I have created an ecommerce store, and I'm using PayPal "Add to Cart" Buttons with what they call 'hosted' buttons (PayPal stores the buttons on their servers) for each of my products.
For reference on how they work (and why I use them):
You create a button(product) inside your PayPal Dashboard and you define the quantity available (most of them are 1 in my case)
You copy the HTML code into your website (or just copy the link)
The user buys the product (and the quantity falls -1)
The reason I use this setup is because my website is static, and PayPal provides the Quanity (SKU) Management - so no one can buy a product that no longer exists - even if he can access the button/link.
My Problem
The PayPal GUI dashboard for creating buttons is very time-consuming, I would like to have the ability to edit/create etc. buttons in bulk.
I had search and search for a solution online but have found nothing.
Possible Solution
The only thing I've recently gave some thought was the PayPal Button Manager API and the Ruby SDK in particular, but even if I've studied programming and I'm really eager to keep learning more, I don't know yet what to do in order to make the API calls.
I can't understand from their documentation and I have found zero tutorials online for such a thing.
Failed Solution
As I was familiar with WordPress I tried installing a plugin called PayPal Button Manager but it hasn't the ability to edit in bulk, which is what I'm trying to do.
All in all, I want to:
Create, Edit, Delete, Update in bulk PayPal Hosted Add to Cart Buttons
If using the Ruby API, I would much prefer doing so in a local environment
I'm using Jekyll for my static site, so I'm having Ruby installed and have read multiple times that it's an 'easy' to learn language. But if you can think of something else, I'm open.
If you have Wordpress, then you have a local database, and might end up much happier with a solution that stores quantities locally in that database, such as the WooCommerce plugin, with the following additional plugin for payment: https://woocommerce.com/woocommerce-and-paypal/
Your proposed solution of using PayPal Standard Buttons with the legacy PayPal Button Manager API .. is extremely unconventional in contrast, and would be considered a "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad" hack by most.
Related
I want to sell downloadable product like: video files, pdf files, word documents, text documents etc.
And also my storefront should have filtering feature.
I have option for following cart in my hosting control panel:
Abantecart, Opencart 1.5, PrestaShop etc. Actually I am accessing mochahost cPanel.
To make a storefront of downloadable products with filtering feature, Which free cart product should I choose?
Big, proven, free, plus easy customization: WooCommerce. It's a classic for a reason.
The real issue is: how is the rest of your website managed? What software languages are you intending? Server? # of hits projected / day? You definitely want tools that easily integrate, and have an active feedback and improvement system. (Open source on Github?)
PHP or Java Content Management system? (Symphony, Laravel, Wordpress? dotCMS, Magnolia, Hippo, Jahia, OpenCMS?) I'd pick one of those first, then choose a storefront that integrates nicely. If you are just starting out, and don't expect more than 5K to 10K hits a day, Wordpress / WooCommerce is way easy. If bigger growth than that, I'd think I'd be looking at Java implementation.
Reference your comment on Uploading API costing money.
So download a free version, and write an upload tool yourself. Shouldn't be a big deal.
And hey, how much are these guys charging, anyway? What is your time worth?
I thought you were selling downloaded items.. why would your customers be uploading anything anyway? In fact, why is an upload tied to the shopping cart in the first place? (I can see letting folks upload quality content, then earning credit, but that doesn't have to be directly tied to the shopping cart...)
You will certainly be able to find sample code to safely allow users to upload content.
I'm working on a joomla site for a charity event. The event has 5 causes to donate for each with its own page. I have created paypal donation buttons for each of the five causes using this site: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donate-intro-outside. That all works fine but I need to accomplish two more things. 1) How do I display a summary of the donations for each cause on its respective page and 2) How do I display a total donations received across all 5 causes on the home page?
I am currently going into the paypal account and updating these values manually every night. I know there has to be a better way. I think I have to do something with IPN but I can't find any good documentation. I'm not a php programmer so I need some hand holding but I can get through it with some help.
I have searched high and low for a Joomla extension to do this but I just can't seem to find anything that fits my situation. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!
I don't think you'll be able to pull this off without some PHP programming and a good integration with Joomla.
As a general overview you will have to:
activate and configure IPN (Instant Payment Notifications) in PayPal
for your buttons configure the notify_url (the URL where PayPal should send the IPN)
on the Joomla site you will have to process those notifications and save into a database the transaction information that you get
finally - on each of your pages you will have to do a database look up and compute the totals that you require.
I have used Jumi (Joomla extension) to implement something similar to what you need, but it does require a lot of PHP programming to do it like this.
Is there any tutorial available for how do i add custom fields on front end check out step like PO number,Job name , customer comments etc as well as in admin->create->order.
My usual motto is to find (and buy if needed) a module that already has the functionality you seek. Especially when the life of this project involves version upgrades because then you can seek a pre-packaged solution from the provider.
