PayPal Advanced not working with Layout C

[E-junkie_Guru]

Yes, unfortunately we can only add your custom logo/header to pages we manage, such as the initial checkout page; PayPal provides no way to customize their final payment page. Note that the third-party cookie blocking issue would affect ALL sites that use PayPal Advanced with Layout C embedded in an iframe; that issue isn't just something peculiar to our own system.



As for the new Admin, we had some false starts and unforeseen setbacks in 2011, but about a year ago we hired an experienced new developer specifically to help out with the new Admin project and got a fresh start on that; we are very conservatively projecting it should be done by the end of this year, and optimistically projecting very much sooner if all goes to plan. Initially, we're just shooting for feature-equivalence with the current Admin, to keep the project scope focused and avoid feature creep that would only set things back even further, but once that's done, we'll be able to start modifying it as needed to support new features and functionality.

[gorilla]

Thank you for your honest answer to help me with my decision.

[adamv]

This is very disappointing news. I agree with gorilla completely and actually opened a ticket minutes ago regarding the hideous looking white form (before I found this post).



I also have a hard time believing people would trust and use that form. Maybe because I've been programming professionally for 10 years, but the appearance is embarrassing and doesn't exactly scream "legitimate, safe, secure business".



I started with eJunkie because of price, but as my eBay and website sales increase I really need an online cart that accepts on-site payments. I was trying to decide between eJunkie with PayPal Pro / Advanced or a more robust solution like Shopify. Looks like I'll have to bite the bullet and invest energy in that.

[E-junkie_Guru]

We agree that the final payment screen for card-based payments using PayPal Advanced is not exactly confidence-inspiring when displayed by itself, but unfortunately the iframe embedding method that PayPal intended for that form requires setting a third-party cookie, which caused problems for a significant number of buyers, as Rob mentioned above. That number will only increase as people upgrade their browsers and as more browsers block third-party cookies by default, not to mention people increasingly enabling that setting deliberately for privacy reasons (as most third-party cookies are used for advertising and tracking purposes). This third-party cookie-blocking issue will affect EVERY site that uses an iframe to embed that payment form as PayPal recommends; it's not something peculiar to E-junkie.

[adamv]

I understand completely. It's disappointing for me because I know for my business I have to take the "on-site" processing step within the next year or two. I prefer to take this step with eJunkie because I have my site designed and traffic coming to the existing URLs.



I don't want to start a store from scratch with say Shopify and result to redirects for my existing traffic. Also, eJunkie integrates great into my site and it looks great (beside the page in discussion).



Maybe making A/B templates available to some like mentioned above could be a solution. I sell tangible goods, but offer free shipping on all products so the shipping calculation issues wouldn't affect me either.



I want to end by saying, I love eJunkie's cart! I really do. If you guys could get a professional looking on-site checkout solution/page, it would really bring your service full circle.



Oh, and fix the flash login so I can manage my store from my iPad

[E-junkie_Guru]

Okay, Development says that for specific sellers upon request, we can disable the part of our code that requires Layout C, so you can set up Layout A/B in your PayPal Manager and see if/how it works for you. To confirm your identity and attend to this request, we would need you to email Support with your E-junkie account password, or your Subscription ID (from your Seller Admin > Account Summary screen), or your original activation code (from the original "Account information" email we sent you at registration):

https://www.e-junkie.com/ej/contact.php



Bear in mind this would be considered an unsupported hack for use entirely at your own risk, as we have not tested this at all nor researched any settings or other parameters that may need to differ from the standard setup for Layout C, so we can offer no guarantees. Once we disable the Layout C requirement for your seller account at our end, you would be expected to configure any needed settings in your PayPal Manager and test it on your own to make sure it actually works.

[gorilla]

What is the status on the checkout pages, it's been 2 years now and I'm hoping that this was improved and we can select good professional layouts for checkout pages instead of a box in top left corner on a white page? I've had numerous customers contacting me directly asking to verify if this was a scam or not as it looks like it is a scam and not part of the website at all.



Can we use a good checkout layout yet?



I've been contemplating moving to other scripts like easy digital downloads but as you know it is not easy to just move everything out and I'll prefer to stay with e-junkie.

[E-junkie_Guru]

PayPal still has not addressed the third-party cookie blocking issue which compelled us to adopt the compromise approach we're still using now (as explained above). Furthermore, it appears they are no longer actively developing or promoting PayPal Payments Advanced, in favor of pushing PayPal Payments Pro, so it seems unlikely they will ever resolve this problem.



If you might consider upgrading to PayPal Payments Pro -- which uses a single, self-contained, secure page we manage for your card-based checkouts -- this help page explains how to integrate that with E-junkie:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/paypal-partner.htm



Unfortunately, checkouts can never occur on your own site/domain with E-junkie due to our inherent nature as a centrally-managed service which does not install any software on your server; this is one of the tradeoffs for our ease of use and site integration.

[gorilla]

I'll call PayPal today regarding your answer, I'm unaware that they are trying to discontinue the service I'm using and their support is very good so far, I'm using them for 8 years without issues. I've tried that link but the checkout page is just a white page with some form fields and a logo on top, looks pretty much the same as what I have now but centered, all hosted shopping cart companies like yours or even WordPress plugins like Easy Digital Downloads offer a plethora of payment gateways and a great checkout experience, is the checkout page here http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/paypal-partner.htm the best that your company can offer in this modern web browser and apps age? it looks totally out of place and it does not inspire customer trust when you get a page like this.

