Script Error after Actinic Payment Complete

[Eileen]

Hi...
we have successfully moved web hosts and now have our site hosted on Actinic. We are also using Actinic Payments.

So far, so good.

Our email is still via the old ISP, and I wonder if it could be related to our problems?

What are our problems?
1) When I click the button "Click here to complete order and view receipt"
Instead of getting the receipts page, I get:

Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator to inform of the time the error occurred and of anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Web Server at wildbirdfood.uk.com

The confirmation emails are sent as desired, both the merchant and to the customer, but we don't get redirected back to the reciept page. I wonder if there is some leftover garbage from having email on a separate host from the website itself? How do I debug this?

the address bar shows:
http://www.wildbirdfood.uk.com/cgi-b...Dog_Chews.html

if I reload the web page, it displays my receipt just fine.... or if I click the link which I pasted here, it displays my receipt just fine .... but I don't get the receipt after making my payment.

[Eileen]

On the Receipts page in Design view, I have found some internal errors.... they look to be due to discrepancies between the Actinic-generated Google Analytics code and my old custom code for Google.... didn't cause an error on the old host, probably because old code was also there.

I will post an update when I get the page cleaned up and re-published .

[Eileen]

I have now reverted all my pieces of code to the factory defaults , but unfortunately, I still get the server error .....

[Mike Hughes]

Our email is still via the old ISP, and I wonder if it could be related to our problems?

Ah.

I've followed this for a while but didn't have anything to contribute so kept quiet.

I've just noticed this though and that probably is your problem. If actinic is unable to access the smtp server it can time out and prevent the receipt page from showing. (as I'm sure Jo will more than happily testify).

Your email settings should really be on domain and use your hosts smtp server.

Mike

PS. You should really only use the domain name with www. (see your signature) This avoids cookie problems from www. and non-www. mix ups and makes it easier for the search engines to properly credit inbound links and reduce duplicate content errors.

PS2. If I add something to the cart on your site and then click your receipt link, then the first time I get an error, but the second time I get the receipt page showing your details but my cart contents. (just an interesting aside really but may also explain some odd emails you're getting)

[Eileen]

I've just created an email account for info@wildbirdfood.uk.com thru the Actinic hosting panels

I've also gone to the old ISP and changed the MX record to point to our new IP address and hope that it will filter through.

I've also created a subdomain called mail.wildbirdfood.uk.com and pointed it to the new IP address....

this is new stuff to me, and I hope I do it correctly.

Must go change the web networks settings now as well.

will let you all know what the outcome is....

[pinbrook]

If actinic is unable to access the smtp server it can time out and prevent the receipt page from showing. (as I'm sure Jo will more than happily testify).

Your email settings should really be on domain and use your hosts smtp server.

Indeed, i also saw this and thought yes the mail needs to be on domain, but Eileen said mail was working. i also think actinic handles mail differently - which i dont know much about as i've never placed a site on actinic hosting

The checkout process will normally hang if the mail server is busy, rather than go to the wrong place.

[pinbrook]

checkout doesn't seem to work at present - i get to checkoutpage2 and get a blank screen

[Eileen]

not sure what caused the blank screen, Jo....
the cheapest item to order is the Dog Chews (down on the left side panel)

I am still not getting past the error after a successful payment... and it does seem to stick a while before popping up the '500 Internal Server Error'

Perhaps we don't have our email settings configured correctly for actinic hosting?

When Actinic set up our hosting, they did not set us up an email account, and the SMPTHOST in the supplied network settings was set to localhost.

I have now changed the MX records on our DNS to point to the actinic host ip address, but cannot get the SMTP settings to pass the network settings test. Has someone got an example of how to set those up for actinic hosts?

I am also confused - are the network settings emal settings for the website host (ie Actinic) or for our personal ISP (ie freeola)?

We need to be able to send emails to our customers when an order is shipped, and that happens from our desktop machine, not from the web, yes? So Actinic on our desktop needs to know our ISP settings for sending email, while our web shop needs to know the Actinic web host settings, yes?

I'm confused ....

[Duncan Rounding]

It sounds like you need an email address that is on the same domain and hosting.

Most hosts will only send mail from the server via their own SMTP hosting to stop spam.

