Checkout slow

[WILKO92]

Most of the time, all seems well. Orders come through and get sorted without any apparent problem.

However, on occasion we get e-mails and phone calls telling us that a customer is having problems with checkout pages not loading or operating slowly.
Each time I check this myself it flys through checkout without a hitch so I have always put it down to customers having a local malware problem or slow dial up connection.

Here is a feedback from a customer this morning:

"Thanks for your reply - I'm trying to reach checkout: even with broadband it is painfully slow (ten minutes, and still not up on the screen):"

Are there any known problems or am I probably right in my assumption that the problem is with the customer?

[Bruce]

If the problem is not replicable then it is really difficult to tell what exactly could be the issue as this could be down to several factors, the clients internet connection, malware / spyware on their system, large page (takes time to load), disk space on the server, etc, etc.,

Kind regards,

[Nikki Ward]

Hi Graham

I'm having a similar issue, whereby the final receipt page can take absolutely ages to display once the customer has entered their details and pressed 'Next' (even when using the pay by cheque option)

I've narrowed my problem down to busy mail servers at my hosting company, Verio, as Actinic will just wait and wait for it's confirmation e-mail to be sent to the customer, before completing the transaction and showing the receipt page.

Verio have suggested using Sendmail from Actinic instead of SMTP, but Actinic support say the mailing process used by Actinic is impossible to change.

It seems that the only option (for me) is to look for another hosting company.

It's perhaps something you could check out with your site anyway,

Hope this helps,

Nik

[Mike Hughes]

There is a sendmail patch that Norman developed in the past. It's very reliable but does need to be re-applied each time you upgrade actinic.

A search of the forum for 'sendmail' should find it.

I seem to remember this has come up before where Actinic waits for the mail to be sent before confirming the transaction. I would say it's something Actinic should look at fixing because the last thing any ecommerce software should do is inconvenience/confuse the customer just because it can't get the email out.

Mike

[Nikki Ward]

Hi Mike

Thanks very much for that! I've found Norman's fix and applied it and it works great. (Thank you Norman!)

The only drawback seems to be, that when customers receive their confirmation e-mail via sendmail, the sender name in the e-mail appears as: petco1@mmm2105.london21-verio.com, or occasionally petco1@petcompany.co.uk.

I feel that most customers receiving an e-mail from petco1@mmm2105.london21-verio.com, would think it’s a spam e-mail, and it doesn’t really look very professional.

I've e-mailed Verio to see if this can be changed at their end (I'm not sure if they can do anything, or if it's something in Actinic that needs to be changed). I've also asked them, that if a customer replied to petco1@mmm2105.london21-verio.com, would we actually receive their e-mail.

I did find an amendment to Norman's script, which you can use if your host doesn't support Mail::Mailer. I wondered if this would alter the Sender Name in the e-mails. I tried this, and as I split Actinic between 2 pc's, I used Norman's suggestion to make the patch ‘machine unspecific’. Unfortunately, Actinic throws a wobbler when I put the sendmail path in the SMTP Server box and won't even let me close the Network Settings with it in!

For anyone else looking to use sendmail, here are the links:
http://www.drillpine.biz/actinicstuf...eadoOfSMTP.txt

http://community.actinic.com/showthr...sendmail+patch

Cheers,

Nik

[Nikki Ward]

Hello again

I just received a message back from Verio, who say:

"It is possible to send the order confirmation to an email address belonging to petcompany.co.uk. You would need to set a from: address in the Actinic script that sends the confirmation"

Umm...would anyone know how I do this?

Can I change:
$mailer->open({ From => $sReturnAddress,

to
$mailer->open({ From => $sSales@petcompany.co.uk,


in this part of the script?
-----------------------------------------------------
#
# Check the return address
#
if (!$sReturnAddress) # if no return address defined
{
$sReturnAddress = $sEmailAddress; # use the destination email address
}

# (V11) use systems sendmail program
my $mailer = Mail::Mailer->new();
$mailer->open({ From => $sReturnAddress,
To => $sEmailAddress,
Subject => $sSubjectText,
})
or die "Can't open: $!\n";

print $mailer $sMessageText;
$mailer->close();

return($::SUCCESS, '', 0, 0);
}

-----------------------------------------------

I'm guessing it's not that simple, or is it?....

Cheers,

Nik