This morning I got an email saying a purchase (on this site) hadn’t been confirmed via the paypal IPN, and was forever “waiting to receive confirmation from the payment processor”. Initially I thought it must have been a one-off, but have since received several more reports of the same issue.
After a bit of searching, I found the following comment by a paypal developer:
Apologies for any inconvenience this issue with IPN may have caused you. We are aware of the issue and working it as high priority, to get it resolved as soon as possible.
As a workaround, if you use port 443, rather than port 80, IPN will work.
Once resolved, we will update any threads created for this issue, so that everyone is aware. Thanks for your continued patience!
I therefore did as suggested and added the option to use port 443 (if the server supports it) instead of port 80, which did indeed fix the problem. I’ve also added the same code to the OIO paypal module, since port 443 seems to be the recommended default now.
There’s no urgent need to upgrade, unless this problem persists for a while.
So, if you’re experiencing any problems with paypal IPNs today, now you know why!
Instead of writing a dreary specification document for you to sift through, I’ve put together a 1st draft of all your ideas and suggestions in the form of a mind map. Enjoy!
>> http://v3.oiopublisher.com/spec/v3-spec-1st-draft/
I’ve been asked on a few occasions during the ideas brainstorm for v3 about being able to display ad zones using different settings to those used in the admin area. For example, I have an ad zone using 125×125 ads, but on one of my sites I want to show the same ad zone using dimensions of 90×90.
Up until now, there was no way to accomplish this, since the output functions just used whatever was set in the admin. Whilst this type of thing will be fully resolved in v3, I thought I’d put together some alternative output functions for v2 that could do the same thing.
I haven’t yet released it as part of the official download, since the output is fundamental to everyone who uses OIO and so any bugs could cause quite a few problems for people upgrading. Instead, I’ve released it as a separate package that you can upload, which will over-write the default functions:
>> http://forum.oiopublisher.com/discussion/796/manipulating-ad-zone-output/
The link above contains all the information you should need on how to install and use these new output options. It supports both php and javascript, and won’t affect any of your current ad zones using the old output method.
I thought I’d release a small update package to include a couple of things you may find useful. You can now download v2.21 from the site, which includes:
(1) One-click WordPress theme integration – you can now use your WordPress theme with OIO more easily. You can find out more information about it here, as well as a short tutorial on how to use this feature (and what to do i your theme doesn’t look quite right initially).
(2) Use decimals in your pricing – up until now you’ve only been able to use whole numbers when pricing your ads. Now you can set your price to whatever you’d like (eg. $9.95).
How to upgrade
The standard upgrade tutorial applies. If you’ve customised any of the template files, the only one to change since the release of v2.20 is the “templates/core/main.tpl” file.
How’s v3 coming?
Since I get asked this quite a bit, the answer is it’s coming along slowly but surely. I’ll be releasing a spec shortly, including as many of your ideas as possible, so you can see what it will end up like. Remember, there’s still time to submit your own ideas!
This is one thing that I’m often asked about – how do you integrate the OIO purchase process with your WordPress theme? Well, now it’s very easy!
>> Rather than try and explain it in words, check out the image below (click it to view full size).
If you want to try it out for yourself, simply download the latest code and over-write all your existing OIO files. There’s no version number change yet, as I’m testing it out with the early adopters first. 
PS. the ‘templates/core/main.tpl’ file has changed for this.
