PayPal Donations (Resurrected) for vB 3.0.7

[Cloudrunner]

This is a complete redux of my now two year old donations hack for 2.3.x. I have completely recoded this from scratch to work with both vB3.0.7 and Paypal's newest IPN (1.7 currently).

What it does:
Quite simply this hack provides you a way to receive donations from your website's users and provide them with the recognition deserving of a donating member of you community. It uses Paypal exclusively for the time being because of Paypal's "Instant Payment Notification" system.

The basics are this, your users go to your donations page where you have certain levels of donations available via hyperlinked "buttons". These buttons take your user to paypal's secure payment processing system where they pay you your donation. Once payment has been received, paypal sends your server a notification containing certain information pertaining to that specific transaction. Your server then repeats this information to the verification server (which is hardcoded into the system so that *spoofing* is rendered virtually impossible) which first checks to see if the information was sent by it, then checks the validity of the information. If everything checks out, it then sends your server a response of "VERIFIED". When this hack see that word after running the script it inserts all the information into your database so that you can see what was donated, who donated it, and where.

If the server returns a response of "INVALID" then this script drops the information into a separate table so that you can investigate the transaction further to detect fraud attempts. It also does this on any suspicious entries after a few checks. Once payment is verified and information has been inserted into the tables, the system then adds a few toys and items for the user to be recognized as a donating user. What you do with that recognition is up to you.

The side effects of this script are that you can also see when transcations are pending, refunded, reversed, etc, and the reasons why. I am still coding the back end to sort these functions, but the ability is there now.

Features:

• You as the admin have the ability to show as little or as much as you want about what happens with your donations.
• Your users will only see what you want them to see.
• You can show your donation goals to the public.
• Automatic updates EVERY time a user donates or retracts a donation.
• This can be run in "dummy" test mode using Paypal's Sandbox site for testing purposes before you go live with it.
• User selectable currency to pay in
  • System calculates the price in the user's currency based on today's exchange rate for that currency to yours
  • Daily CRON to update currency exchange rates

**Coming Soon**

• Your members who have donated are recognized for doing so in the memberlist and their postbit.
• Postbit Awards for certain levels of donations that you decide on
  • User has the ability to choose whether they receive the awards recognition

Stuff you have to do:
Files to upload: 5
Files to modify: 2
Templates to modify: 0 (for now)
Queries to run: (The install script does this for you, uninstallation is also provided as well)
Ease of install: easy, simply follow the instructions in the install script.
Time of install: ~5 minutes

***REMEMBER! Add your email address that Paypal has on file in Donations settings. This step is not an option, your payments, although they may be valid, will all be considered invalid if you do not do this! Sign up for Paypal's Premiere Account (Business), and setup IPN.

PayPal Registration:
You will need to register with Paypal for a premiere account if you have not already, if you have, but your account is probably a personal account, you will need to upgrade the account to a premiere account. Assuming that you have a premiere account and have been verified, you then go into your profile at http://www.paypal.com and the select Instant Payment Notification. There will be a checkbox that you must check, and an inputbox where you will need to place your script file. Simply place your entire URL to the paypal.php file there.

On most systems it will be either:

http://www.yourdomain.com/donate.php

or

http://www.yourdomain.com/forum/donate.php

That's all there is to setting up Paypal to work with your site!

If you are going to play in PayPal's sandbox (yes that functionality is in this script too) you need to have a developer access to their sandbox. More information can be found at paypal.com, I'm not going to go into large details, we're all big kids and can figure that part out ourselves .
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This is currently in Alpha Stages. This is for the few who are helping me on this give feedback until Beta, when Beta is reached I will post the zip here for full public testing (I don't see this taking more than a week or two, seriously).

Thank you for your understanding.

)O( Cloudrunner )O(

[trackpads]

Excellent! I will install this and test it out, just something I was looking for!

-Jason

[Trana]

Very cool! Is there a demo online?

[Cloudrunner]

Not one that can be public due to licensing restrictions, but there will be screenies shortly.

[DS MrSinister]

Nice.. I cant wait to see them... :smoke:

[Cloudrunner]

Screenies of options both on and off

Image 1 -- All Options On
Image 2 -- No Currency Selector on Donation Buttons
Image 3 -- Donations Closed

[Cloudrunner]

Screenies of options both on and off

Image 1 -- Top Donators Turned Off
Image 2 -- Goals Turned Off
Image 3 -- No Options, Just the buttons and a thank you note.

[Cloudrunner]

And yes, we are phrased on the user-side of the house, AdminCP is not yet phrased...I'll get more pics of actual use up and admin side tomorrow.

The admin is still very CHEESY, but it's functional for now.

[guvner]

Hi Cloudrunner - looking really good

With the currency drop down, will your hack have the ability to set donations in Australian dollars (AUD)?

Thanks - Mike

[deta]

Where are the files?

cu deta