New Update 3.8.14.1 does not solve the mess from 3.8.14

This plugin sucks and WooCommerce is lightyears ahead of it, but I have managed to fix the ~”please select a valid state” problem.

Deactivate and remove the plugin. Then go to PHPMyAdmin or whatever you use, export the wpsc_checkout_forms table, then delete it.

Then reinstall the plugin, and you will have the new default checkout forms with the new default fields.

Then, you’ll probably want to edit the sql file you just exported to remove the old default fields, while preserving your custom checkout forms. I just imported the table to a database I have on a local XAMPP server.

I think the query I used was something like delete from wpsc_checkout_forms where checkout_set=1.

Then, it should work! I honestly have no idea what these additional checkout forms are supposed to do, or where I’m supposed to actually assign them to specific products or whatever? But at this point, I was able to place a test order.

Of course, the various coupon options seem to be completely unable to reduce the price to below the shipping price. It would make a hell of a lot of sense to me that the free shipping coupon would, oh I don’t know, actually remove the cost of the shipping? And for that matter, the fixed amount discount really should apply to the total price, not just the price of the items before shipping.

But again, this plugin totally sucks, and you should get rid of it and move to WooCommerce or JigoShop or any of the other numerous options out there as soon as possible.

If I’m wrong, I would love to hear why this plugin doesn’t totally suck, and why I should ever recommend it to someone. The only reason I know about it at all is because some poor client is using it. I’ll be migrating them to WooCommerce as soon as they’re ready.

I actually feel bad for saying it sucks, so let me explain:

When you try to add a product with a required option to the cart without selecting an option, it doesn’t say anything like “you must select an option”, it just brings up the AJAX cart box and says “your cart is empty”.

When something goes wrong on checkout, half the time it doesn’t show you an error message, and instead just reloads the checkout page.

I spent no less than 24 hours screwing around with it trying to figure out why checkout wouldn’t work, because there were no errors anywhere. No PHP errors, no SQL errors, no JS errors. No errors anywhere, it just didn’t work. In the end I had to roll back to an older version, along with an older version of Gold Cart.

And then earlier today I decided to try upgrading both plugins the latest version, and somehow they still work! This sounds expected, except that I tried updating the plugins originally and it didn’t fix anything. So I had to downgrade and then upgrade in order to get it working.

Also, as I googled around for solutions to my problem, I seemed to find thread after thread, site after site detailing various other problems with the plugin. It seems that every major release is plagued with issues, and it isn’t until numerous bug-fix releases after each major release that the plugin is actually stable.

Why are the folders within the plugin prefixed with “wpsc”? What is wpsc, and why isn’t it “wpec”?

What is wpsc-deprecated.php? Is there really an entire file dedicated to deprecated functions?

Why doesn’t deleting the plugin actually delete the tables associated with the plugin? If that had been the case, I would have never run into the issues I did. Come to think of it, that’s probably the reason these issues occurred in the first place. Am I just stupid and this is a standard way of doing things for WordPress plugins? I would have assumed that deleting a plugin would actually delete every trace of the plugin.

Again, maybe I’m just an idiot and this is a great plugin and I’m just used to WooCommerce and other ecommerce plugins. What makes this plugin better than other ecommerce plugins? What are the strengths of WP E-Commerce?

Thanks for the info brettlefty – my store was down. Table shipping not working at checkout. I managed to find 3.8.13.3 download and deactivate, uninstal 3.8.14.1. Deleted the wpsc_checkout_forms table entries in the db and then installed and activated the old release. I am working now and opened a support item, but not sure how to proceed on this.

A simple fix for me!

Had the same problem after updating WordPress to 3.9.1, WP eCommerce to 3.8.14.1 and Gold Cart to 2.9.7.8. Not sure if it was involved in the problem, but I also installed the Fixed Rate Shipping plugin (which should just be included automatically to accommodate store pick up option). I was getting the “Enter A Valid State” message for the Billing State when attempting to checkout.

