PayPal Donations For vBulletin 3.5.0

Sorry Guys...I have disappeared from vB coding completely for the time being...RL is paying me $35/hour to ignore it lol. Hope you understand why I haven't been around...

Paypal Donations For vBulletin 3.5
Version 2.02b

Hack Provided and coded by )O( Cloudrunner )O( of The Noble Pagan.
Release version: 2.02b
Release Date: 03 July 2005

Change Log

Paypal Donations 2.02

• Fixed Bug introduced with the installer for the tables from 2.01
• Added Who's Online Support Plugins For Donations Script

Paypal Donations 2.01

• Fixed a small bug in the display of the top / last donors on the donate page.

Paypal Donations 2.00

• Ported system over to vBulletin 3.50
• Added ability for the installer to install template edits automatically
• System installs plugins automatically
• Fixed some minor bugs that were present in 1.07 of the 3.0.7 vBulletin donations system.

Special Thanks

Special Thanks goes to the following people, without their support, this would never have happened:

dsboyce8624
guvner
SLeeeper
And all of the Alpha Testers that helped out with this Hack!

I couldn't have done it without you all, Thank you!

)O( Cloudrunner )O(

What Paypal Donations Is:

Paypal Donations is a complete system that controls donations and how they are received via backend interfacing between your vBulletin server and Paypal's payment gateway server. The beauty of this marriage of servers is quite simply automation of the donation process as well as security of the transactions for both you, the administrator, and your users. With the Paypal donations system installed on your forums, you will be able to bring in that much needed income to not only keep your forums alive, but also to help defer costs of doing so to the users of your site without having to bug everyone and beg for money.

This seamless integration of Paypal as your backend payment processor not only provides your user with a well known and safe payment processor, but you are saved the hassle of opening a merchant account with your banking institution as well as saves you time in the process as it takes only a few short minutes to sign up with Paypal if you are not already an account holder there.

System Requirements

OS: vBulletin 3.5 (if you are running this already, then your server has the required installation, GD libraries are required, as well as CURL capabilities for this system to work)

Things To Do Before Installation

Direct File Edits To vB Resident Files: 1 (needed to group templates in AdminCP)
File Uploads: 34 (Of which 18 will be deleted after installation, leaving a total of 16 Files on your server)
Direct Database Queries: None, the installer does these for you
Direct Plugin Installation: None, the installer does these for you
Direct Template Modification: None, the installer installs all new templates, and modifies the resident templates as needed

The uninstaller will remove all modifications (to include the templates) should you decide to remove the system from your server.

How To Install / Upgrade Paypal Donations

Installation and Upgrading are as easy as a human like me could make it. Simply upload all the files from the archive to your server keeping the folder hierarchy intact and then point your browser to the installation file. On most servers it will be one of the following:

• http://www.yourdomain.com/admincp/donations_install.php
• http://www.yourdomain.com/forum/admi...ns_install.php

Just follow the prompts from there folks, the installer does all the database, template, plugin, phrasing, and settings automatically for you!

If you ever decide to remove the system, just upload the install files and folder again and run the installer and choose uninstall. The uninstaller will remove any and all modifications that it did to your files, database, and templates automatically as well. Its as easy as you can get!

Time to install: less than five minutes depending on your upload speed.

Steps To Perform After Installation

1. You must make sure that you have either a Business or Premiere account with Paypal.
   1. If you do not, then you will need to upgrade your Paypal account to that level before this system will work.
2. You must have Paypal's IPN (Instant Payment Notification) turned on in your Paypal Profile.
   1. You do not need to have it pointing at any particular file for this system to work as the system will tell Paypal where to send the IPN to credit your users and notify you of the transaction.
3. You will need to run through the donations settings at the end of the installer and make sure that you have all the required information in there.
4. Please note that this system can be placed into test mode (default setting is ON when system is first installed).
   1. This setting tells the system whether to speak with the real Paypal Server for transactions or with Paypal's Sandbox (testing) server. If you wish to test the system before going live you will need to have access to Paypal's Sandbox server, you can sign up for access there at: http://developer.paypal.com.
5. You will need to input your Paypal Account Email into the settings
6. You will need to input the full URL to your donate.php file so that your users can make it back to your site after payment
7. You will need to input the full URL to your ppverify.php file so that Paypal can send your IPNs to you and your system can process the information and give your users credit for the donation

License

Originally Posted by Brandon J. Briggs aka. Cloudrunner

As the original author of the Paypal Hacks for vBulletin 3.0.x and 3.5.x I give full authorization to modify, recode, compile and/or reverse engineer the paypal donation hacks to any and all fully licensed members of vBulletin.org. I also give permission to fully distribute any derivative works that are created due to this authorization without need of providing credit or other means of recompense.

I am releasing this authorization in the hopes that someone will be able to carry on the work that was begun.

