I was just wondering about using Paypal for donations to my site. My friend suggested it after telling him I wanted to open a forum, and I've heard that they're a good company and lots of people use them for online transactions. So I thought I'd give the donation thing a try and I signed up for an account, got a button and everything but I've had a couple issues with it.

Firstly, I want to be able to collect extra info from anyone who donates, like a username so that I can add them to a contributers page, and a lil checkbox that they can check if they so desire NOT to be added to the page. I got the fields in, but I have no idea if theyre going to work, as I dont have any way to test it. :(

I was also wondering... well an unencrypted button shows your email address in the html code, so what's there to stop some spammer from harvesting my email and sending me a box-and-a-half of spam per day? I was looking for a useful script on hotscripts, which usually has everything I need, but I don;t even know what to look for! :confused: thx for any help!

First off, PayPal has both happy and unhappy users on this forum so you should prepare for a slew of both :) Me being a happy one, I would say that they are good for some purposes, such as this one.

They do have the option now to encrypt the code, so your email address is protected from crawlers.

As far as collecting the extra information, you could create a simple form on your forum with the fields that you want and when they submit it, it sends them to PayPal to make the donation. Just a thought.

Best of luck!

So all of the extra form fields will just be submitted once they make the donation? That sounds easy enough. :) But do the fields need to have any specific name, or can I just use the names that I have now?

Also, Paypal says that if I encrypt the form code, I can't use any of the extra options... does that include adding extra fields? I made an encrypted one, and its all letters and numbers. Can I still add extra fields to this code, or is it just the button? I'm really confuzed!

For the extra fields, simply create a form on your website as if you wanted someone to contact you with certain information. Many scripts have the ability to re-direct to a page when the form has been submitted. Mainly to thank people for submitting the form. However, if you put your PayPal donation URL in the re-direct, when they have submitted the form (so you already have the extra information you want) it sends them to PayPal to make the donation.

Make sense?

ahhh, I see what you're saying! So, just make a form with the info in it like a regular contact form, attach a CGI to the form action so that way it submits their info. Then have it redirect to the URL that paypal gave me so that they can continue with the actual donation, right? Heh, why didn't I think of that before! Thanks!

Oh, 1 more thing (sorry, I'm just new to this whole Paypal thing). Is it a good idea to add my savings account to my Paypal Account? I mean, is it secure and all? I think that's what most people (and myself) are worried about most. Thanks so much for your help!

Not a problem, glad I could help.

As far as the savings go, you should be okay. When in doubt though, simply make sure their is no overdraft limit on it, and don't keep any money in it. PayPal can't draw on what isn't there, right? :)

Have you considered setting up a special account to use for your website business? This is probably the best thing you could do. I have seen some screwy things with PayPal where money has been automatically sent to my account and transferred to another PayPal account without my permission. That was about six months ago, but for the most part, I would recommend PayPal as a secure banking solution.

Originally posted by ITWeb LLC
Have you considered setting up a special account to use for your website business? This is probably the best thing you could do. I have seen some screwy things with PayPal where money has been automatically sent to my account and transferred to another PayPal account without my permission. That was about six months ago, but for the most part, I would recommend PayPal as a secure banking solution.

I don't think they're still reading this thread, its really old.