I regret every bit of custom code I have added to our Magento install. Because now I've got to maintain the site to just keep working in addition to figuring out my hacks. Time to devote more time to replacing hacks with off-the-shelf extensions, which would have been much faster in the first place.
I know this attitude goes somewhat against the stack overflow thinking of I can do anything, but really, Magento's job is to enable someone to do less work.
Two years later, an update: after the gentle poke of a downvote (probably for appearing to shrug off the question), I am back to revisit and share some of what I've learned. The programming aspect of additional fields is the concept of persistence of the data.
If you're ok with the custom fields only appearing in the transactional emails following the order, then the task is as "simple" as adding the fields to the form somewhere and then updating the controller to to catch and insert the post data into the email. You can use a custom variable in the back end to readily expose this to the email templates. And a Magento SE on programatically creating a custom variable.
Getting persistence into the back end requires adding database fields via an installer in your module. The iCoreThink blog lays out the steps clearly and explains why, how to confirm your work, and then provides real-world implementation, like displaying to the customer in their account. The "other blog" mentioned below has a great example of this, though his example is specifically related to billing and shipping.
Resources from my upvotes and bookmarks:
» This iCoreThink blog post is my favorite reference so far and what I'm following now.
» I was using Templates Master's FireCheckout which includes their own checkoutfields module, but I've abandoned their single view checkout for the flow of Magento's one page checkout. I'm now trying to adapt their checkout fields (and use their controller) into my template for checkout.
» I thought for sure Alan Storm wrote an article about Checkout custom fields, but I don't see one.
» This Magento SE lists a couple blogs and a paid extension. The excellence blog is ok, but his style is too rote for me and I don't learn anything. The other blog discusses the procedure for building your module and installing the database fields.
» The unexpected-IT blog demonstrates and informal hack to add the code to core files (but sadly doesn't show how to override those files by copying them to app/code/local) and the steps to manually perform to get the column and fields added in the database. Apparently is perfect for 1.4 and below, but comments seem to explain what to do for 1.5 and up.
This last hack-ish change is my personal favorite as it seamlessly adds the extra bits into existing Magento admin pages and "feels like" less work. Caveats: I wouldn't do this without using version control and it will absolutely break if any core code changes happen between version upgrades.
Hi i run Joomla site on htpp://www.deeptechtons.net and wanted to construct a membership based subscription where people pay to get premium articles.
Exactly the same as tutsplus site network.[ i think it is custom but some solution must be available for joomla]. I already looked into extensions directory nothing fits my purpose.
Some requirements i need are,
1.Custom Profile fields for members.
2.Any time un-subscribe from plan.
3.Simple interface to show plans available
4.Payment processor's support
Also how do i hide the articles for premium members from not showing in search results, both joomla and google.
Joomla has teensy, weensy setting that hides un categorized articles in search plugin.
If you are running your website on Joomla 1.5 then PayPlans might be the better choice. It blends very well with JomSocial and your design. And yes, its very much customizable.
If you want to use 1.5, then Joomla 1.5 + JomSocial + AEC. I would also use K2 for the content because it would make filling your request about keeping content out of Google trivial. I wrote an upgrade to the K2 content display module that would allow you to leave all of your content as public and only display the intro text to non-registered users. Then you display the member content in a module that only displays to registered users. Very easy to maintain and implement.
I'm running an online store on Magento. I have Google Checkout as a Payment method. The problem is if someone pays using it they don't always return to the site so it throws my Google Analytics conversion rates off. Is there a way to pass this information to analytics when the people don't return to the site after the transaction?
Magento has built-in support for sending data about Google Checkout process to Google Analytics. Implementation of this functionality is done according to
http://code.google.com/intl/ru/apis/checkout/developer/checkout_analytics_integration.html
You should see all the data (e.g. pages visited) and conversions from GC normally. The customer is not required to return to your shop.
Step1: no GC conversions in GA
Allow up to 24h delay before the conversion data will appear in GA.
Step 2: After 24h you still don't see GC conversions in GA
Make sure you've enabled Google Analytics in Magento and setup it properly, because GC module in Magento sends data to GA only if it's activated and working fine.
Step 3: If steps 1-2 are done, everything works and GA is activated, but GC conversions still not visible in GA
Make sure that your design theme includes all necessary GC & GA code as made in base/default scheme. You can temporarily enable default/modern theme to check that original core Magento code works fine and then check the differences between your design theme and Magento core theme
Step 4: you've done steps 1-2-3, but no conversions are present in GA
Hire a Magento professional to find the source of a problem. In such a case this problem cannot be solved remotely.
The only data that comes back from Paypal after the customer has paid would be the IPN callback that notifies Magento of the payment. If you wanted to hook into this, you would need to find a direct URL to notify GA of the conversion and to periodically monitor the database for IPN notifications so that you could invoke that URL.