Miva Merchant SSL Connection Error
If you see "Error establishing SSL connection: certificate verify failed" in Miva Merchant, there might be an easy fix.
Keeping your Miva Merchant store up to date is the first step in resolving eCommerce SSL errors. Sometimes this means contacting your host or a module developer. Usually Miva Merchant and Miva Empressa updates are painless and quick.
by Scot Ranney
Miva Merchant is the most solid eCommerce platform out there, and like any complex system, it needs to be kept up to date.
Miva Merchant has three levels of technology that need to be kept up to date.
Level 1 - Miva Merchant Updates
There's a popup box and an update button that unambiguously lets you know when it's time to update Miva Merchant. It's a hands off routine. You click the buttons and Miva Merchant updates itself. Updating the Miva Merchant software is your choice but usually the updates include enhancements, bug fixes, stability fixes, and other updates that enhance the administrative and customer experience.
Level 2 - Miva Empressa Updates
Miva Empressa is the engine behind your website that runs miva script files, the files that make the Miva Merchant software. Store owners are not expected to update Miva Empressa on their own. It's a complicated process that happens behind the scenes by your web host.
Out of Date Miva Empressa Will Cause SSL Errors
If your site is not running the latest Miva Empressa (3.32 at this time) then you will most likely experience SSL errors. It could happen when you're logging into the admin, it can also happen in modules that are doing license look ups which will give you errors like this:
Runtime error in mm5/5.00/modules/util/amp.mvc @ [0000005b:0000007e]: Y:webmm55.00modulesutil_license.mv: Line 243: MvCALL: Unable to open URL 'https://www.scotsscripts.com/license/': Error establishing SSL connection: certificate verify failed
The important part is Error establishing SSL connection: certificate verify failed
This tells us that either the remote site has a bad secure certificate or that your site can not communicate with the most up to date secure certificates.
How To Debug and Fix Miva Merchant SSL Errors
The first thing to do is check the version of Miva Empressa that you are running by clicking the "home" link in you Miva Merchant admin. You'll see a small box in the right sidebar that will tell you what version of Miva Empressa you're using.
If your site is running a version of Miva Empressa that is less than 3.32, contact your host immediately and ask them to update Miva Empressa on your site to the latest version.
In the image below, the Miva Merchant SSL problems were caused by an old version of Miva Empressa (5.24) and once the host updated to 5.32 the errors went away.
Level Three - Module Updates
There are times that older modules must be updated to stay current with the technology Miva Merchant is using. If your site is completely up to date and a Miva Merchant module is still giving you SSL error, or any other strange errors, then you must contact the module developer and give them a bug report. Some developers will deal with the problem quickly (like us!) and others will completely ignore you (like some I probably shouldn't name.) If you can't get a response from your module developer, let us know and we'll see what we can do to help.
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