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

[SCRIPT3R]

i'm not sure what else to suggest. have you verified that your host meets ALL of the minimum requirements for this hack? verify the CURL support is available... that's the most common requirement that host might not provide that would disable this hack... and just to be on the safe side, can you post your CURL information here. would you also post a screenshot of your Paypal's IPN screen.

also, for anyone else wondering... this hack DOES work for 3.6.x versions of vB.

:banana:

[Skelp]

Here's a copy and paste of my PayPal IPN page contents:

Instant Payment Notification Preferences Back to Profile Summary
PayPal's Instant Payment Notification (IPN) allows you to integrate PayPal payments with your website back-end operations.

Instant Payment Notification (IPN) On
Instant Payment Notification (IPN) URL: http://www.fsfta.com/ppverify.php

and here is the curl informaiton:

CURL support enabled
CURL Information libcurl/7.15.3 OpenSSL/0.9.7a zlib/1.2.1.2 libidn/0.5.6

Am I the only one having a problem with this??
If all this thing can do is accept donations and not actuallu give th einfo it's supposed to I might as well unload all the bulky crap that's supposed to work but doesn't and just add my own link to a custom donation page with a simply PayPal Donations button on it.....
Very frustrating......

EDIT: OK... I just took a look at my MyPHPAdmin and the tables for the donation thing don't look right to me....
On normal tables, say like my forum User table.. across the top it has the field names and such then under the field names it has the corresponding information such as username, userID, user e-mail, etc....
But in the donor tables the field names are down the left side with no info in them..... Could this be the problem? I might ust be grasping at straws but this thing is just frustrating the heck out of me....

Oh and Gear.... thatnk you very much for sticking with me on this problem. You've gone totally above and beyond on this. I'm wondering if you might be able to fix this if you had certain access to anything that might be able to help you.. if so please let me know...

[SCRIPT3R]

Skelp- have you tried installing this on a barebones test board installation? i noticed you have an Arcade hack installed that might be interfering with this hack. other then that, everything that i'm able to access looks spot-on. there's nothing else i would be able to look at outside of the AdminCP and/or your FTP directories. if you want to post some screenshots of your PayPal Donations settings, i'll take a look.

[SCRIPT3R]

Originally Posted by Skelp

EDIT: OK... I just took a look at my MyPHPAdmin and the tables for the donation thing don't look right to me....
On normal tables, say like my forum User table.. across the top it has the field names and such then under the field names it has the corresponding information such as username, userID, user e-mail, etc....
But in the donor tables the field names are down the left side with no info in them..... Could this be the problem? I might ust be grasping at straws but this thing is just frustrating the heck out of me....

that sounds correct; should look something like this...

[Skelp]

Ummm eheh should look something like what Gear?? hehehehe

Also, I just gave ya Admin status and privledges at the site.. at least I HOPE it's you ehhehe... so you can check things out...
If you need access to my database let me know...

[pgalore]

Originally Posted by Skelp

OK.. got all the files uploaded but now I am getting this error:
Database error in vBulletin 3.5.4:

Invalid SQL:
MySQL Error : Unknown column 'phrasegroup_ppdonations' in 'field list'
Error Number : 1054
Date : Thursday, June 8th 2006 @ 09:17:22 AM
Script : http://www.mydomain.com/admincp/plugin.php
Referrer : http://www.mydomain.com/admincp/plug...?do=productadd
IP Address : 72.38.179.70
Username : Skelp
Classname : vb_database



Just wondering here.... where it says username above.... is that supposed to be my database username? Cause it's not.. that's my forum username.

Dont feel bad I was having the saame errors and tried what you did and Im getting the same errors

[SCRIPT3R]

Originally Posted by Skelp

Ummm eheh should look something like what Gear?? hehehehe

Also, I just gave ya Admin status and privledges at the site.. at least I HOPE it's you ehhehe... so you can check things out...
If you need access to my database let me know...

i didn't get this until just now. i took a quick peak and noticed that your options are listed differently then i've seen with my installs. i have no idea how that would happen. was this installed with the product? other then that, your settings are fine from what i can see. i'll take another look in the morning when i'm not soo tired. also, PM me your username on that forum so i know who to contact when i'm there.

[Skelp]

Originally Posted by GearTripper

i didn't get this until just now. i took a quick peak and noticed that your options are listed differently then i've seen with my installs. i have no idea how that would happen. was this installed with the product? other then that, your settings are fine from what i can see. i'll take another look in the morning when i'm not soo tired. also, PM me your username on that forum so i know who to contact when i'm there.

Options are different? Hmm strange.. umm... I installed the version that cloudrunner has in the main post in this thread.... I'm gonna try to uninstall it though and reinstall using that version you linked me to earlier and see if that changes anything..... If i CAN install it that is ehehe... without getting those errors... I'll do that now...

[SCRIPT3R]

cloudrunner versions is flawed... definately use the product that i linked to above. don't forget to make the necessary template modifications. i'm logged into your site now, so just PM me over there when you're finished.

[Mikecp421]

I have installed this hack on 4 different boards with no problem in function at all, the thing I notice is that it has to be installed then reinstalled right over itself without deleting anything.