PayPal IPN WordPress Install and Setup Guide

by Drew | Last Updated May 24, 2019 | Published on Jan 17, 2015 | PayPal IPN for WordPress | 39 comments

Installation

You may install the PayPal IPN WordPress plugin by manually downloading and uploading the plugin files. If you do not already have a copy of the plugin you may submit an order here.

Manual Installation

Download the plugin from your order email receipt or account history.
Navigate to the Plugins page in your WordPress admin panel.
Click the Add New button at the top of the page.
Click the Upload Plugin button at the top of the page.
Click Choose File, and then browse to the zip file for the plugin that you downloaded in step 1.
Click the Install Now button.
Click to activate the plugin once it has been installed.

Updates

Be sure to install the Angell EYE Updater plugin to receive future notices and automated updates.

Configuration

To setup your WordPress PayPal IPN listener you will need to copy your IPN URL from the plugin’s general settings tab into your PayPal account profile’s IPN settings panel.

Plugin Settings

From within your WordPress admin panel, navigate to Settings -> PayPal IPN.
Highlight the PayPal IPN Primary URL and copy it to your clipboard (ie. Ctrl+C / Cmd+C)
If you wish to enable logging for troubleshooting purposes, check the box and click Save.

PayPal IPN for WordPress General Settings

PayPal Settings

Login to your PayPal account.
Click the Profile link on the My Account tab.
Click Instant Payment Notification Preferences in the Selling Preferences section.
Click Choose IPN Settings.
Enter your IPN URL that you copied from the plugin settings.
Click Receieve IPN messages (Enabled) to activate your IPN listener.
Click Save to save your changes.

PayPal Instant Payment Notification Configuration Screen

For more details about configuring IPN in a PayPal account, see PayPal’s IPN setup guide.

Now What?

With the PayPal IPN WordPress plugin installed and configured you’re ready to extend the plugin and automate tasks based on the types of IPNs you receive or the status of a payment you’ve received. For example, you may want to:

Generate branded email notifications for employees and/or customers.
Post messages on social networks.
Remove an item from eBay that has sold on your website (or vice-verse).

The possibilities are endless!

View PayPal IPN for WordPress Developer Guide

Need to Run Multiple IPN URLs?

Forward PayPal’s IPN data to any number of additional URLs you need so that all your systems / services can be updated by IPN as expected.

More Info

Need Additional Help?

Schedule a live meeting with Drew Angell, PayPal Certified Developer, and get all of your questions or concerns answered.

Get Direct Help from a PayPal Partner

Featured PayPal Products and Services

39 Comments

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Martin Taylor on March 11, 2018 at 1:40 pm

Hi – this plugin is really useful, thanks. I’m using it to handle IPN transactions for PayPal subscriptions.

One thing I’ve noticed, however, is a potential issue with the audit list of IPN messages shown in the admin view. When a subscription is started, you get an IPN “subscr_signup” message with a TX ID of (say) I-T1GZ144TL9E5. OK so far, that one is listed in the admin view.

Trouble is that when the subscription is cancelled, that exact same TX ID is sent again by PayPal, this time with a “subscr_cancel” type. It looks like your plugin just overwrites the original signup message with the cancel message.

I can see why it would do that, of course, but it reduces the usability of the backend list as I can no longer see the full history.

Any chance that new transactions could just be inserted rather than used to update existing transactions?

Or could I do something in the code myself to achieve that?
Reply
- Andrew Angell on March 14, 2018 at 2:49 am
  
  I’m sorry for the delay getting back to you. This would be best submitted to our support forum so that our help desk can assign this to a developer for better info. Please submit a ticket here with your question. Thanks!
  Reply
juber on March 19, 2018 at 7:47 am

hi
when i do the above setting then payment are not complited.payment is cancelled so what i do?
Reply
- Andrew Angell on March 20, 2018 at 4:28 am
  
  I’m not sure I understand what you’re referring to..?? Are you talking about updating WooCommerce orders?
  Reply
Simone on March 30, 2018 at 6:57 pm

Hi,
I have an editor with an additional role of author. All users with only the editor role can see the IPN button in the WP menu. Users with an additional role can not see the button and do not have access to the functions. It seems like the plugin is disabled for them. What can I do? Thanks
Reply
- Andrew Angell on March 30, 2018 at 9:52 pm
  
