Donation Can 1.4
February 9th, 2010 - Jarkko
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!
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.