Paypal sale not reflected in cart

[gman88]

I am using an older version of PrestaShop because I found a theme that myself and my business partner like - this is Version 1.3.4.0 9 (the theme would not work with newer versions). Here's the problem: I've enabled and configured the Paypal module and the thing appears to work in the sense that (1) you are given the option to pay with Paypal, and, (2) it redirects you, properly, to the Paypal web site to complete your transaction. I created an item that only costs one dollar and I have access to two, real Paypal accounts. So I am testing, but, in a live environment. I am just shooting a few bucks back and forth between the two accounts.

 

Here's what happens: I keep making one dollar purchases but absolutely nothing is happening in the cart. In the administrative back-end there is no record of a sale and, when I am returned (as a customer) to the website I still have the item that I just paid for in my cart. I have horsed with permissions on the paypal module (setting everything to 755, and, 777) but nothing helps. I found a page on the web that claimed to address this issue precisely - that is, Paypal payments not showing up in the cart. Among other things (which I've already tried) it said to check the following page:

 

http://www.yoursite..../validation.php

 

When I do this I get a completely blank white page - no errors in my log file and no php errors in my php log file (I run my own Unix server and have logging enabled for PHP). I'm not sure what I am supposed to be seeing, here, but perhaps this is relevant.

 

At Paypal I have a business account with the IPN feature disabled, which I believe is correct. Also, I had tested this in a sandbox account a few weeks ago and - in that case - I did get notifications but they all said "pending", as I recall (there were a lot of them and, with the aid of Google, I found a file I could edit that would add a "delete" button - now they're gone). I did have an htaccess file protecting the admin area, but I've removed it and it still doesn't work.

 

Editorially speaking it seems as if good documenation for this thing is sorely lacking; the majority of the things I find around the net seem as if they've been written by 14-year old kids - ambiguous, no punctuation, and generally hard to follow. If anyone has a clue, I'd really appreciate some input.