Testing Order Process
You have the capability to fully experience the cart process by testing your virtual storefront. You can fully simulate exactly what the customer sees when they purchase your software online. To "test drive" the cart, simply follow these instructions:
- Edit the Product ID record and check-mark the check-box labeled "Use Test CC No." (located in the Other Information section). This enables you to use a specially created SOLO Server-only test credit card number to "purchase" your product. By default, all new SOLO Server Authors are initially set up to use the SOLO Server test credit card number.
- Make sure that you are logged into the SOLO Server Author interface at the time you perform your testing activities. This is a security measure designed to prevent anonymous or otherwise unauthorized users from maliciously using the SOLO Server test credit card number to illegally purchase software products.
- Place an order using the normal Ordering URL that you intend to publish.
- At checkout time, use the following SOLO Server test credit card number: 4442780423232. Enter a CVV2 value of 000 and specify any future MM/20YY combination as the Expiration Date.
You will not be charged for any transactions using the test credit card number, as this results in the creation of test licenses which are subsequently deleted at the end of every month. Please DO NOT attempt to use this credit card number for legitimate transactions.
Test licenses are available for your development and testing needs as you may deem necessary, but test licenses should not be distributed to customers. At the end of each calendar month, all test licenses are purged from SOLO Server. In addition, any customer records which contain only test licenses will also be deleted. You will not be charged for creating test licenses.
All other non-test (or "live") licenses created in SOLO Server (regardless of how the licenses are created) will not be purged, however, and will result in account charges/fees being assessed to your SOLO Server account. There are various ways of creating non-test licenses, including, but certainly not limited to the following examples: Manually adding a license, processing an order without using the test credit card number, or performing web service calls.
To easily create a test license without going through the cart process, please refer to the Creating a Test License topic.
When testing the order process using a PayPal Payments Standard merchant account, please be aware that the SOLO Server test credit card (as described above) cannot be used for testing purposes, as the payment pages at the secure PayPal site are not equipped to recognize the SOLO Server test credit card number as a testing-only credit card number. Any PayPal Payments Standard transactions using the SOLO Server test credit card number will be unconditionally rejected. Instead, you will need to submit your test transaction using either a live PayPal account or a genuine credit card and then subsequently issue yourself a refund. If you are reluctant to put fairly large amounts on a live credit card, you might want to consider setting up a temporary Priority Code (established at the Product Option level) with an assigned value of $1.00 USD less than the actual retail price of your software product so that you end up charging yourself no more than $1.00 USD at checkout time.