  Have you looked at a plugin like this one? That should allow you to give access to the IPN data to any role you want.
  Reply
Simon on April 22, 2018 at 7:54 pm

Hi, I installed the plugin and I pasted the url from IPN options to my paypal account. Now, if I click PayPal IPN, in my WP admin area, I can see “No PayPal IPN found”, so I click above “Add Paypal IPN” and a page titled “Add New PayPal IPN” is displayed, but there are no options, Paypal IPN Fields is empty, Paypal IPN Row Data is empty too, i can only see the function code below to extend ipn. Where am I wrong?
Reply
- Andrew Angell on April 23, 2018 at 3:02 am
  
  It sounds like you haven’t received any IPN data since you updated the URL in your PayPal account. Did you try to use the IPN Simulator or have you gotten any actual payments to your live account since you updated it with our IPN URL?
  Reply
  - Kim on August 26, 2018 at 6:29 am
    
    I did try the IPN Simulator, and got a positive result. I also submitted a donation and the payment went through, but the payment status still shows pending.
    Reply
    - Andrew Angell on August 27, 2018 at 11:44 am
      
      If you got a successful result with the simulator then you should see that simulation test in the PayPal IPN section of your WP admin panel (provided by our plugin.) Are you seeing that there?
      
      If so, then with our Forwarder enabled that data would be forwarded out to any additional URL(s) you provided. It would be up to those listeners to update your data however they typically would.
      Reply
Kim on August 25, 2018 at 8:57 am

Hello,

I have installed IPN Forwarding, set the URL provided in Paypal IPN plugin in my paypal account settings. I am using the “Give – Donation Plugin”. I did a $1 donation – it shows in my paypal IPN History page with a status of “retrying”. The IPN History in the plugin is blank. The Give plugin shows the payment as “Pending”. I have a forward rule set up for the donations. What am I doing wrong?

Also, I am using the booking feature of the M.E.C. plugin that also needs a forward rule set up, but I don’t know how to determine what the IPN URL should be. How do I find this out?
Reply
- Andrew Angell on August 27, 2018 at 11:43 am
  
  When it says Retrying in PayPal IPN History that means the POST to the listener URL failed. Is it showing up in the WP admin panel under PayPal IPN? If so, what status does it show there?
  Reply
  - Kim on August 27, 2018 at 6:42 pm
    
    No, it doesn’t show up at all under PayPal IPN.
    Reply
Carole on September 6, 2018 at 9:25 pm

What is smart forwarding? Do I need it?
Reply
- Andrew Angell on September 6, 2018 at 10:32 pm
  
  Smart forwarding allows you to forward to specific URLs based on the data included in the IPN instead of forwarding all data to all URLs you have configured. It is not required, but simply an option available for you if you need it.
  Reply
Carole on September 9, 2018 at 4:05 pm

OK, I have a new problem. The information seems to have been accepted by Simple Member, but they are not receiving the aweber subscription. If I’m reading it correctly, it says that the notifications were sent to both Simple Member and aweber.
Reply
Emmanuel on September 20, 2018 at 6:32 pm

Great plugin you have here and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I came across it. I have one question though, can the hook i supply in functions.php execute JavaScript functions because we are sending mails by posting to a php script. Thank you
Reply
- Andrew Angell on September 24, 2018 at 11:56 pm
  
  IPN is not something that runs in the browser, so no, unfortunately JavaScript will not run there. You’ll need to put the PHP you want to run directly inside your listener.
  Reply
robbie on February 5, 2019 at 11:21 pm

Hello,
In PayPal IPN in WordPress shows no transactions ( No PayPal IPN found )
The IPN code in settings was correctly copied ad pasted into sandbox PayPal merchant account in IPN settings but nothing appears in WordPress.
I tried another ipn-listener and it correctly pulls in PayPal data.
Is it currently broken with my WordPress version as it says when i install it this–> http://prntscr.com/mh8igo
Thanks,
Reply
- Andrew Angell on February 6, 2019 at 12:00 am
  
  Hi Robbie,
  
  I’ve updated the plugin to show it’s tested up to 5.0.3. That would not be causing your issue.
  
  You need to double check what address the IPN was actually sent to based on the method you used to trigger the payment. If the “notify URL” parameter is included in the payment request, that would override any value set in your PayPal account profile. It sounds like that could be what’s happening.
  
  Please check the IPN History in your PayPal, and click into the details to verify exactly what URL the IPN you expected to receive was sent to.
  Reply

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