Reoccurring Paypal Subscriptions

What this does (added in first post)

With the current vbulletin subscription set up, it only charges your members one time. So if you have a pay based site, or forum area they have to keep subscribing, and causing them to waste time and effort (and maybe you lose money)

What this does, is give you the option if you want one time payment (standard vb) or reoccurring payment.

When you choose reoccurring the script has them sign up for a reoccurring payment, as paypal sends you confirmation each time you get a subscription payment, your system will now update their access time.

This will save your members from having to resign up all the time and hopefully save you some money


For instance, say you have a paying member?s only area, and you want them to have to pay $10 a month.

With this you can charge per month and it handles all the charges, and every month they send another payment automatically your script gets updated and sets their new expiration.


This has been asked for many times and IMO should have been in to begin with.

Enjoy and I will help as I can.

Note from the new supporter: This hack is now being actively supported again. I have updated the install instructions to work for version 3.0.7, and we can now begin to work out any existing bugs. This code is still raw and has not been tested extensively due to the difficult nature of testing paypal transactions.

[ashley53680]

I would love this for 3.5!

[contemptx]

anyone managed to get this working or is this hacknow dead and we dont have a recurring payment hack for 3.0.x?

it would be great to get this hack working as i find 3.5 hogs cpu usage.

[mfarmerhi]

Originally Posted by contemptx

anyone managed to get this working or is this hacknow dead and we dont have a recurring payment hack for 3.0.x?

it would be great to get this hack working as i find 3.5 hogs cpu usage.

For 3.0.x versions, I believe there's an error in the instructions for Step #3 Open includes/functions_subscriptions.php

I believe it should read:

		case 'paypal':
		$form['action'] = 'https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr';
		$form['method'] = 'post';
		/// Add In For Reacuring Payments
		$paypalextra = $DB_site->query_first("SELECT * FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "subscription AS subscription WHERE subscriptionid=$subscriptionid");
		if($paypalextra[reoccur]==0){// It is one time
		$form['hiddenfields'] = "
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"cmd\" value=\"_xclick\" />
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"business\" value=\"$vboptions[ppemail]\" />
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"item_name\" value=\"$title Subscription\" />
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"item_number\" value=\"$item\" />
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"amount\" value=\"$cost\" />
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"currency_code\" value=\"$currency\" />
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"no_shipping\" value=\"1\" />
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"shipping\" value=\"0.00\" />
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"return\" value=\"$vboptions[bburl]/$vboptions[forumhome].php\" />
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"notify_url\" value=\"$vboptions[bburl]/subscriptions/paypal.php\" />
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"custom\" value=\"$userinfo[username]\" />
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"no_note\" value=\"1\" />";

		}else{
		$form['hiddenfields'] = "
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"cmd\" value=\"_xclick-subscriptions\" />
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"business\" value=\"$vboptions[ppemail]\" />
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"item_name\" value=\"$title Subscription\" />
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"item_number\" value=\"$item\" />
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"currency_code\" value=\"$currency\" />
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"a3\" value=\"$cost\" />
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"p3\" value=\"$paypalextra[length]\">
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"t3\" value=\"$paypalextra[units]\">
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"src\" value=\"1\">
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"sra\" value=\"1\">
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"no_shipping\" value=\"1\" />
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"return\" value=\"$vboptions[bburl]\" />
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"notify_url\" value=\"$vboptions[bburl]/subscriptions/paypal.php\" />
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"custom\" value=\"$userinfo[username]\" />
			<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"no_note\" value=\"1\" />";
	
		}
			break;

As it was written, non-reoccurring subscriptions were not being updated by vB for Paypal users not using IPN; and subscriber were charged shipping. Further, as it was written Emails to the Admin didn't include the subscriber's names.

The updated code was taken directly from vB's original coding and, for the life of me, I can't see why it would have been changed in the if/else statement. The if/else statement takes care of non-reoccurring/reoccurring, but the coding for non-reoccurring should remain the same in either the hacked version or the non-hacked version. (Hope that makes sense...)

~ Mark

[mfarmerhi]

I'd like to ensure that this thread is linked to this thread discussing what the heck to do if you decide later to raise prices: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=73419

If you raise prices after installing the reoccurring hack, you'll have problems with everyone's subscription who subscribed BEFORE the price raise: because their auto subscription payments no longer match the new price, their subscriptions will fail, requiring them to re-subscribe.

In that linked thread I describe a down and dirty hack to prevent some of the problems.