Author Topic: Instructions for making a PayPal link people can follow to donate money to you (Read 172,437 times)

mouser · « **on:** October 21, 2005, 10:24 AM »

Here's a little tutorial for how to create a link people can click on to donate to you (note first you have to sign up at PayPal - i won't go into how to do that here):

log in to your paypal account

click "merchant tools" tab
[attach]

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #1 on:** October 21, 2005, 10:57 AM »

Thanks I wondered how you did that (and was too lazy to dig around the PayPal site) ...

I don't know if it is a UK PayPal thing but if you specify an amount (where you say suggested amount) then the PayPal donation page created has that as a fixed amount. On the site it says leave blank if you want people to enter an amount.

Of course it does have the unforunate side effect of making your paypal email address visible on every post you make, and available to spam bots ...

Is there any way to add the encrypted button HTML to signatures? (I'd guess not)

brotherS · « **Reply #2 on:** October 21, 2005, 11:25 AM »

Thanks mouser, that's really helpful! I wonder why PayPal doesn't have such a nice page to tell new users...

m_s · « **Reply #3 on:** October 21, 2005, 02:42 PM »

Not sure if I deserve one, but I guess I have contributed a little to the site... Anyway, that was dead easy! Thanks, Mouser.

AbteriX · « **Reply #4 on:** October 21, 2005, 03:18 PM »

And we see again how well works Mr. Mousers Screenshot Captor for such issues

Screenshot Captor should be shipped with Windows and Mr. Gates should pay mouser well for his great mastermind of coding !

mouser · « **Reply #5 on:** October 21, 2005, 09:24 PM »

see i used those numbers this time stefan, and when i get the new round "step #" cliparts then pictures will be even better

AbteriX · « **Reply #6 on:** October 22, 2005, 12:23 PM »

Just an suggestion to use an alternative email address for your PayPal account
'cus your PayPal eMail address will be seen in the source
code of this web side, and so for bots too:

&business=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX%40XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX%2ecom&

;business=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX%40gmx%2ede&

mp;business=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX%40gmail%2ecom

%40 means an @-sign
%2e means an dot

brotherS · « **Reply #7 on:** October 22, 2005, 01:07 PM »

Yes, I know, but spam protection gets better and better anyway

mouser · « **Reply #8 on:** October 22, 2005, 01:43 PM »

you know that is a VERY good point!

bots do scan websites and harvest emails for spam...
hmm, ok let's see how can we fix this..
maybe an encrypted paypal link is needed after all somehow...

mouser · « **Reply #9 on:** October 22, 2005, 01:46 PM »

i can have the button point to a script and not the person's email, and write a little script that opens the proper link.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #10 on:** October 22, 2005, 02:19 PM »

How about allowing user to put a PayPal encrypted button script on their profile page (like you have added the ad control stuff) and then point the icon to the profile for people who have set it up?

mouser · « **Reply #11 on:** October 22, 2005, 02:54 PM »

i think that would be too much of a security risk..
i suppose if you already have a web page, the easiest thing is to point your donation link to a page on your site with the encrypted form, but for those that don't a solution is still needed.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #12 on:** October 22, 2005, 03:15 PM »

The encrypted PayPal link code is standard HTML format, you could handle the actual HTML tags (to avoid security issues) and just allow people to enter the encrypted part of the code, which is just an encryption of the email address etc.

Here is mine:

Code

<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_s-xclick">
<input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/x-click-butcc-donate.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!">
<input type="hidden" name="encrypted" value="-----BEGIN PKCS7----- Lots of encryption junk -----END PKCS7-----
">
</form>

As far as I can tell the "Lots of encrypted junk" is just that, not executable code. It is decoded on the PayPal page referred to using the PKCS7 routines embedded in the PayPal page.

the first three lines are standard (you could supply them so that you know they are OK along with the <form> tags). The only user customisable bit is the image file used for the button. You could choose that as a site default (or even use a DC specific image for the button).

The only user specific info required is the 'Lots of encrypted junk' which could be cut and paste into a user profile field, and automatically used to generate the button script (a trivial PHP script could do that).

If invalid data is supplied PayPal would not be able to decrypt it and generate its own error (and anyway it would not be ina DC page - so no threat to DC). If some one used somebody elses code they would effectively send all their donations to them, but the same thing could happen now if someone copied another users URL from the 'donate' button on the forum pages!!!

Just a thought.

mouser · « **Reply #13 on:** October 22, 2005, 03:23 PM »

yes, you are right, if we enforced only having paypal encrypted form field text in that field (or if i allowed a special prefix like "encrypted=" which could be a reasonable solution), then this might be doable.

i really wish paypal had a better way of doing this.. they really should have a simple link with user id# in it or something

mouser · « **Reply #14 on:** October 22, 2005, 03:43 PM »

maybe what would be nice would be a simple javascript function that when you clicked on that link (or email link), brought up a tiny java script form that you have to click a button on before it will redirect you - that should stop any email harvesting and still allow general navigation. anyone want to help me look for such a mini script?

mouser · « **Reply #15 on:** October 22, 2005, 07:43 PM »

i've coded up a javascript encryption thing and ill be adding it today, stay tuned.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #16 on:** October 22, 2005, 09:51 PM »

Don't know what you have done, but my PayPal link no longer works.

It seems that where ever there is an '&' in the URL, specified in my profile, it has been replaced by '&'

mouser · « **Reply #17 on:** October 22, 2005, 11:05 PM »

i spent MANY HOURS cursing at my computer getting my javascript solution to this to work.
took about 1 hour to code it, 5 hours to figure out why javascript wasn't always working (answer, certain characters were being escaped out during the call).

hope you like the solution. uses a simple encryption plus a confirmation dialog so people can see EXACTLY where they are being redirected to.

the obfuscation is also used on email links, so if you decide to make your email visible to the world here it will be obfuscated to prevent email harvesting robots as well.

this should keep everyone's email here safe

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #18 on:** October 22, 2005, 11:09 PM »

Great - seems to be working now ...

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #19 on:** October 24, 2005, 09:37 AM »

One thought - same trick needs to be aimed at Columnist and Program writers pages on the site as they have links to PayPal (and presumably others) coded into their pages ...

mouser · « **Reply #20 on:** October 24, 2005, 11:09 AM »

good point carol - i'll fix those as well.

Mark0 · « **Reply #21 on:** November 15, 2005, 12:51 PM »

It seems that there's some problem in the way the PayPal userid / email address is encoded, or something like that, because following the "$" link lead to this PayPal's page:

Quote

Error detected

We cannot process this transaction because there is a problem with the PayPal email address supplied by the seller. Please contact the seller to resolve the problem. If this payment is for an eBay listing, you can contact the seller via the "Ask Seller a Question" link on the listing page. When you have the correct email address, payment can be made at www.paypal.com.

Bye!

mouser · « **Reply #22 on:** November 15, 2005, 01:08 PM »

mark0 when i click your $ it works fine, at least in ie. let me check firefox.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #23 on:** November 15, 2005, 01:16 PM »

Works fine here too (using Maxthon)

mouser · « **Reply #24 on:** November 15, 2005, 01:23 PM »

it was a firefox vs. ie problem.
fixed now.