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Built Mighty
Seymour Duncan: Protecting Pre-Order Payments on a Live Store
While working at Built Mighty, I traced a silent payment failure on the Seymour Duncan WooCommerce store to a plugin update. Thirteen high-value pre-orders had gone without payment authorization for about two weeks. I identified every affected order for the business to resolve, fixed the underlying faults, and added automated checks to catch the problem if it ever returned.
What went wrong
Seymour Duncan sells guitar pickups and pedals, including products customers can pre-order before they ship. At checkout, the store is supposed to place a hold on the buyer’s card, then charge it when the product is released.
After a major update to the store’s payment plugin, that authorization step silently stopped working. Customers could still check out normally. There were no errors or warnings, and the plugin’s own health screen showed everything was fine.
The problem went unnoticed for about two weeks. It surfaced only when someone manually inspected a large pre-order priced at $5,999.
The pre-order fix
- I traced the missing authorization step to a specific change in the plugin update and found a second, separate fault in the same release. I fixed both.
- I identified all 13 affected pre-orders and handed the list to the business so it could resolve them.
- I built automated checks to verify that the pre-order payment steps remain connected after future updates. The plugin’s green status screen had shown that a separate check was needed.
Keeping the store running
- The pre-order problem was not the only production issue I handled.
- When the site began timing out, I traced a large share of its processing load to one abusive visitor. It was consuming about 38% of the site’s daily processing capacity. I blocked it at the hosting layer, and the site recovered.
- I fixed a marketing integration that had been crashing about 2,000 times a day and added protections against aggressive crawlers.
- I traced recurring server errors to two internal processes that were occupying the server’s limited workers during long-running jobs, using the live server logs to confirm the cause.
- I delivered 51 numbered releases of the store’s code, making each update traceable to a specific version.
The result
The first pre-order processed after the fix was held successfully, then released and charged for $5,999. The payment reached the company’s order system.
The business also received the list of all 13 affected orders to resolve. Automated checks now verify the pre-order payment steps after updates, while the other production issues were addressed and the store continues to receive traceable releases.
Tools I used, in plain words
WordPress and WooCommerce
The platform and shop software behind the store.
PHP
The programming language I used to fix the payment behavior and build the automated checks.
Git and GitHub
The version history and release system used to track changes and publish numbered updates.
Server logs and hosting tools
The records and controls used to investigate live problems and block abusive traffic.
Automated checks
Tests that verify important payment steps remain connected after updates.
Gallery
Screenshots
Select an image to enlarge it.
Other work
More projects
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