strictly-software

Hi

I know, I cannot see how it would be Cloudflare OR WP Super Cache OR any caching system that is at fault, as IP addresses are not cached into form variables OR should not be.

The payment form hidden inputs contain things like the purchase amount & details on the product. The button generator THAT s2 provides does NOT as far as I can see generate elements for an IP address and I don’t see why it would.

Also when you go to PayPals payment page I am sure they are not silly enough EVEN if you did pass an IP address in the form inputs to take that as the Clients IP address anyway.

They would obviously want the REAL IP address not some form value that had been passed to it e.g “Please believe this value as the IP address not what HTTP tells you – so to speak” – for their own reporting and so on, they would need the real IP address of the client making the HTTP request.

So they would look at the HTTP headers and see the clients Remote_Addr / X-Forwarded-For etc.

Also as they are no longer on MY server anymore (e.g PayPals payment page is not being cached by CloudFlare / WordPress caching) they would not even see a Cloudlfare IP Range address making the request either.

Therefore I cannot see how caching can be the problem and I have to yet to had a proper technical explanation of how it could be.

It’s the same as if I had just come to this webpage from a heavily cached page on ANY site. This site would be looking at the HTTP headers and getting the IP address from my computer/server/network NOT the referrers IP address.

That is the only thing I can thing off, that somehow – for some reason PayPal has taken the referrers IP – but even then that would be my Servers IP address NOT my works computer that accesses the server.

I cannot find any documentation or details anywhere about any caching system that would embedd the “last users” IP address into the caching system they use as that is what we are saying – that I, as the first person to ever test the payment system (which I was), somehow had my IP address embedded into the page so that a future user when clicking the button passed MY details along to PayPal.

Apart from how this doesn’t make sense – UNLESS s2 Member are doing something I don’t understand as it can only be there plugin that would be doing this. I cannot see how the 1st payment (from a few years ago – as this member got User:1 on his PayPal payment page) would still be in any cache ANYWAY – as it is so long ago it would have been flushed many times.

-He wasn’t logged in (new member)
-Says he just clicked a standard button on my page – that many people have used, which I checked
-Yet he somehow manages to supply the details of the first ever person to ever make a payment through s2 member (me – userId: 1 and with my office IP address as his own)

A technical explanation of what s2 member embedds into their buttons when they encrypt them e.g DO they embedd IP / user details into the buttons is what I need as it can only be their code that would be doing something like this, as caching or not a non logged in user shouldn’t be passing these details along.

It would be great if this was explained to me in a technical way as it doesn’t add up at the moment.

Thanks

Hi

I am saying that I could exclude the pages from caching by just adding a querystring to any link going to them as I have excluded any page with a querystring from being cached by either WP Super Cache or CloudFlare.

I haven’t tested the payment system myself for years as I haven’t had any issues with it for a long time so had no need to ask for support recently or test it myself.

I understand that a non logged in user is more likely to get a cached page by whatever means, WP Super Cache, Cloudflare or just the browser but what I don’t get is how an HTTP POST method submitting the FORM linked to a BUTTON on the page could submit MY IP address when someone ELSE is hitting the button.

How would my IP address get encoded into the hidden form inputs that your payment buttons use to submit the payment data to PayPal. That is what I am having a hard time understanding.

I use your button creator object and that generates a shortcode button snippet like the one I posted in the original question and then that gets converted to HTML on output and encrypted by your plugin.

So unless your plugin is somehow storing my IP address in these buttons when they are created or outputted which then gets cached so that another user hitting the button sends MY IP to PayPal instead of there own – when surely it would come from the Remote_Addr/X-Forwarded-For HTTP header. I don’t understand how it could happen. Nor can the web developer who purchased the product.

Thanks for the info on the plugins by the way.

Rob

Hi

Cheers for replying.

This was a brand new member so he was not logged in at the time of paying also he just clicked a payment button on a page that took him to PayPal (see button code).

He also sent me a screenshot of what PayPal showed him once he had paid and it says at the top of the receipt.

Referencing Customer ID: 1 (which is obviously the 1st ever member to exist, which was obviously me when I first set the site up 3+ years ago for testing)
Customer IP Address: My Work IP Address

I get what you are saying about Caching as it could obviously be a culprit but I don’t understand how details of my IP address and Customer ID (from 2012) were passed to PayPal as I have swapped caching plugins and proxies many times in that period.

