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

[DS MrSinister]

I think memberinfo ,modifyoptions and the postbits ones.. not 100% sure on this..

[venomx]

Ok Looks like I wont be using this... I dont like to have templates auto edited...

[dxguru]

Would somebody please be able to write a cron job script that would reset the user.donor flag after x seconds per cent of donation?

Although we all accept whatever donations we get greatfully, I think it's unfair that a person who donated 1cent 6 months ago is still recognised as a donor.

Thanks in advance

[Trickle]

Originally Posted by GearTripper

both of these questions have been answered a few times already in this thread. you have to fix your ppverify.php and you have to add a link to the donate page into your navbar. detailed instructions are made available in a zip'd package found a couple pages back.

I've gotta call you out on this one. I've read all 59 pages and see that this issue has been raised numerous times but no one has come out with a precise answer on how to fix this.

Database error in vBulletin 3.5.3:

Invalid SQL:
INSERT INTO donation_paypalipn (

Everything works except the members recognition on the paypal donation page and the CMPS page along with the donation goal is not affected.
Trust me, I have read all 59 pages and I've seen your posts about deleting a double blank transaction via myphpadmin. Can someone please tell me the solution to this or at least if you've seen it in here and I've missed it please post the thread or post #

Thanks
Trickle

[titodj]

I dont know what am I doing wrong I made the instalation severat times and check and doublecheck all the steps and all seems to go with out a glitch until I go to the admin panel and there is nothing there new, (Paypal donations menu)...
I really dont have a clue .... Any ideas???

[SCRIPT3R]

Originally Posted by Trickle

I've gotta call you out on this one. I've read all 59 pages and see that this issue has been raised numerous times but no one has come out with a precise answer on how to fix this.

Database error in vBulletin 3.5.3:

Invalid SQL:
INSERT INTO donation_paypalipn (

Everything works except the members recognition on the paypal donation page and the CMPS page along with the donation goal is not affected.
Trust me, I have read all 59 pages and I've seen your posts about deleting a double blank transaction via myphpadmin. Can someone please tell me the solution to this or at least if you've seen it in here and I've missed it please post the thread or post #

Thanks
Trickle

ok, what i should've said was that although the ppverify issue is a common problem (but not for everyone), there is no definate fix for it. make sure you have your IPN set at Paypal, that you're not in sandbox, that you have the correct type of paypal account (not personal), that you have the correct ppverify.php page loaded and linked to correctly in the AdminCP Paypal Donation settings, etc. also note, this hack is not friendly with other hacks so if you have a heavily hacked board, you may have problems. on a clean vB install, i can get this hack up and running withing ten minutes with zero problems any day of the week. as for adding the donation link, yes that has been answered a million times with an instructional walk-through zip attached in a few posts. you need to add a donation link somewhere on your site, most often in the navbar. as for the donation goal not being affected... that again could be the result of a many things. the vBA module itself is not perfect and has its flaws. or it could be something simple like the module not being linked to the goal. if all your checks and rechecks fail and your positive that your paypal account is set up correctly, i'd be willing to take a look at your settings. just PM me an account username w/ login that has apporpriate access. i'll have some freetime this afternoon 2:30 - 4:00PM (PST).

[SCRIPT3R]

Originally Posted by titodj

I dont know what am I doing wrong I made the instalation severat times and check and doublecheck all the steps and all seems to go with out a glitch until I go to the admin panel and there is nothing there new, (Paypal donations menu)...
I really dont have a clue .... Any ideas???

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

[SCRIPT3R]

Originally Posted by dxguru

Would somebody please be able to write a cron job script that would reset the user.donor flag after x seconds per cent of donation?

Although we all accept whatever donations we get greatfully, I think it's unfair that a person who donated 1cent 6 months ago is still recognised as a donor.

Thanks in advance

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.

[Ryan McBain]

fixed it nevermind

[SCRIPT3R]

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.