In fact I'd chip in a good chunk, say like upto $2,000!

If we got 3 or 4 of us together to split it I think we could do it.

There is a hack some place that does this, but its not complete enough in my book. We could start with that (with permission) and make it more robust (user reporting, statements, credits, etc.)

So what is the project budget for this?
What is in the MUST have list and what is in the WISH list?

The way I see it is either you have it work on a credit system where the user buys credit points and then cashes them in to post, or the user creates his/her post and then is redirected to PayPal and once paid for the post goes into the moderation queue.

I think it should be a credit system, so users need only pay once, and we can give them a discount for buying in bulk. There would also need to be user reports that shows their account and which posts used a credit. Probably refunds too, etc.

I just realized that pay-per-post is not the top of the list for me, but I am still interested.

I'm more interested in a business directory.

Not sure what you mean by that.

For paid posts, are they only on a certain category or anywhere on the site?

As for refunds, as far as I know there is no easy way to write code to issue a PayPal refund without first installing their SDK which is not really worth it.

can someone get a up an entire feature list and how it should run and post it up or pm me it. I think I could get someone to do this.

Business Directory: An area of the site, organized in a Yellow Pages fashion (by offering), where people could post about their business. The posts would be presented in a structured way (logo, business name, location, description, etc.)

See examples at:
http://www.edirectory.com/
http://www.byregion.net/mainsearch/s...Acupuncturists
http://www.eclectichealth.net/prac_q...tic%20Massage&


This would be the area I would use the Pay-to-Post feature (So I AM interested in going in on this if we come up with a design that works for my application).

Users should be able to access a report of their account showing what credits they purchased, what posts they were used for, and any balance.

I would want to be able to "sell" different kinds of credits for posting different kinds of ads or different places at different prices.

The way I see it working is that we'd use the VB Paid Subscription interface. When VB receives the the Paypal notification of a purchase a record would be added to the user's payperpost account with the date, type and amount of credits purchased.

A PayPal refund notification (triggered by an action on the Paypal site, not the vb site) would add a negative purchase record. (Some thought would be needed to deal with the cases of if the credit had already been used for a post or not).

API calls should be available to:
- add credits of a given type (called by the payment gateway or manual interface "Add paid subscription")
- return the current balance of credits by type
- deduct one credit of a given type for posting a specified thread
- return email body of an account statement

There is an existing hack, I think by Calorie, that addressed this need, but as I remember, it was not supported and did not include statements or other essential features.

One option would be to find that hack and build upon it.

My application would use these credits for a certain about time for each post (ie running the post in the Business Directory for 6 months) and could also be used for renewing it. I imagine this level of support would be custom to my system, but it would be great is someone out there also had this need so we could share that code too!

Does this sound like an approach you'd be interested in? Any other ideas?

I could see making this hack available to the larger vb community (supported or un-supported) either as a paid/premium hack or possibly even free (perhaps partially crippled).

How serious (as in time and bucks) are you guys about developing something like this. I am very interested, particularly if I can go in on it with 1-3 other like minded webmasters and a seasoned vB coder. I can see getting started in earnest (developing a spec and locating a coder) in the next month or two.

Barry