Oddly, if I checked “Shipping Same as Billing” there was no error on the Billing State. But if I did not check “Shipping Same as Billing” the error message would appear.

Someone recommended to go to Settings>Store>Checkout and in the Shipping form fields drag Country above State. That didn’t quite do it. In the Billing form fields I also drug Country above State and then was fixed. Question is, did they both have to be like that, or just billing. I went to the Shipping form fields again and put country BACK below state. Checking out continued to work.

So for me, dragging Country above State in the Billing form fields did the trick!

And I hope some of this helps developers correct the issue.

@jjmatley that “bug” seems to be caused by just the Billing State field. Moving the country above the state field in billing has been reported to fix that weird bug.

Are there any plans to fix this issue? It is certainly not an obvious issue at all and since you are aware that the recent version of the WP E-Commerce plugin introduced this bug. I am surprised that it is treated with such low priority since it effectively breaks the shopping cart and prevents anybody from purchasing products.

I would also not assume that developers will locate this particular thread and find out that the solution is to move the country above the state. My recommendation would be to review the changes that introduced this bug, since it worked until 3 months ago, and handle the scenario where the shipping fields have the country listed below the state. This e-commerce plugin is installed with the fields in that order so it should handle it the way that it did prior to the recent version.

Lastly, this issue is making me really re-think this plugin. In looking at the reviews for it, it has very low ratings due to the many bugs like this. WooCommerce is rated much higher. There are just so many complaints of it being very buggy and not well supported and I can see why. For this particular bug, reported 3 months ago that prevents checkout from working, still no fix. Wow.

Hi David,

We think this issue is resolved in the core plugin at this point. If you’d like to beta test the 3.8.14.2 release and confirm, that would be incredibly helpful – thank you!

As much as I would like to help test it, I spent a good amount of time trying to diagnose this particular issue in my production system. I would recommend that for issues like this which prevent customers for submitting payments, you should not wait 3 months to get around to a fix.

Do you realize that you have more 1-stars ratings than 4 and 5 star ratings combined? If you compare it to others plugins, it is significantly lower than other e-commerce plugins. If you look at feedback regarding this plugin on other review websites, there are very few that do not mention the low ratings and bugginess and I see why. After dealing with this issue, I can see why our website has had ongoing shopping cart problems has had ongoing problems and I am switching to WooCommerce.

I hope that, for your sake, that you guys get your act together because this is a fail on many levels. It shows insufficient testing on your end as well as not much concern to fix something technically simple like “User can not select State at checkout and is unable to complete purchase”.

Yeah, what benefits does this plugin provide that WooCommerce doesn’t? It seems to me like this is one of those situations where another ecommerce plugin really isn’t needed. I mean maybe if it worked well and gave a nice alternative and increased competition to drive innovation, then sure. But everything I’ve seen with this plugin just seems outdated and hacked together. It doesn’t work correctly most of the time, and on the rare occasions that it is working correctly it still doesn’t even work that well. What’s the point?

Just uninstall and switch to WooCommerce :/ And to the plugin creator, I’m sorry to be so harsh, and I understand it takes a lot of work to create an ecommerce plugin and I have great respect for that, but at the end of the day it just doesn’t work.

It’s been 9 months now struggling with this shopping cart checkout problem where the client is not able to properly select their province state. Any since the user has to manually enter their state/province, then the tax and shipping doesn’t populate correctly and just frustrates everyone!!$@#$@

We have literally lost Tens of thousands in sales at this point. We just reverted from 3.9.1 to 3.8.13.3 and it’s working again. Does anyone know why the state/province drop down doesn’t work in more recent versions?

Hi livetosurf,

Can you tell me about the specific issues at hand? Are there any Javascript errors being reported in the console? Often times, that’s part of the issue – we load the regions/states via Javascript, and if a theme causes javascript errors, or another plugin does, that can certainly cause issues here.

More than happy to help you debug this issue, let me know if there is a URL we can replicate it at.