I’m happy to announce the release the most important update to Donation Can to date: Donation Can 1.4 is now live with the following changes:
- Currencies: Donation Can now supports all currencies supported by PayPal. All you need to do is to update the currency in plugin settings and all of your new goals will use that currency. You cannot change the currency of existing goals (this would mess up the progress calculations) so any existing goals will still be in USD.
- Offline donations: You can now manually input donations received outside the plugin and they will show up in the donation goal’s progress bar.
- Improved PayPal donation notification (IPN) handling: With this complete rewrite of the payment notification handling code all the issues we’ve had where donations were not saved correctly should be history.
- Sandbox mode: Testing the plugin just got easier with the Sandbox mode option. Just tick one checkbox in the plugin settings and the donations use PayPal’s sandbox mode. Donations made in sandbox mode are not shown when sandbox mode is turned off.
Check out the plugin page to download the new version.
Update (just 15 minutes after the release… Ouch): There was a small bug in the 1.4 release that caused the donation progress bars to show up empty. I fixed it right away, so make sure to get version 1.4.1 instead of 1.4 and you’re all set to go!
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{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
cool work bro… a sandbox mode makes this really great!
is ther a way to upgrade my 1.3.1 to 1.4.1 ? :)
hi, now i am trying out 1.4.1 in sandbox mode… but the the donations in the sandbox mode are not getting updated…. :’(
it says “You haven’t set up your WordPress permalink structure. Donation Can will not be able to receive payment notifications from PayPal.
Fix permalink settings now.”
i have my permalink settings as default
like http://mydomain.com/?p=123
Hi Anand.
Yes, the plugin doesn’t work with permalinks in default format. Here’s why I decided to do it this way: PayPal doesn’t allow sending the payment notification to a URL that has GET parameters in it, for example “?p=123″. Using the other permalink structures (= anything except the default), you will not have these parameters visible to the caller, and PayPal will be OK with it.
In previous versions, the callbacks were handled through a specific file “callback.php” that was located in the plugin directory. This meant that your WordPress permalink settings didn’t matter at all, but on the other hand the solution was hacky and wouldn’t work on anything except the most standard of WordPress installations — an even on them all the time.
Besides, using more descriptive permalinks is not only required for the plugin to work, but also good for search engine optimization :)
I hope this helps!
Hi Jarkko,
that is really great!,
but the problem is , to change the permalinks, i need to edit the .htaccess. because when i change the permalinks wp says
“You should update your .htaccess now.” “If your .htaccess file were writable, we could do this automatically, but it isn’t so these are the mod_rewrite rules you should have in your .htaccess file”
unfortunately i dont have access to the server of my client,i have only ftp access… :(
so is there any way out? or can i get the 1.3.1 vesion?
@anand: I’m not sure if this will work for you, but at least it works with PayPal, so you can try this approach called PATHINFO. There is more information on this page, http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks, but here’s the short version.
1) Select one of the other permalink structures except “default”
2) Then select “custom” and add
/index.php/at the beginning of the permalink definition in that text field.With Anand’s help I created a new version of the plugin today (1.4.2, available at WordPress.org) that makes the IPN handling work also on blogs using PATHINFO permalinks. This is useful if you are not able to use mod_rewrite but still want to use Donation Can.
Hello. I downloaded the Donation Can plugin today. I activated it and then when I went to the settings area I was given a prompt that I don’t have the right permission to acces the area. I was logged in as the administrator on my blog so I am not sure what the issue is. Any suggestions?
Hi Jarkko I have the same issue with donation can 1.4.2 as Steve above. Wordpress 2.9.2 tells me, I don’t have the permisson to access the settings page?
Hey but I’m the admin, I should have the rights ;-)
Thanks
Matthias
Hi Jarkko, I solved the problem with the permission. I think the link in the plugin section is wrong. The link in the wordpress sidebar to the donation setting page is working fine.
But now I have another issue ;-)
The paypal button has no image dimensions and is too big. Is there a way to set the dimensions?
Thanks
Matthias
Hi Jarkko, thanks for an excellent plugin. I’d be interested in commisioning you to do some alterations for our specific needs, please contact me via email if you’re interested!
@Matthias: Good catch! I thought I fixed that already in a previous version but I guess I didn’t :) I’ll fix this for the next version.
Also, for the PayPal images, I think I’ll add an option for replacing the image with a custom one. I’m looking into that for the next release.
