Preview: Donation Can WordPress Plugin
August 18th, 2009 - Jarkko
At last, it’s getting time to announce the release of my first full featured free WordPress plugin: Donation Can will be released in one week from today, on Monday, August 24th, 2009.
In this post, I want to tell you a bit about the plugin and show one of the most interesting features, and hopefully get you at least a bit excited about what is coming up.
Overview
Donation Can is a WordPress plugin for collecting donations through PayPal. It was initially developed as an in-house donation tool for the Train for Humanity web site, but since completing the site, I have been polishing the plugin so that it can be released for a broader audience. Now, after all these months, I’m finally there, and you’ll get to try the plugin for yourself.
To support Train for Humanity a bit more, I’m releasing the plugin for free, only asking that it you find the plugin useful, you would support the humanitarian cause by sponsoring my training. Donating to Train for Humanity is also a fun way to see the plugin in action!
Easy Tracking
Whatever you are collecting money for, I bet you want to know how the fundraising is going. With Donation Can, I have tried to make it as quick and straightforward as possible to stay up to date with how the donations are going. The key feature in making this happen is the dashboard widget shown in the following screenshot.
In the screenshot you will also notice that Donation Can supports multiple causes or goals at once, each tracked on its own. This feature was created to make it possible to track sponsorships to each athlete separately, but it also works really well in a single-author blog, for example if you are simultaneously collecting donations for getting yourself a new computer and buying some food for your cat.
In addition to the dashboard widget, Donation Can makes tracking easy through email notifications. You can configure the plugin with as many email addresses you’d like and when someone makes a donation, they will all be notified of it. The email configuration can also be made separately for each goal.
This was the first look at what the Donation Can plugin offers. There will be another one still this week, but now I must get to work with finishing up the plugin and making it ready for the big date of next Monday.
Have a great week, and talk to you soon! I can’t wait to share the plugin with you.
Great work Jarkko and congratulations for finishing the plugin!
At least in the screenshots the plugin looks great and easy to use. If I need to raise money I’ll definately use your plugin to do it. :)
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Thanks, Lauri!
Just so you know, you and this plugin rock. It was exactly what I was looking for.
:-) Your awesome.
- Jade
Thank you, Jade! I really appreciate you saying this.
Let me know if there is any way I can make the plugin even better for your needs :)
Hi Jarkko,
Great plugin, but I can’t seem to get it fully functional. Our Ministry has set up several goals, and we are able to do that. Donation Can under general settings, the link (add new) next to Donation options does absolutely nothing…
Secondly, the donations are not getting sent back to our database and updating the goal to show donations have been made. I am totally lost on what to do next. I have even called paypal and sat on the phone for an hour trying to get help from them, however, after several long holds and 3 transfers I was finally told that I probably need to setup and turn on the paypal instant payment notifier (IPN), which I did, and yet, the plugin is still not recording any donations have been made. We’d love to see this plugin up and running so that we can receive donations for some our Ministry sponsored events.
Please, any help you can provide would be great – thanks!
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