[E-junkie_Guru]

This is the page where I found PayPal Payments Advanced listed as a "Legacy product" which is "No longer actively marketed; now included with PayPal Payments Pro":

https://developer.paypal.com/webapps/developer/docs/classic/products/payflow/



Elsewhere in that documentation, they have indicated that "Legacy products remain available for pre-existing users", so it seems they will continue to support existing integrations using it into the foreseeable future.



We've already prepared the design for a more modern, mobile-responsive card checkout page, but Development still needs to actually implement that as a live checkout page, replacing our current card checkout page (which is not responsive, as you've seen). When that project is completed and goes live, we would post a notice to our System Status & Updates forum here:

http://www.e-junkie.com/bb/forum/6

[gorilla]

Ok but your proposed new solution for PayPal payments Pro looks pretty obsolete too, that is my issue, if you offer an amazing looking checkout page I'm going to make sure that I meet all requirements and move my accounts to take advantage of this checkout page but so far it is the same page but centered and with a logo on top.



I understand that you may be developing one page but the latest e-junkie.com changes from flash to html took like 6 years?



I would love to use this new mobile responsive checkout page but you do not have it right now and I need to move fast, what about the integration with EDD? I see that they need to receive the product purchase data to from url, I'm already sending transaction data to a url from E-junkie to my sever for customer account creation, can I send transaction data to EDD script too? Can your software allow to send transaction data to two URLs? I assume this would pretty easy?



If I can send info data to EDD plugin and also data to my account creation script I'll be spending a little more money but I'm ok with that as I'll be offering a superior checkout experience.



Here is the info:



http://docs.easydigitaldownloads.com/article/408-e-junkie-purchases-setup-documentation





This could solve my issue retaining customers after they click the purchase button until e-junkie release their own modern checkout page.



Can you please let me know?

[E-junkie_Guru]

There are ways to have us post the order details to more than one URL, and I've contacted EDD support to clarify something about their integration which would determine the best approach for that; however, EDD's E-junkie integration would only have us post the order details to EDD after we're done processing the buyer's order, so you'd still be using E-junkie's purchase buttons and checkout -- i.e., this wouldn't allow you to use some other checkout experience and then have E-junkie issue download links after the buyer has paid.

[gorilla]

If that is the only integration I'm stuck with your checkout if I want to continue using e-junkie for hosting files and affiliates?



Is there any other service that will integrate with e-junkie that have a professional integrated checkout process?



Are all e-junkie customers using this blank page with a top left checkout form after the customer click on a buy button?



You would imagine how that page looks on a 27 inch hiDPI retina screen.

[E-junkie_Guru]

If you want to continue using E-junkie's download delivery and affiliate features, you must sell your products using E-junkie's purchase buttons and checkout flows.



Only PayPal Advanced uses that rather bare-bones top-left-aligned payment information page that comes after the buyer submits their billing/shipping address on our checkout page. 2Checkout works similarly, but their payment information page is much nicer than the PayPal Advanced one. Only PayPal Payments Pro, Payflow Pro, and Authorize.Net use a single page for our card checkouts (which all use the same non-responsive page you've already seen for PayPal Pro). You can see the 2Checkout flow by testing our demo cart here:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/2checkout-shopping-cart.htm



Also bear in mind that the PayPal Payments Standard checkout site will usually offer a card-based payment option for buyers without a PayPal account, depending on your own PayPal account type and related settings, which we explain in more detail here:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/faq.paypal.card-checkout.htm

[gorilla]

In your 2checkout sample I still see a white page with a form centered instead of left-aligned, am I looking a the wrong sample? Can you link to the much nicer checkout page to test the features?



I have PayPal Payments Advanced and i do have credit card payments without the need of a PayPal account all, that is the main reason I use their service instead of just regular Paypal.



They have Layout A & B checkout pages that look much much better than Layout C.



You are encouraging me to upgrade to PayPal Payments Pro but wha tis the difference from what I have now if I can accept cards without PayPal?



So far every sample on your site takes me to this checkout page with a red legend on top with the credit card test info and it looks like a page from the 80's, can direct me to the nicer one stoa you are mentioning here?

[E-junkie_Monster]

2Checkout's process begins with the basic form on our site but then redirects to a different payment form at their end. You can see that by filling out the demo checkout at http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/2checkout-shopping-cart.htm with any information and then clicking the "Proceed to payment form" link at the bottom.

[gorilla]

What was EDD answer to your question about the integration? I'm still trying to do this or cancel E-junkie and go 100% with EDD and their Affiliate WP softwares.

[E-junkie_Guru]

EDD has not replied to my inquiry from over a month ago, so I've just sent them a followup reminder.

[gorilla]

Thank you for your follow up, I'll contact them and forward the link to this thread too.

[E-junkie_Guru]

Finally heard back from EDD, apparently the delay was because this integration was developed by a third party who'd abandoned the project; here's what they said:

EDD SupportSo it actually looks like we'll have to make some decisions with this extension very soon (as we are about to do with all extensions we sell). The thing is, EDD hosts an extension marketplace. While there are several 3rd party extensions that we do nothing more than link to, there are also several that we sell for 3rd party developers. We simply take a small commission cut.



Some extensions, like this one, don't sell much at all. And we've recently made the decision to start getting rid of them. I did ask the extension developer about the things you mentioned, specifically the last paragraph of your original query [regarding why, or even if, it required both a Code Generator URL and Payment Variable Information URL, both identical]. His response was:



"Thanks for the update. It's been a while, so I'm not sure why I chose to use both."



Obviously, that's not very helpful. It was immediately followed by asking us, the EDD team, if we were interested in buying the extension from him. Because of its very low sales (2 in a year and a half), we aren't. So it's very possible that it will be taken off of the market extremely soon. And I can say with certainty that its codebase will not be receiving an update from us or its developer.