As I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes with your code I don’t know how the Customer ID value is passed along to PayPal so I cannot comment on how the code works but I know how HTTP works and surely clicking one of your payment buttons, encrypted or not, would not pass anything apart from the hidden form values containing information about the amount to be paid, how often and so on. All the customer information is set when they come back from PayPal as they have to fill out the registration form.

As he didn’t get that far and was not logged in (I had to manually set him up today so I know he didn’t exist as I checked the system first) I don’t see how my IP/First Ever Customer ID could be passed along to PayPal unless when the buttons are generated some other information is encrypted inside them?

Also I have ways of preventing a page being cached e.g adding a querysting to the page would prevent a cache both in WP Super Cache and Cloudflare but are you saying to just swap WP Super Cache for your plugin and carry on using CloudFlare or to stop CloudFlare as well?

I will look at your plugin but have never heard about it before. Does it work with mobile sites and handles responsive layouts and the toggling between mobile/desktop views?

So apart from info about your caching plugin I would be interested to know how a non logged in user just clicking a payment button could get my IP and an original 2012 Customer ID from just a form submission and hidden form values as I take it no Database information, Cookies or Session data is transfered when you click a button is it?

Thanks for your help.

Rob

Oh, also I ran the Server Scanner tool you have at https://s2member.com/kb-article/server-scanner/ and it didn’t return any errors.

I have everything installed correctly according to your tool.

Oh and something else, whenever I try and authorise the plugin to connect to a WP.com account it always fails, going to my Cloudflare account as an error – then on “retry for a live version” it works but it does it 100% of the time.

Don’t know if connections are an issue but it does seem to only work when I am logged in as admin with a manual feed push.

Hi

The problem is that the tagging plugin fires on_save (publish/draft) which is why I have to add a hook finished_tagging as if a post is published I then, take it out the DB, analyse it for tags, save the tags and re-save (with SQL) the article before setting finished_tagging which the TweetBOT listens for and then runs.

I am guessing as you run on publish there are no tags at that point but why it stops everything else running I don’t know.

Problem with turning one off is the three are linked

email => Posite parses and puts it on the system => (with Publicize nothing goes from draft to publish)
normal feed import (admin) => publish is fired, strictly autotags runs & re-saves the post, sets the finished_tagging hook => strictlyTweetBot runs and Tweets.

I think although I wish I had all the Jetpack code to debug, it’s to do with the timings of the actions/events firing.

Thanks

Rob

Hi

The problem is that I have customised it a lot so that it’s now proprietary code.

What I can say is that it is the same code as WP-O-Matic, e.g it uses SimplePie to fetch feeds but then it also does the following
-checks the feed type as if it’s a small piece of text it might use your wp_remote_get function to get the URL, extract the body of the article with regular expressions, then analyse the content to see if it’s relevant (e.g with a list of keywords), and also runs it through a function that assigns categories to it depending on whether it has certain words in the article. It then saves the article with this insert post function.

function insertPost($title, $content, $timestamp = null, $category = null, $status = 'draft', $authorid = null, $allowpings = true, $comment_status = 'open', $meta = array())
  {
    $date = ($timestamp) ? gmdate('Y-m-d H:i:s', $timestamp + (get_option('gmt_offset') * 3600)) : null;
    $postid = wp_insert_post(array(
    	'post_title' 	            => $title,
  		'post_content'  	        => $content,
  		'post_content_filtered'  	=> $content,
  		'post_category'           => $category,
  		'post_status' 	          => $status,
  		'post_author'             => $authorid,
  		'post_date'               => $date,
  		'comment_status'          => $comment_status,
  		'ping_status'             => $allowpings
    ));

		foreach($meta as $key => $value)
			$this->insertPostMeta($postid, $key, $value);			

		return $postid;
  }

Therefore I think it might be something to do with the length of time all this takes?

I also have my own Strictly AutoTags / StrictlyTweetBot plugins which
a) analyse the content for relevant post tags, adding new ones or existing ones.
b) then if TweetBot is installed (which it is), it waits for my finished_tagging hook before running and Tweeting out the posts.

What seems to happen when Jetpack / Publicize is enabled is this
-A plugin called Postie that takes emails and converts them to posts never works and the posts always stay as drafts.
-I will get posts added but not published
-I will have some of my Strictly AutoTags plugin SEO work done on the content (deeplinking/bolding etc) – will be done BUT no tags will be added which means…
-Strictly TweetBot never runs as the finished_tagging never fires.

Why I have no idea all I can say is what happens when I turn the plugin on and off.

I can run the plugin to import feeds manually logged in as admin and it will work fine e.g, posts with tags, tweets and all the publicize posts.

