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]

Originally Posted by Tyegurl

you mean to tell me that you all have never once asked for help? this is how you treat someone who does? incredible.

i'm not sure if this was directed towards me or not, but anyone should feel free to ask for help. remember that there are no stupid questions, just stupid people. your statements remind me of someone who has to do a project that has a book of instruction, but rather then read the instructions completely, you just jump right in and ask for help. there are many pages of instruction for this particular hack that should be read to avoid the same questions popping up over and over again.

[vbreal]

Originally Posted by GearTripper

i'm not sure if this was directed towards me or not, but anyone should feel free to ask for help. remember that there are no stupid questions, just stupid people. your statements remind me of someone who has to do a project that has a book of instruction, but rather then read the instructions completely, you just jump right in and ask for help. there are many pages of instruction for this particular hack that should be read to avoid the same questions popping up over and over again.

man 70 pages is alot to read. when u can just ask a question ad someone can answer it. i can see if it was 10 pages. when i first installed this i read pages 1 - 55 at least once some more. its alot of ish that don't even pertain to what u looking for. then by page 20 ur eyes are all watery and u tired and u may over look what u looking for. or u may not know enough
to realize u just read the answer. knowing what i know now that happened to me a lot when i first started.

[Tyegurl]

anyways back to helping people. just thought i would point out a little common decency and a little less rude would go a long way. i do knkow how to search and i searched and still had to ask....

searching is only as good as the keywords you use.....i searched for an error i got only to find out it didn't exist...but it really did.....found it in the posts word for word...and i put it in the search word for word....only thing is my error #...example "error 5678idon't" understand why i get this....that doesn't come up as error 5678 lol...anyways like i said...search is as good as the key words and the posts. secondly enough about petty little comments....

on to helping people if i can.

[SCRIPT3R]

Originally Posted by Real Talk

man 70 pages is alot to read. when u can just ask a question ad someone can answer it. i can see if it was 10 pages. when i first installed this i read pages 1 - 55 at least once some more. its alot of ish that don't even pertain to what u looking for. then by page 20 ur eyes are all watery and u tired and u may over look what u looking for. or u may not know enough
to realize u just read the answer. knowing what i know now that happened to me a lot when i first started.

kinda like how cell phones today have huge instructions BOOKS you have to read to understand everything. i guess people shouldn't read those either? how 'bout new digital cameras with huge instruction books - maybe nobody should read those? why do you think people take the time to write those instructions? why do you think soo many of us have taken the time to write out posts that solve 90% of all questions asked thus far? so that people can READ them and get the answers. i'm shocked this is such a difficult concept for soo many people.

[SCRIPT3R]

Originally Posted by Tyegurl

just thought i would point out a little common decency and a little less rude would go a long way.

as have i and many others multiple times already... now it's time for newbies to do their homework rather then just ask for the anwers... hell, the answers are already here - just search for them. as for your numerical error that didn't match up - each database is different and will produce a myriad of different error configurations. you just need to learn how to refine your searches to be more inclusive and less exclusive.

[Trana]

Honestly, if you want to install the hack, you can buzz through the 50+ pages of responses here. For any hack I now read the entire thread. There are a lot of details and cool recommendations in these threads that don't make it into the final code or install.txt.

It is a GOOD habit to develop, don't just install something based on the description and don't expect things to install and work right out of the box.

[jodycwilliams]

Great hack! installed and going!

[Tyegurl]

oh well obviously you two are content being snide. so be it.

i will gladly help if needed...and if i know how lol...

[jim6763nva]

Originally Posted by Rich

Hello,

If anyone needs it, here are instructions for adding links to your donations page.

It includes how to add a link to your navbar, quicklinks in navbar, and the footer.

See attachment for instructions.

If you have more ideas or want to know how to add links to other areas of the site, let me know via PM.

You might want to add to this -- how to add to the "Site Navigation" links block on the left since my main navbar is getting a bit crowded and I really don't want to add a second navbar right now.

Thanks,
Jim

[Tyegurl]

Originally Posted by jim6763nva

You might want to add to this -- how to add to the "Site Navigation" links block on the left since my main navbar is getting a bit crowded and I really don't want to add a second navbar right now.

Thanks,
Jim

how about a dropdown menu like "quicklinks" thats what i did...want the info for that?? i will post it.. just get rid of all the links you want n the navbar and add them to a dropdown instead...looks much nicer!