction after your testing is complete (so the payment gets reversed).

To make the purchase, you can either use your credit card or ask a family member or friend to use their PayPal account to purchase the item on your site.

Performing live testing in this manner will help confirm that your site is ready to accept membership payments.

PayPal Sandbox Specific Tips

In this section, I will provide you with some helpful tips to consider when using PayPal sandbox mode for your PayPal payment buttons.

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 for your Live PayPal account.

PayPal sandbox email addresses are simulated email addresses and are not capable of receiving real emails. Therefore, you won’t be able to receive any emails in your sandbox email account, which may be in the format of ‘example_email@example.com’.

If you plan to use PayPal subscription buttons and intend to test them in Sandbox mode, be aware that you will need to create new buttons for live mode once you are ready to go live. Do not reuse the subscription plans that were created in sandbox mode, as those will be associated with your sandbox PayPal account, which is separate from your live PayPal account.

Stripe Sandbox Testing

In this section, I will give you steps to perform a Stripe transaction in sandbox mode:

  1. Go to the WP Membership Settings -> Payment Settings menu. Check the Enable Sandbox Testing checkbox. Save Changes.
  2. Make sure to enter both your test and live API credentials for the payment buttons you intend to test.
  3. Navigate to the page or post where the button is located and then click on the Stripe payment button.
  4. You can use the following test Visa card number for testing: ‘4242 4242 4242 4242’. The expiration date should be set to any date in the future, and the CVC can be ‘123’.
  5. Please note that you will not be charged anything when using this test card, as it is only meant for testing purposes.
  6. If everything has worked successfully, you will receive an email to your address to complete the next stage of registration. The registration process document has details on what to expect.

Troubleshooting Transaction Issues

Before doing the test transaction, you can enable the debug logging feature. Enabling debug logging is very useful for troubleshooting and identifying any issues that may occur during the test transaction. The log file will contain detailed information about the transaction, including any errors or warnings that may have occurred. This can be helpful in identifying the cause of the problem and finding a solution.

The debug logging feature can be enabled from the settings menu of the plugin.

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.