However a CRON job running the same WP-O-Matic feed import will cause, posts, not published OR no tags, and no tweets.

At the moment I am having to manually turn it on and off before and after my email import runs in the morning and then manually run the feed import to ensure publicize pushes out to LinkedIn/Tumblr etc.

I also have to constantly check for posts with no tags from CRON initiated jobs.

I am just wondering if it is do with the sequential processing of the steps OR the priority flag not working e.g maybe I need to set it really high in JetPack (Can I do this) OR it is do with an Admin logged in cookie which means when I run the job manually it works, automatically it doesn’t.

Is there any hook that can be added or event/action that I could manually fire from my OTHER plugins to fire Publicize rather than letting it run automatically as this would allow me to tag, tweet then FIRE your code?

Thanks for your help

Rob

Hi okay I’ll check the DB, why don’t they show custom fields with an underscore OR why don’t you rename them to NOT have an underscore so that users could see the values on the page – checkboxes being ticked would be better of course. But it depends what other data you store e.g failures or errors – that would be great to see on the page.

The plugin I use to import feeds is WP-O-Matic that uses SimplePie to load in feeds. However I have customized it a bit to make it add in custom categories depending on the content of the article but the core of the plugin should be the same as the original or the one being used at the moment.

Thanks

Rob

Hi

The first part you got the wrong way round, when I am logged in and import a feed (batch of articles), the Publicize action DOES work, with FB,G+,TW all going out.

It is when I am not logged in and the feed is imported that the publicize actions don’t seem to work.

Therefore it seems like being logged in as admin in an open browser window is somehow affecting it?

Also re the tick boxes, surely even if disabled, when editing a post that has had successful Publicize actions to the various listed Social Media outlets WORK, then they should be ticked, even if I cannot edit them?

This would show the user that the Publicize actions to those sites had worked without the need for custom fields etc.

Also re the _wpas_ custom fields.

If I am displaying Custom Fields on my edit page then surely if Publicize HAD worked these should be showing up along with my other custom fields? At the moment whether it works or not I don’t see any custom fields named _wpas_ on the page.

Thanks for your help

Rob

If you ever want to shorten your links with bit.ly, add google tracking codes to them (before shortening), delay your tweets so that they are staggered and prevent Twitter Rushes, OR post to multiple Twitter accounts OR the same Twitter account with different formats using placeholders %titl%, %url%, %hashtags% (categories/post tags/default etc), AND do content analysis so that a tweet is or isn’t sent out depending on the content of the tweet OR article then you can look at my TweetBOT plugin.

It has an easy configuration setup and a button to test it all in admin.

It works with OAUTH pin codes so it’s easy to link to multiple Twitter accounts and has a dashboard storing all the last messages tweeted out.

https://www.strictly-software.com/plugins/strictly-tweetbot

Free version is on WP > https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/strictly-tweetbot/stats/

Hi

No it’s not that often. It’s just that there seems to be some sort of weird conflict between Jetpack and another plugin called Postie which accepts emails into the system as articles (with tags/categories/images etc) – and when Publicize is on I just get draft articles and they don’t get posted.

I just want to turn it off before the emails go in, then turn it on again afterwards. I have my own plugin Strictly TweetBot which will tweet out the articles (linked to Facebook) – and then all the other articles come from feeds so there is no problem with Publicize.

Thanks for the code!

Rob

Hi

I am getting Database locked errors when trying to follow the links.

Do you have a code example snippet I could use in a plugin activated by a CRON job to deactivate / activate the Publicize plugin?

Thanks

Rob

Yeah it seems that any kind of social media plugin has the same issue as I’ve tried a few now.

For some reason it reacts with Postie (not my Plugin) that converts emails to posts causing them to become drafts only, if this happens no tagging and therefore no tweeting.

So are you 100% sure there is no check I could run in my TweetBot plugin that Tweets on_publish once Tagging is complete to see if:
-JetPack was installed e.g check plugins array, or some custom function existing.
-And if so, call your own Publicize method manually from there?

It was all working fine for 3 years and then something happened to just stop it working.

My plugins haven’t changed for a while, only the number of the tags in the site which I trim down regularly if they have less than 4 posts against them.

Only Jetpack and WP core code has really changed that caused this so I don’t really know what happened as if you are posting on a transition from draft to publish then it shouldn’t really matter what my own plugins are doing on the same actions should it?

Anyway thanks for your help and if you can think of any suggestions please do not hesitate to let me know.

