IMPORTANT: Action Required by all DAP users using Paypal
Earlier this year, Paypal announced that they will discontinue support for the HTTP 1.0 protocol starting February 1, 2013 and that this change could impact the ability of merchants to perform IPN validation. They’ve now officially announced that this is actually going to happen in a few days, on October 7, 2013.
Here’s a quote from Paypal’s recent, official bulletin…
Dear Customer, In a bulletin dated October 18, 2011, we announced that we were going to expand the number of IP addresses for www.paypal.com to improve our site’s performance, scalability and availability. As part of this transition, we planned to discontinue support for HTTP 1.0 protocol starting October 7, 2013. We have recently identified that this change may impact the ability of some of our merchants to perform IPN (Instant Payment Notification) post-back validation or PDT (Payment Data Transfer) posts to www.paypal.com and ipnpb.paypal.com. This happens when the IPN or PDT scripts use HTTP 1.0 protocol and do not include the “Host: www.paypal.com” or “Host: ipnpb.paypal.com” header in the HTTP request. Additional Details Starting October 7, 2013, we will require all incoming requests to have a “Host” header which complies with HTTP 1.1 Specifications. This header was not required under HTTP 1.0. IPN and PDT scripts using HTTP 1.0 may start failing with “HTTP/1.0 400 Bad Request” errors after October 7, 2013, which will result in IPN messages not being validated successfully, or PDT scripts not being able to retrieve transaction information.These changes to DAP scripts for Paypal compatibility are already included in DAP 4.4.3 / LL 1.8.3.2. So if you already are on 4.4.3, then no further action is required from you.
Impact of Paypal’s Changes
IMPORTANT: Please note that your actual Paypal Recurring and One-time Payments themselves will NOT BE AFFECTED at all by Paypal’s changes. Neither will your existing buy buttons be affected – those too will continue working just fine. And Paypal will still continue to charge your members as usual. Nothing changes as far as your actual subscription payments are concerned.
The only thing that changes: Just the ability of Paypal to notify DAP on your site properly and extend member access automatically, that is affected.
If Paypal doesn’t notify DAP correctly, then the access end dates of your members may not get extended automatically. So it is really more of an annoying maintenance issue, than anything else.
So if you’re not already on DAP v4.4.3, then now is the time to upgrade. You can find the DAP Version Number in the Footer Area of your DAP admin pages. You can find the DAP LiveLinks version in WP admin -> plugins.
These Are Your 4 Options
1) If you are already using DAP v4.4.3, then nothing further to do. You may stop reading now, leave this page and check out our newest plugin
-OR-
2) If you have access to the latest updates, but have simply been holding off on upgrading your DAP version, then now is the time to git ‘er done! :-). Once you upgrade your DAP installation to DAP 4.4.3 / LL 1.8.3.2, you will be all set.
-OR-
3) Your access has expired, and you would like to renew. That’s also probably why you don’t see the latest files for DAP v4.4.3 and LiveLinks v1.8.3.2 in the members’ area. You may renew your access to DAP support & upgrades by clicking here.
-OR-
4) Your access to DAP support & upgrades have expired, and you don’t wish to renew at this time. Like we mentioned above, your payments will NOT BE AFFECTED. Just the ability of Paypal to notify DAP and extend member access automatically, is what is impacted. So if you don’t wish to renew, you may just extend member access manually going forward. Absolutely nothing else changes.
Upgrading to DAP v4.4.3
WARNING: Please READ THIS BLOG POST before you upgrade to DAP 4.4.3 / LL 1.8.3.2. It lists all of the features added/improved. Read the ‘BEFORE UPGRADING’ section in the blog post before your upgrade.
If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to ask via the comments below.
Cheers!
– Veena Prashanth & Ravi Jayagopal
PS: As always, please leave your comments & thoughts below 🙂
PPS: We have a MASSIVELY cool new update about a brand new DAP Shopping Cart plugin coming out in just a couple of days. So stay tuned for that. And oh yeah, the plugin will be free for all current DAP users.
Additional Info
Click here to read the 4.4 beta announcement that lists all of the features added/improved
Click here for instructions about Upgrading DAP
If you think you should have access to the newest DAP version, but don’t, then please open a ticket and we’ll take care of it. Thanks!