The emials you send from Actinic for order confirmation and order shipped etc actually get sent from the server not a desktop client so the above applies still.

[Eileen]

the mail server dialog for the Actinic Network Settings Wizard shows:

Would you like to have mail sent to you when new orders arrive? Or send mail to your customers confirming their order? If so, what is the address of your ISP's SMTP mail server? This is the server that handles out going mail. Note that you will only receive an email for the first new order since your last download (not an email with every new order). If this test is successful, you will receive a test message at the account specified.

Since it says "what is the address of your ISP's SMTP mail server?" I assume it means our ISP, which is freeola, and not Actinic (who are now hosting our on-line shop).

from what I have been able to learn about MX records, The MX (Mail Exchanger) records for your domain name instruct other mail servers where to send messages destined for all your email addresses you have at your domain name... this is incoming mail.

So this would mean our outgoing server is still our freeola smtp address... and if so, why would I want to be receiving email via Actinic host... so I think I should set my MX records back to point to our ISP.

but that STILL leaves the problem of the 500 Internal Server Error.

[Eileen]

well, I have now set the MX records back to point to Freeola for incoming email.

Based on Duncan's, Mike's and Jo's comments I think our problem is a conflict between Actinic host and freeola SMTP.

to prevent spamming, freeola only lets mail be sent from its servers by someone connected to it's servers via freeola. But they DO have webmail access now, so we can access our email when logged on to the internet via another source.

I'm guessing that our network error is caused by Freeola not letting the Actinic IP address send SMTP mail?

[pinbrook]

What did actinic tell you to do to transfer DNS to them? ie A records, MX records?

[Eileen]

Hi Jo,
Our Actinic account was configured Friday, with no email.
The Actinic instructions say :

Domain Set-Up (for configuring an existing domain).
In order to use your existing domain name with your Actinic Web Hosting you must point your domain to our hosting server, optionally you will need to configure your email to be handled by our server.

It is a good idea to move the web site first and then when that is working, move the email.
First you need to point the www ‘A’ record to (new IP address), this tells your domain to look to our server, so when you access your domain it will look to our server for your web site. You may also decide to point your domain name without the www to the same IP address, then if someone omits the www when they type it into their browser they will still be sent to your web site.

I've done that, and published the website to the Actinic host.

the Actinic instructions contine:

Secondly, if you wish to use the email that comes with your Actinic Web Hosting, you need to configure MX records (MX stands for Mail eXchange and controls which server deals with your email).

To correctly configure email you should set up an ‘MX’ record so that mail. wildbirdfood.uk.com is responsible for your mail (you may need to remove other MX records). You must also add an A record for mail.wildbirdfood.uk.com so that it resolves to OUR.NEW.IP.ADDRESS.

Actinic do not operate a domain transfer service or run ‘name servers’ or DNS for domains, other than those purchased from Actinic.

Most DNS use a different system for editing the DNS settings, as each is different its hard to give generic instructions, if you are unsure consult the company who controls your domain name.

If your DNS does not use ‘mail.’ But rather ‘mailserver’ or ‘mailhost’, for example, then make sure to use that as the POP/SMTP server name.

These settings can take up to 48 hours to propagate fully around the internet; until they have propagated you will not be able to access your web space or email.

You can check your domains DNS records by using tools at www.dnsstuff.com these will query your DNS but this information still needs to propagate.

I set up our email account thru the Actinic web panels after having the problem with the 500 server error, and then conigured our MX records to point to the Actinic IP address.

We did not have a "mail.wildbirdfood.uk.com" address for our email, instead our freeola uses "smpt.freeola.net" as its incoming POP3 server and "smpt-auth.freeola.net" as its outgoing SMTP server. Our username is our freeola username, ie sr012345-001

we also did not have a 'mail.wildbirdfood.com' subdomain, so I created one and set its 'A' record to point to the new Actinic IP address

[Eileen]

a quick note - our orders having coming in nicely since moving to Actinic hosting and Actinic Payments - we find the server response time nice and fast, and our customers are saying they have had no problems with their orders.

[pinbrook]

mail dot wildbirdfood etc is resolving to the same ip as www.wildbirdfood so that seems ok.

i would now set smtp is network setings to localhost and make sure email addy in business settings is on domain