Thanks

Rob

Hi

Thanks for the reply I received however I am unsure of what to ask for. Maybe if you read through how my own plugins work you could suggest some sort of request I could put to the Jetpack team as I am sure they won’t accommodate my own hooks/actions in their plugin.

The email I got is below.

Hi Rob!

> Therefore I am thinking your plugin and others like it are doing calls on the
> publish_post hook and this is causing no tagging to be done or tweets to go out
> even if your social media posts go out.

Here’s what I suggest: have a look at the Publicize code (at least, what’s in the plugin, since a lot of Publicize happens on the WordPress.com side of things).

https://github.com/Automattic/jetpack/blob/master/modules/publicize/publicize.php#L68

We hook into the transition_post_status hook; when a post goes from draft or unsaved to Published, that’s when we start saving the related Post-meta as you mentioned.

If you don’t find an adequate place in the plugin that you can hook into for what you’re doing with your own plugins, then please open up an enhancement request here:

https://github.com/Automattic/jetpack/issues/new

and specify that you’d like a hook added to the plugin, and where exactly.

Does that help?

So I know 100% turning the Publicize code off fixes the problem I was having with emails being turned into posts (with the Postie plugin) and then social media going out and my posts getting tagged with Strictly AutoTags and then Tweeted with Strictly TweetBOT.

What I don’t know is how to re-arrange the way my two plugins interact as they rely on custom hooks/actions. If I need to ask for a new feature in Jetpack I need some help in figuring out what I need to ask for.

I have an Auto Tagger Plugin (Strictly AutoTags) that the save_post action fires (draft/publish) to tag the post.

After the tagging is complete I need Jetpacks Publicize event to fire sending out the messages to Google+, Tumblr, LinkedIn etc.

Due to the high number of tags I have on my site 25,000+ just changing the priority order doesn’t work to ensure tweets or other messages are sent out AFTER the tagging is done.

On small sites it might.

However I have to re-save the newly tagged and reformatted post back into the DB before calling my other plugin Strictly TweetBOT (that fires tweets using tags as #hashtags to numerous accounts).

So what happens is that after the post is first saved and on_save runs

-I re-open the post and do the tagging before re-saving it using SQL only.

-I set a finished_doing_tagging action/event with the post_id so other plugins can run off it e.g my TweetBot. It would be nice if I could get Jetpack to also hook into this action to fire off its messages to LinkedIn/Tumblr/Google+ etc.

// fire my custom event so any plugin wanting to run when tagging is completed can now do so pass in the post ID as the parameter so others can use it
do_action('finished_doing_tagging', $object->ID);

-Then my Strictly TweetBOT plugin uses the publish_post action to call a function CheckAndPostTweets which checks for the existence of AutoTags to decide whether to wait for the end of tagging or to run ASAP.

add_action( 'publish_post', array($this, 'CheckAndPostTweets') , 999);

This function works out whether AutoTags is installed.

If not it just runs and sends the tweets.

If it is installed then it adds our PostTweets function to the finished_doing_tagging hook/event.

if($strictly_auto_tags_active ){

	// AutoTags is active - have we tweeted already?

	$tweeted_already = get_post_meta($post_id, 'strictlytweetbot_posted_tweet', true);

	if(!$tweeted_already){
		// Strictly AutoTags is loaded so wait until the finished_doing_tagging event fires for $post_id

		// hook post_tweets into our finished_doing_tagging HOOK/EVENT
		add_action('finished_doing_tagging',array($this, 'PostTweets'),99,1);
	}else{
		// Strictly AutoTags is loaded but we have already tweeted! so RETURN FALSE!

		return;
	}
}else{

	// no Strictly AutoTags and no tags/categories so just post tweets now for $post_id

	// just run normal tweet code
	$this->PostTweets($post_id);
}

Once Tweeting is complete I set some post meta to tell me that this post has had the tweetbot code run against it. Which you can see being used in the above code snippet to determine whether Tweeting has already run for this post.

// after tweeting we set the event strictlytweetbot_posted_tweet so we know we have posted tweets for this post id
add_post_meta($post_id, 'strictlytweetbot_posted_tweet', '1', true);

So somewhere I need to ask JetPack to get their Publicize code to run on the same hook I have e.g finished_doing_tagging.

Or (as I doubt they will change their code to fit in with MY plugins) arrange the order of events in such a way that I can fire their publicize function once my tagging is complete.

As for why their Publicize action is effecting the change of Posties posts from temporary posts to real ones I have no idea unless it’s my tagging plugin effecting it in someway.

If you have any ideas I would love to hear them.

Thanks!

