Troubleshooting¶

What goes wrong once Back In Stock is running, and what each symptom means.

If Back In Stock will not open at all (a blank page, or a bounce back to the dashboard), that is an install problem rather than a Back In Stock one. See troubleshooting an install.

Whatever the symptom, Back In Stock wrote down what it did and what it refused to do, in a file your own admin downloads in one click. See what Kyvero extensions log.

Nobody is receiving anything¶

Check the settings screen first. It carries every reason it knows about, in red, at the top: no mail engine, no postal address, nothing has swept, the sweep secret is empty, the module is off.

The usual cause is that nothing is calling the sweep. A product save sends the first batch for that product, and every batch after it needs the sweep. The screen says nothing has swept since… when three cycles have gone by, and again more bluntly when nothing has ever swept. Fix it with one of the three ways in keeping the sweep running, and press Send any alerts that are due now to catch up immediately.

Other reasons, in the order they are worth checking:

The module is off. Off is off: no form, no sending. Nothing is used up while it is off, so switching it back on mails everybody still waiting for something that is back.
The store cannot send email. No mail engine under System → Settings → Mail means the store sends nothing at all, ours included.
The mail server is refusing them. A refused alert is not counted as sent: the person stays waiting, the request is parked after three refusals, and the extension's log names the reason. Send yourself a test from the Wording section to see the same refusal on screen.
The thing is not actually buyable. Look at the Alert state column on the demand report or the product tab. It gives the sweep's own reason: quantity zero, below the minimum quantity, product disabled, not yet released, not in this store, or a required option beside it unavailable.
The batch is doing its job. With one alert per unit in stock, three units mail three people and the rest wait for the next batch, an hour later by default.
This is OpenCart 4.1.0.4. That release cannot run any scheduled task at all, for any extension. Use the sweep web address or the command line.

The capture form is not on the product page¶

The product is not out of stock, or the variant selected is not. The form appears only where a shopper cannot buy the thing.
Nothing is selected yet. On a product with options, the form appears once a selection resolves to a counter, and follows the selection as it changes.
Two option axes are both unavailable, for example Medium and Forest gone. The form is withheld deliberately and the page says why.
The counter is switched off on the product form's Back In Stock tab.
Preorder offers a pre-order for that counter. The shopper can buy it now, so the alert form is the wrong offer. This is per option value.
The theme's product page has no </form> after the Add to Cart button. Back In Stock needs that anchor and refuses rather than guessing, so the page renders as your theme wrote it and no form appears. There is nothing to configure; the theme has to carry it.

Somebody says they signed up and heard nothing¶

Look the address up on Catalog → Back In Stock. It answers all of this in one search:

State Pending: they never clicked the link in the confirmation email. Ask them to check their spam folder and sign up again; a sign-up they never confirm is deleted after seven days. Signing up again within 15 minutes of the last confirmation email sends nothing, so ask them to wait that long.
State Parked: three attempts to mail them failed, so the row was parked rather than destroyed. Retry puts it back on the list with a clean count.
A live suppression entry: that address asked never to be mailed again, possibly a long time ago. Only you can lift it, and lifting signs nobody up.
Nothing at all: no subscription, no suppression. Either they typed a different address, or the sign-up was for a variant they do not remember picking.

The confirmation emails are arriving in spam¶

Nothing about this extension is unusual to a mail provider, so the answer is the store's own mail setup: send through a real mail service rather than the server's mail() function, and make sure SPF and DKIM are set for the address the store sends from. Both are settings in OpenCart and in your DNS, not here.

Pending confirmation is climbing and nobody is confirming¶

That is what a script filling the form in with invented addresses looks like. Each of those costs the store one confirmation email carrying no offer and no price, and every one of the rows deletes itself after seven days.

There is no rate limit to turn on, and none is planned. See abuse for why. What you can do is switch on the store's own captcha under System → Settings → Option → Captcha and then tick Use the store's captcha on Back In Stock's settings screen. If no captcha extension is enabled, that setting protects nothing and the screen says so.

The settings screen says the install did not finish¶

Something interrupted the install. Remove the extension and add it again in Extensions → Extensions → Modules. Nothing is lost: no table is dropped and no row deleted, so the waiting list, the consent records, the suppression list, your settings and the sweep secret all come back.

The sweep web address answers Not Found¶

The secret in the address is wrong, empty or has been rotated. The web address never says which, so that nobody can use it to guess. Copy the address again from the settings screen and paste it wherever the old one was. Each refused call is written to the extension's log only while detailed logging is on.

The scheduled job disappeared¶

A cron entry deleted under Extensions → Cron Jobs comes back on the next install of the extension. To stop the scheduled sweep, switch the entry off rather than deleting it. A switched-off entry survives an update.

It is suppressed. The form says the same neutral sentence to everybody, because saying more would tell a stranger whether an address is on the list. Look it up on Catalog → Back In Stock to see the entry, and lift it if that is what the person asked for.