Hey Jarkko,
Great plugin. I’ve used it to raise money for Charity events I’ve done. VERY useful.
I manually coded in an anonymous button using the database var you had obviously allotted for it, I was wondering if you ever decided to include an anonymous donation button as a feature? If you haven’t I think it would be a great a addition to this plugin.
Thanks for doing a great job on this!
Cheers,
John
I’m still getting this error.
PayPal Instant Payment Notifications (IPN). IPNs sent to the following URL(s) are failing:
I have version 1.4.2
I also received a donation today and it didn’t update the info.
Maybe I configured something wrong?
.-= Tony´s last blog ..VIDEOS: Got a Case of the Mondays? =-.
@John: Yeah, I was planning for anonymous donations as it may be handy when you list the donors. I’m not 100% sure but I think I’ll include that feature soon.
@Tony: Can you check the IPN callback URL to make sure it’s not callback.php or a default WordPress link. This is because in the current version, Donation Can only works with the permalink format set to something other than default. If you check the comments above by @anand and myself, you’ll find more info on this topic.
Let me know if that doesn’t help and I’ll try to figure out what else could be the cause.
Hey Jarkko,
I managed to set up multiple donation cans, but I’m having difficulty implmenting each of the cans on different Pages. Is there some kind of documentation set up with instructions that I could read?
Veronica
.-= Veronica´s last blog ..YSDN Grad Show 2010 Website Launch =-.
Hi Jarkko,
Is there a list of valid shortcodes for this plugin somewhere? I have “Provide a text box and prompt for the note” turned on, but the text box doesn’t show up anywhere. I figured maybe I need to include a shortcode to make it visible, but since I can’t find a list of shortcodes to use with the plugin, I’m lost.
Okay, so I found the shortcodes, but I still haven’t been able to get the text box to show up. Anybody have a suggestion?
haven’t figured out changing the css styles for the widgets and stuff. what i put in the option in the admin panel isn’t taking over on the page. i’ll keep trying, but so far it looks like a good plugin to have.
thanks !
thanks again for sharing your great plugins.
excellent work.
@Veronica: I guess you already figured this out as I’m replying this late, but if not, you can take a look at the comments on the main plugin page (http://jarkkolaine.com/plugins/donation-can) and search for what has been written about short codes. They are the best tool for showing the donation widget on different pages.
@Dave: Actually, the “provide text box” checkbox only affects PayPal’s settings so that on the PayPal donation page, you should see a text box prompting for a note.
I’ll see if I can make this clearer in the next release. Also, a full list of short codes is definitely worth having somewhere. Thanks for pointing this out!
@eric: I’m going to redo the css styling for the next release, but for now, if the text box is not working, you can also try to put the css code in your theme’s style sheet files for now.
The “Donation options” does not appear to be doing anything. Any ideas?
I figured it out… Donation Options was not working and neither was the progress bar. It was because I installed Wordpress in a sub-directory on my site. I had to update the path in a few Donation-Can php files.
Great script, Thanks!
Jarkko, thanks for the reply.
The donation box on PayPal is okay for simple things, but doesn’t work very well for the client I’m using your plug-in for (http://www.bakemehome.org). They have two programs people can donate to; one of them, BakeMeBackHome, allows the donor to have cookies sent to a specific soldier or unit, or they can choose to have them sent to any soldier on the organization’s list. I haven’t figured out an elegant way to allow the donor to make those choices.
@Bryan: OK, thanks for letting know! Good to hear it works now.
@Dave: I see… You could maybe achieve this by having multiple donation goals, one for every soldier/unit. I suppose the most elegant solution would be to have many goals but just one donation form where you pick the goal (=unit) from a drop down list. Unfortunately, there isn’t this kind of widget in Donation Can… At least not yet: I had never thought of this before, but I’m sure it would be useful for others too.
Thanks for considering it! I have your plugin running on another non-profit’s site and while they don’t have as complex a donation system, an initiative they have in the works right now would also benefit from this capability.
For now I’ll have bakemehome continue to use the PayPal message field.
Hey Jarkko- this is the best paypal donation plug-in I’ve found so far- thanks for making it so good. I have one small issue: my donors’ information isn’t showing up, even though I’ve added the right stuff to the shortcode
[donation-can savetherainforest show_donations=true]
Am I missing something here? Thanks!