Hi

I was just wondering if you could help me out as Jetpack (WP) have replied to me with the following email. It seems if I turn off their Publicize (Social Media Sharing) option I don’t get ANY problems with your Postie plugin. All emails go in, get posted, tagged and tweets go out. There are no long lists of draft posts with tmpTitle etc.

Why this effects your plugin I am not sure but the proof is in the pudding as they say.

The email I got back from Jetpack support after I explained what I was doing and the problems their plugin caused is below.

Hi Rob!

> Therefore I am thinking your plugin and others like it are doing calls on the
> publish_post hook and this is causing no tagging to be done or tweets to go out
> even if your social media posts go out.

Here’s what I suggest: have a look at the Publicize code (at least, what’s in the plugin, since a lot of Publicize happens on the WordPress.com side of things).

https://github.com/Automattic/jetpack/blob/master/modules/publicize/publicize.php#L68

We hook into the transition_post_status hook; when a post goes from draft or unsaved to Published, that’s when we start saving the related Post-meta as you mentioned.

If you don’t find an adequate place in the plugin that you can hook into for what you’re doing with your own plugins, then please open up an enhancement request here:

https://github.com/Automattic/jetpack/issues/new

and specify that you’d like a hook added to the plugin, and where exactly.

Does that help?

So as I know Jetpack is the problem I am wondering if you have any ideas about new hooks that I could request.

Turning off the Jetpack Publicize option has totally fixed the tmpTitle tmpPost issue and all posts are going on to the site fine now.

However this means I am missing out on content going to numerous social media outlets.

As I link my Twitter account to Facebook I still have those two working due to my plugin Strictly TweetBot however I think the issue is how my plugins, yours and Jetpacks Publicize interact. What and Why I have no clue. All I can give you is details of how my own plugins interact and run once your Postie plugin makes them live from the emails I send in.

I have an AutoTagger Plugin (Strictly AutoTags) that the save_post action fires (draft/publicize) to tag the post.

Then after the tagging is complete I want Jetpacks Publicize event to fire sending out the messages to Google+, Tumblr, LinkedIn etc.

Due to the high number of tags I have on my site 25,000+ just changing the priority order doesn’t work to ensure tweets are sent out AFTER the tagging is done. On small sites it might. However I have to re-save the newly tagged and reformatted post back into the DB before calling my other plugin Strictly TweetBOT (that fires tweets using tags as #hashtags to numerous accounts).

So what happens is that after the post is saved I
-Open the post and do the tagging, re-save using SQL only
-Set a finished_doing_tagging action/event with the post_id so other plugins can run off it e.g my TweetBot

// fire my custom event so any plugin wanting to run when tagging is completed can now do so pass in the post ID as the parameter so others can use it
do_action('finished_doing_tagging', $object->ID);

-The Strictly TweetBOT plugin uses the publish_post action to call a function

add_action( 'publish_post', array($this, 'CheckAndPostTweets') , 999);

CheckAndPostTweets, which works out whether AutoTags is also installed. If not it just runs and sends the tweets. If it is then it adds our PostTweets function to the finished_doing_tagging hook/event

if($strictly_auto_tags_active ){

	// AutoTags is active - have we tweeted already?

	$tweeted_already = get_post_meta($post_id, 'strictlytweetbot_posted_tweet', true);

	if(!$tweeted_already){
		// Strictly AutoTags is loaded so wait until the finished_doing_tagging event fires for $post_id

		// hook post_tweets into our finished_doing_tagging HOOK/EVENT
		add_action('finished_doing_tagging',array($this, 'PostTweets'),99,1);
	}else{
		// Strictly AutoTags is loaded but we have already tweeted! so RETURN FALSE!

		return;
	}
}else{

	// no Strictly AutoTags and no tags/categories so just post tweets now for $post_id

	// just run normal tweet code
	$this->PostTweets($post_id);
}

Once Tweeting is complete I set some post meta to tell me that this post has had the tweetbot code run against it.

// after tweeting we set the event strictlytweetbot_posted_tweet so we know we have posted tweets for this post id
add_post_meta($post_id, 'strictlytweetbot_posted_tweet', '1', true);

So somewhere I need to ask JetPack to get their Publicize code to run on the same hook I have finished_doing_tagging. Or (as I doubt they will change their code to fit in with MY plugins) arrange the order of events in such a way that I can fire their publicize function once my tagging is complete.

As for why their Publicize action is effecting the change of your posts from temp posts to real ones I have no idea unless it’s my tagging plugin effecting it in someway.

Ideas?

Thanks – and anyone can pipe in if they want!!