Final words

You will need to add a link somewhere in your navigation system for vBulletin pointing your users to the donations page (if you installed the vBadvanced Module then you have a link on the home page, but you might want to add one in the nav bar as well), as well as setting up your paypal account to give IPN responses to you, you can do this in your Paypal Profile under Instant Payment Notification.

To play in PayPal's Sandbox you will need to be registered with their developer network and setup a few sandbox accounts to play with the sandbox properly. I have throughly tested the sandbox functionality, and it is working until they decide to change coding standards again.

I sincerely hope that you enjoy this hack, Please feel free to send feedback to tnp@noblepagan.com !

Thank you!

)O( Cloudrunner )O(

P.s. Should you feel the need to donate to me in thanks, I will not stop you , in fact I will say thank you and that your support is greatly appreciated. If you do donate to me for this hack, I will give the recognition here as well as on The Noble Pagan. You can find my donations page here (also works as a demo site should you feel the need to check it out):

The Noble Pagan Donation Page

[mikehawk]

Finally installed but that was a +++++ to install..... a lot of things are forgotten in the instructions such as navbar coding and switching VBULLETIN to lowercase in the .xml.

Nothing against the coder though; it's a solid hack. Good work. :squareeyed:

[Chief Corn]

sinister, paypal module looks good. works on left column. thanks.

any solution to the ppverify.php error?

[DS MrSinister]

Originally Posted by Chief Corn

sinister, paypal module looks good. works on left column. thanks.

any solution to the ppverify.php error?

I think ppverify.php file has something todo with donate.php file. not 100% sure or not.

[RGSMDNR]

i need some coding help here. i have this running currently on my site. what conditional would i type in so that once a user donates, the google ads are gone.

thanks!

[davidw]

Originally Posted by Chief Corn

i get the database error when i view the ppverify.php file in the browser. i searched the thread for ppverify and seen others that had the problem but couldn't find any solutions. in my paypal profile i have ipn set to on and the link is right. any help?

http://www.lifeslashquit.com/forum/ppverify.php

I get the same issue - how I found out is that I got an email regarding a database error (guess because someone tried to send me paypal)...

Database error in vBulletin 3.5.1:

Invalid SQL:
INSERT INTO vb_donation_paypalipn (
MySQL Error  : Duplicate entry '*****************' for key 1
Error Number : 1062
Date         : Friday, November 11th 2005 @ 05:40:19 PM
Script       : http://www.***************.org/ppverify.php
Referrer     : 
IP Address   : ***.***.***.***
Username     : Unregistered
Classname    : vb_database

The ppverify.php says:

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, **********@christianboards.org and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

[Chief Corn]

Originally Posted by christianb

I get the same issue - how I found out is that I got an email regarding a database error (guess because someone tried to send me paypal)...

Database error in vBulletin 3.5.1:

Invalid SQL:
INSERT INTO vb_donation_paypalipn (
MySQL Error  : Duplicate entry '*****************' for key 1
Error Number : 1062
Date         : Friday, November 11th 2005 @ 05:40:19 PM
Script       : http://www.christianboards.org/ppverify.php
Referrer     : 
IP Address   : ***.***.***.***
Username     : Unregistered
Classname    : vb_database

i took a look in phpmyadmin to see what this dupe entry was and there's a line with just 0's in it so i deleted it. checked ppverify.php and it was a blank white page like how it should be. then i went back to phpmyadmin to see the line with 0's was there again and ppverify.php was doing the error again. maybe in ppverify.php the delete sql query command can be added to it, but i don't know where that would go.

[davidw]

I had to edit that link in the database error - when its clicked - I get an email with the database error.

[SlaPPiE]

Running 3.5.1. Appeared to install smoothly, found fix for AdminCP menu in this thread, but now when I goto Edit Options in the User CP, the following error is thrown at the top of the page (directory location edited, BTW)

Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_ENCAPSED_AND_WHITESPACE, expecting T_STRING or T_VARIABLE or T_NUM_STRING in .../profile.php(2702) : eval()'d code on line 66

followed up by a lack of content on the page.

[divided_by_fear]

this is a nice mod but if you look in your profile (Last Activity: Today )member.php will be all along the side instead of the bottom... is there a way to fix that?

[Mith]

Originally Posted by divided_by_fear

this is a nice mod but if you look in your profile (Last Activity: Today )member.php will be all along the side instead of the bottom... is there a way to fix that?

If I remember correctly, this only happened to me when i reinstalled paypal donations.. the install script created the donations stuff in MEMBERINFO Template a second time...

I have found the easiest way to search for anomolies is to highlight all the text in a given template, and copy and paste it into frontpage... you can then get a good grasp (although not always perfect looking) of what your template is doing graphically (and also change the way your template looks very easily)