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

[Trickle]

Thanks for the fast responce Gear. Ok upon further review of my problem I took at look at the message that was given.

Invalid SQL:
INSERT INTO donation_paypalipn (

I ended up uninstalling it and reinstalling the hack...carefully watched the template donation_paypalipn when it was installed and was successfull. Went through setting up the goal and buttons again and tested the ppverify.php and now I am the proud owner of a white blank screen. So my thinking is the donations_paypalipn template was corrupted and couldn't be read/accessed. Gonna play with it when I get off work and send some cash through to see if it truely is fixed.

This is my second install for this hack and I got spoiled on the first one cause that one too only took me 10 mins to install.

As for a lot of hacks.....I just the double nav bar.

Thanks
Trickle

EDIT : Well that blows my theory all to hell. I just tried donating $1 and the transaction went through to paypal alright but I got no recognition that there was any donation made. Figuring I had a bench mark to work off of I checked out the other site where I first installed this and successfully got it working and it still works 100%. But I did a check on the ppverify.php and I'll be a monkey's uncle......(slaps face like Curly on the 3 Stooges) this is what I got

Invalid SQL:
INSERT INTO donation_paypalipn (

and yet it works. I am more lost then when I started and I am by no means a coder.

Edit Again
Ok I found that if you try to test your ppverify.php it ends up creating a dead link which in turn gets you the error that I've been making above. I've access the db and deleted it and it comes back every time I try it out ie .com/ppverify.php So I am completely in the dark as to why I now have 2 sites with the same hacks with no errors on either and yet one works the way it should and the other does not. Still not recognizing the members that donated or adjusts my goal at all.
Next step is to uninstall everything and delete all templates and .xml and start over. Wish me luck

[titodj]

Originally Posted by GearTripper

read this post... HERE (just several posts up!). you need to edit your .xml file.

Thank you VERY MUCH!!! great !!!

[cmiller1014]

So is it safe to assume if I had this on 3.0.7, and it remains in the database but files are gone - and now I want to use it AGAIN - I need to read all 59 pages ?

Sounds like it doesnt work but maybe there are fixes buried in th 59 pages? In cases like this, cant someone just release a new, working version?

[dxguru]

Originally Posted by GearTripper

do you want to remove their complete donation transaction, or just their Donor "badge"? either can be done without a CRON job via the AdminCP or database repectively.

Just remove the donor badge, but I want it to happen automatically.

cron job runs daily
selects all users that are currently donors
checks their latest donation and compairs the datetime of the donation + x seconds per cent of donation with the current datetime.
if its less then 0 the user.donor flag

[DS MrSinister]

Originally Posted by cmiller1014

So is it safe to assume if I had this on 3.0.7, and it remains in the database but files are gone - and now I want to use it AGAIN - I need to read all 59 pages ?

Sounds like it doesnt work but maybe there are fixes buried in th 59 pages? In cases like this, cant someone just release a new, working version?

try this

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=707

[Ryan McBain]

Originally Posted by GearTripper

when upgrading vB, it installs fresh copies of files that this hack originally edited during the install. you'll have to you the xml plugin provided earlier to get everything to show again. i think it's back around page 15 or 16.

I got it working again by just reinstalling everything. I when I upgraded to 3.5.3 I lost everything. I know I'm missing something, can someone point me in the right direction and tell me what to do when I upgrade to the next VB? I'm sure its something simple.

[Trickle]

Does anyone actually know coding? I mean its one thing to know how to fix a broken link but its another to understand why and how it got broken. I'm trying to find out why the ppverify.php is not working, (if that is my problem) why the hack works perfectly in every other aspect except in my eyes but the most glorified part letting the members brag a little to let everyone know that they donated doesn't. This is a great hack but useless to me if this function does not work.

Is there someone or somewhere that we can take this and show them this so they can fix it and make it install and run a lot smoother?

Trickle

[grrlburn]

I read through 60 pages and it is possible I missed it, but the two places on my donate page that show the total donated do not match up. I know the reason why, because I manually add several donors who send checks instead of going through Paypal, so I can update the amount towards the goal in the goal section of the admin, but I cannot find where to update the header that says

We have collected a total of $xxxx since Jan 2006

At the top of the page. Where could I do this?

Thanks!

[Lucas]

I don't see any menu on the admincp, so I can't configure more than the options? What can I do?

[Trana]

Originally Posted by LucasG

I don't see any menu on the admincp, so I can't configure more than the options? What can I do?

This has been asked and answered about 10 times in this thread. Please reread it.