[ozzy47]

In setting up paid subscriptions for the first time there is a lot that can go wrong. A common problem is that payments are received but vBulletin doesn't register the payment and doesn't change the user's group memberships appropriately. Here are several things you can check based on my experience troubleshooting these problems.

1) Make sure your paypal emails are correct and that they are entered exactly the same as in your paypal account. Note that these emails are known to be case sensitive:

Admin CP -> Paid Subscriptions -> Payment API Manager -> Edit

2) Make sure the test communication is working:

Admin CP -> Paid Subscriptions -> Test Communication

3) Make sure you heed the warnings on this page:

http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/m...scriptions_add

Warning:
Do not change the cost of a Subscription if a recurring payment is currently in use, these payments will fail to update.

Warning:
Do not set a Paypal subscription to greater than 100 days. Use the months or years options to set subscriptions greater than 100 days.

Also note that the duration of a paid subscription cannot exceed a time that would put the expiration date past the year 2037 as that is the highest complete year that can be represented by a 32 bit integer timestamp. PHP is currently limited to 32 bit integers.

4) Make sure your forum directory is not behind a htaccess login because that will prevent paypal from accessing the callback URL.

5) Make sure your forum URL is correct as that is used to build the callback URL:

Admin CP -> vBulletin Options -> Site Name / URL / Contact Details -> Forum URL

If this is your forum:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/

...then the forum URL should be set to:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum (no ending slash)

6) And if you are specifying the IPN URL in your paypal account then make sure that is correct. If this is your forum:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/

Then the IPN URL should be:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/payment_gateway.php?method=paypal

7) Login to paypal.com and make sure you are actually receiving the money from the purchases. Make sure the transactions are marked as "completed." Also, make sure your paypal account is not configured to require your approval for incoming payments. Otherwise the payments won't complete until you approve them.

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If it still doesn't work then it might be due to some customizations on your forum. You can determine this by temporarily removing your customizations to see if the problems goes away. Try to reproduce it on a default style:

Admin CP -> Styles & Templates -> Style Manager -> [Add New Style]

Create a new style with no parent. Then click that style's name in the Style Manager to view your forum with that style.

If you still have the problem then try disabling your plugins:

Admin CP -> vBulletin Options -> Plugin/Hook System

Also run a file check to look for customized files:

Admin CP -> Maintenance -> Diagnostics -> Suspect File Versions