vBulletin LTS

Paypal Donations for vBulletin 3.0.7
Mod Version: 1.08, by Cloudrunner

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 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.

• 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.
• Your members who have donated are recognized for doing so in their profile and their postbit.
  • Your shy users have the ability to hide their donation status from public view in their profile options
• vBadvanced CMPS Module Integrated
• You can set Goals and have donations count for or against a specific goal
• Multiple Currencies are supported automatically and use TODAY's exchange rate to make the donation (vB Cron Enabled)
• Everything is controllable in the AdminCP
• User-side is 100% phrased
• System completely ignores any transaction not placed by it (i.e. Ebay transactions and other PayPal transactions are not included in your transaction history (cuts down on DB bloat)).
• Donate Button(s) PNG source provided (Image Credits go to SLeeeper, Thank you for the help!)
• You do NOT need to have paypal's IPN pointing at the system. The system tells Paypal WHERE to send the IPN transactions :-}

• Postbit Awards for certain levels of donations that you decide on
• Donation / Donor Categories

Files to upload: 34
Files to modify: 3
Templates to modify: 1 (required) / 2 (Optional)
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

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 https://www.paypal.com and the select Instant Payment Notification. There will be a checkbox that you must check, you do NOT have to point to the script at Paypal, if you choose not to do this, then you will need to make sure that your Notification URL is put in the settings or this script will NOT WORK!

On most systems it will be either:

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

or

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

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

Upload all the files in the archive into their provided directories

Run the provided install file, setup your settings, after installation, DELETE THE FILE!

This will usually be:

http://www.yourdomain.com/forum/admincp/donations_install.php

or

http://www.yourdomain.com/admincp/donations_install.php

To begin with, you simply upload all the files into their respective directories (keeping the structure in the archive).

After you upload the files, point your browser to the installation file: donations_install.php and run the installer all the way through, remembering to save your settings at the end (you MUST put in your paypal email, and the path to donate.php, and the path to ppverify.php). Remember, if you have the system set in test mode, you will not be able to process LIVE transactions. If you are going live immediately, then change this setting to no!
After you install, simply delete the donation_install folder and all files within it, and the install file.

Now you are ready to play. The system is 100% phrased on the user viewable side, so you will need to edit some of the phrases to better suit your site, specifically the phrases titled:

your_donations_are_appreciated
all_donations_go_towards_furthering_goals
donation_used_to_further_mission

are the ones that I recommend redoing to suit your site.

After editing the phrases, next comes adding your donation buttons and goals.

Always add your goals first as the buttons can be attached to a specific goal so that the user gets credit for donating towards a specific goal (you can of course add a button that does not attach to a goal for a general coffer fund type of deal, but goals are the preferred method).

After adding a goal, you can then add a button to the site.

The settings for the buttons are self-explanatory for the most part, the only required input from you is the title, and the description of the button. Everything else will work fine without input.

The system defaults to use the USD currency. If you change this currency in the Donations settings, then to get the correct exchange pricing, you need to run the CRON file to update your Exchange Rates table.

To do this simply log into your AdminCP and then do the following:

1. Scroll down your navigation bar on the left and find the Scheduled tasks navigation group, open that up and click on "Scheduled Task Manager".
2. Find the CRON named "Donations Currency Exchange Quotes"
3. To the right of that you will find a button named "Run Now"
4. Click that button and wait until the system says Done.

Once the system has reloaded the exchange rates using your new currency you are ready to go and start collecting donations.

From there, it's all fairly intuitive. The biggest thing to remember is that to use this hack you MUST have a paypal Business or Premiere account, and have turned IPN on in your Paypal profile. If you run into troubles with a transaction, make sure that you are not trying to verify a sandbox transaction with the live Paypal server and vice versa (the test setting). Secondly, this system will notify you of suspect transactions that Paypal refuses to validate. If you get an email stating that a transaction was invalid, it would suit you to investigate it to find out where the transaction came from and why it failed verification. If all is kosher you can add the donor to the AdminCP so that they get credit for the donation.

To assist in this you can edit an invalid transaction to show as valid if the transaction turns out to be kosher. The steps to this are as follows:

1. Make sure transaction is valid
2. Edit invalid transaction to show as valid
3. Edit goal and add that transaction amount to the total
4. Edit / Add donor (user) to the DB to give credit

This will get the transaction into your database properly and give credit everywhere it is needed for the system to read it properly.


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 email!

To view this in action head over to: http://damn.that-sucks.net or http://www.noblepagan.com

Thank you!

)O( Cloudrunner )O(

P.s. Anyone who feels the need to http://www.noblepagan.com/forum/donate.php to me (*hint hint*) feel free to do so, I won't stop you (yeah, I'm as greedy as the next guy). In fact we are a non-profit organization over at The Noble Pagan, so your donation would be tax-deductible .

LICENSE:

I am releasing this authorization in the hopes that someone will be able to carry on the work that was begun.