Miscellaneous Hacks - Donation Goal Thermometer Forum Block addon for Donation Manager

**This is an addon for the Donation Manager addon if installed as below.**

I've been waiting for something that will be an all-in-one donation system such as the Cyb Paypal Donate for vBulletin 4 but can't wait any longer. I really needed a donation goal monitor as it encourages people to donate who otherwise do not.

I like the features of the Donation Manager addon and decided I would search for some sort of script that would enable me to display donation progress. I found this free script: http://www.arkie.net/~scripts/thermometer/

I have implemented a basic method to display donation progress through both of these scripts. It is a manual process to update donation progress but the Cyb Donate plugin was as well.

DEMO: You can see my implementation in action at http://www.puritanboard.com/forum.php

Instructions
1. Download thermometer.php and upload that into your forum root.
2. Create a new Forum Block

a. AdminCP -> Forums & Moderators -> Forum Blocks Manager
b. Click Add Block
c. Block Title: Donate (or Support Us)
d. Active: Yes
e. Content Type: HTML
f. Content

PHP Code:

<img hspace="10" align="left" border="0" src="thermometer.php?Current=0&Goal=250&Width=100&Height=100&Font=2">
<br><br>
<form action="donate.php" method="post"> 
<input type="submit" value="Donate" class="newcontent_textcontrol"> <br /> <br> 
</form> 


g. BEFORE YOU SAVE, you must configure the thermometer in the Content block. All the settings are within the img attributes and you don't need to touch the thermometer.php file. Notice that img has the following src value:

thermometer.php?Current=0&Goal=100&Width=50&Height=100&Font=2

(1) Current=current donations received
(2) Goal=donation goal
(3) Width=width of the thermometer
(4) Height=height of thermometer
(5) Font=size of font from 1...whatever
(You can experiment with these settings but I found a width of 50 and Height of 100 with a font size of 2 makes my thermometer about right)

Once you save the Forum Block you can position it in your Block order. When you receive donations you simply edit the forum block and update the Current= value. It's not perfect but it's better than having no goal meter. When the user clicks on the Support Us link he is taken to the Donation System which allows him to donate.

ALTERNATIVE IMPLEMENTATION

You can set up the forum block to allow the user to select pulldown dollar amounts. I don't know how to pass the variables that the donation system uses or I would use them in my block. This block requires a bit more editing to get it working for your site.

Follow the same instructions as above but in the Content Block replace all with:

PHP Code:

<img hspace="10" align="left" border="0" src="thermometer.php?Current=6&Goal=400&Width=50&Height=100&Font=2">
<br>
<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post"> 
<input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick"> 
<input type="hidden" name="business" value="email@doman.com">
<input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD"> 
<select name="amount"> 
<option value="10">$10</option> 
<option value="20">$20</option> 
<option value="50">$50</option> 
<option value="100">$100</option> 
<option value="500">$500</option> 
</select> 
<input type="hidden" name="no_shipping" value="1"> 
<input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="1"> 
<input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US"> 
<input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-BuyNowBF"> 
<input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="Forum Donation"> 
<input type="hidden" name="cancel_return" value="http://www.forumdomain.com/donate.php?do=fail"> 
<input type="hidden" name="return" value="http://www.forumdomain.com/donate.php?do=success"> 
<input type="hidden" name="rm" value="2"> <br /><br /> 
<input type="submit" value="Donate" class="newcontent_textcontrol"> <br /> <br> 
</form> 


Set:
- Thermometer values as before
- email@domain.com to your paypal e-mail address
- value="USD" to a different currency if you want to accept by another currency
- option values to the amounts you want to donate and set the values between the option tags to the currency you want
- value="US" to your country
- value="Forum Donation" to what you want displayed in the paypal cart when the user donates
- forumdomain.com to your forum domain (there are two and they are the success and fail pages of the Donation System plugin)

[SemperFideles]

By the way, within 30 minutes of installation last night I had 2 donations.

[VonDoom]

This looks pretty interesting, i also couldn't wait for my premium donations module to be updated so had to find alternatives of my own. Fortunately since i found a great alternative i don't need this but wanted to comment and give you props for putting this together. *Rated*

[Bouncer222]

Any chance of a nicer image instead of that red ugly themometer?
Thanks.

I hope that the donation system coder will implement a donate meter in his addon because it should do it automatically and its a great need for a site because it motivates donations.

[SemperFideles]

Originally Posted by Bouncer222

Any chance of a nicer image instead of that red ugly themometer?
Thanks.

I hope that the donation system coder will implement a donate meter in his addon because it should do it automatically and its a great need for a site because it motivates donations.

If you can find a "prettier" thermometer then I'm willing to update the code. It's the only one I could find that allowed me to update the status easily. It might not be the prettiest thing but it auto-generates the image and is free for use.

[Bouncer222]

Well can the themometer be made on photoshop? Or does it have to be specifically made with the code or something?

[SemperFideles]

Originally Posted by Bouncer222

Well can the themometer be made on photoshop? Or does it have to be specifically made with the code or something?

It depends on the amount of work a person wants to put into a donation bar and how much fidelity you want for it. The short answer is "Yes" I could have chosen to make a killer Photoshop Thermomether and made 100 images for each percentage of the thermostat's rise. I could have made 1000 images if I wanted to show it in .1% degrees. I could have then made several variants for the various heights and widths that people might want to choose.

Then people could have taken out their calculators to figure out how much of their goal is achieved when the user contributes $15 and their goal is $400 for the month and selected the correct image to display.

BUT

I'm a Marine with four kids and a lot of other work to do. I wanted a simple solution that got the job done and was sharing how I implemented.

So, if you think it's "ugly" then you're welcome to put the work into figuring out a way to make it pretty but it works for me given the time I was willing to devote to the task.

[Bouncer222]

oh I didn't mean any disrespect by that, sorry if it came out that way, I was just curious that if you create a new image, does the code somehow have to be modified to suit that image. that is all. And thanks again for the release of this

[lazydesis]

thanks for the nice mod

An unrelated question. Would you be kind enough to tell us how you were able to put the sidebar on forumdisplay in your site, please?

[SemperFideles]

Originally Posted by Bouncer222

oh I didn't mean any disrespect by that, sorry if it came out that way, I was just curious that if you create a new image, does the code somehow have to be modified to suit that image. that is all. And thanks again for the release of this

No problem. You weren't insulting me by the fact you thought it ugly but the person who wrote the code. The thermometer.php script generates the image and it would require a pretty complicated script, I imagine, to generate a more sophisticated looking image. I think it might be possible to use a script in conjunction with a nicer image and I've seen some nicer status indicators online but all the independently hosted script ones I've found are not free and this one is. That's why I mentioned you might be able to find something nicer.

Originally Posted by lazyindian

thanks for the nice mod

An unrelated question. Would you be kind enough to tell us how you were able to put the sidebar on forumdisplay in your site, please?

Everywhere Sidebar addon: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=233871