More WebMarketingMagic/1ShoppingCart Woes

The Horse Before the Cart Syndrome

or How to Lose a Couple Dozen Customers in a Month

I've blogged in the past about a shopping cart product, 1ShoppingCart/WebMarketingMagic, I have to use for a site I maintain. Marketing Guru's sing it's praises all over the net but for the life of me I don't see why.

Strike One

In my previous blog I mentioned the woefully inadequate API they publish and the nightmare of integrating this product in a meaningful fashion with a modern website. So we opted to just duplicate the catalog on the website and link to the cart for check out. I love the smell of duplication in the morning.

Strike Two - Works one minute but not the next

Now enter in the membership scenario. To integrate a membership site with protected download areas you'll have to purchase a third party piece of software called aMember. Knowing now what I do about the API of 1SC/WMM I'm amazed the engineers/programmers at aMember were able to get the products to work together as much as they do.

The past few weeks have been spent trying to find out why 1SC/WMM isn't posting back the correct information to the aMember product. According to 1SC/WMM the problem is: I incorrectly entered a postback password. They have to match you see. I suppose I could be brain-dead enough that cut and paste is beyond my meager skills. Let's try a simple one like "foo". Nope still getting the error. Hmm, maybe I fat-fingered that simple password as well. Let's try "a". Nope. Guess I am brain-dead roll in the ambulance and take me to the morgue.

Strike Three

So, I spend the weekend manually correcting problems with subscriptions where the payments have been collected by 1SC/WMM but not posted back so the members can have access to the site. And just when I think I'm done, 1SC/WMM goes off line. Luckily the 11 hours of downtime happened on a Sunday.

So, to Sum Up

If you're ever faced with a project where you have to work with 1SC/WMM... Run awaaaay, run awaaaay.

1SC/WMM Login Greeting (10/04/2010)

We understand that the problems affecting our system this weekend have affected your business. We feel that this is unacceptable and regret that we could not prevent this situation from occurring. 

At approximately 12:34PM EST our Emergency Response Team began receiving alerts concerning hardware performance problems. At this time they immediately responded to the incident and executed our plan to recover service as quickly as possible.

The recovery plan procedure took several hours to complete after which we began working through a test plan to ensure system stability. At approximately 11:32PM EST our test plan was complete and the system was brought back online.

Please accept our sincerest apologies.

Our Client Services Support Team is available today. Please be advised that we are receiving a very high volume of calls and that you may receive a busy signal prior to getting through to our support queue. 

Thank you for your patience while our team works to help all of you today.

Support Tickets

The integration with amember is not functioning. I've contacted aMember and they say WMM isn't sending the IPN information.

>>From: "Andrey Seredkin, CGI-Central Support Team" <
 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
 >
>>To: XXXXX
>>Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 11:20:14 +0400
>>
>>Hello.
>>As I can see in aMember CP -> Error/Debug Log
>>an IPN URL has been called from IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx without any parameters.
>>Please try to click 'Repost an Order to aMember' link in your 1SC account -> Orders -> Details
>>Then check debug log again.
>>I suppose there is an issue with IPN notifications at 1SC side.

I've reposted but the same error occurs. The passwords are correct on both ends.

Please advise as this is our membership site.

Here's the error log, 

>>09/10/2010 20:27:14 /amember/plugins/payment/1shoppingcart/ipn.php xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 1shoppingcart >>ERROR: Validation error: verifysign incorrect. Make sure you set the same password in both >>1ShoppingCart and aMember Pro CP

>>09/10/2010 20:27:14 /amember/plugins/payment/1shoppingcart/ipn.php xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx DEBUG: >>Validation error: verifysign incorrect. Make sure you set the same password in both 1ShoppingCart >>and aMember Pro CP
>>[md5(XXXXXXXX)] != [] 

>>09/10/2010 20:27:14 /amember/plugins/payment/1shoppingcart/ipn.php xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 1shoppingcart >>DEBUG: 

Please provide any logs if you are going to say it's an aMember issue cause they say it's WMM.

Modified by:  Administrator  Last Modified:  2010-09-14 10:43:25  
Created By Id:  XXXXX  Date Created:  2010-09-14 10:42:36  
Note Subject:  aMember Integration not working - reply  
Note:  Hello xxx,

I have verified with our Team lead and our Development team that this error:

>>09/10/2010 20:27:14 /amember/plugins/payment/1shoppingcart/ipn.php xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 1shoppingcart >>ERROR: Validation error: verifysign incorrect. Make sure you set the same password in both >>1ShoppingCart and aMember Pro CP

..means that your Post back password in the shoppingcart is NOT the same as what has been entered into your Amember software.

Please reset your password in both your Amember and your shoppingcart account. To find the Postback Password field in your shoppingcart account please mouse over:

Setup >> Third Party Integrations - then scroll down and look for the field called: aMember Password:

Please note the Password must be identical to the PostBack Password you have entered in your aMember Account. It *IS* case sensitive.

Kind regards,
XXXXX
Technical Support Client Services

PostScript...

We finally ended up dumping the WMM/aMember integration and went straight to Authorize.Net without the middle man WMM. Guess What? No issues.