ReL Using PayPaL IPN (Instant Payment Notification)

["Rod D Carlson" <invertedtriangle eudoramail com>]

PayPal Instant Payment Notification Can be used to autorespond to a correct purchase if and only if your website customer purchases code, music, or other copyright material you are selling.  A CGI script that interfaces to PayPals IPN posting address will send your customer an email only after the script verifies that the purchase was correct amount and payed in full.  This way when you use PayPal's standard submission form you dont have to give you successful page as being the download page.  As any first grade programmer/hacker knows how to read the html sucessful page and therefore skip payment altogether.   PayPal is free and IPN is free, they provide the free stuff without add on cost, unlike merchant credit card processors.  You can get the cgi scripts and set up your own server for handling IPN (Instant Payment Notification) however probably the simpler approach and the one I used for my website was just paying a small group cooperative fee to share a server and cgi-IPN script with a bunch of users.  Hence I didnt have to fool around with setting my own up.  I payed like 4 dollars a month to share the server and scripts, well worth it when you consider card processors charge 40 dollars a month to accept cards on your website.  You can still do all the server and scripts on your own however.  Not rocket science Im sure, and besides the majority of the script is already provided by PayPal. Anyways the non-profit group Jade Group that hosts the CGI script and shares the server is at  http://www.jade-ltd.com/jadett2/PALmain1.html



>On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Kim Schulz wrote:

> On 23 Jan 2002 19:50:40 -0500
> Tim Ney <ten@gnome.org> wrote:
> >
> > In order to make PayPal active, there is some html (a button) on 
> > their site that needs to be placed on the guadec.org - at this point
> > there are three possible payment transactions that I can think of:
> > -1- Sale of G3t-shirts, other merchandise
> > -2- Acceptance of "Friends of GNOME" donations
> > -3- Tuition for tutorials
> >
> > Video streaming would probably use its own payment system.
> >
> > Will you be the one to load the PayPal?  For this I will need to 
> > call or fax you the ID and password for GNOME's account.
> >
> > It would also be useful if you and Kim can look at some of the 
> > other non-profit uses of PayPal and think about ways the transaction
> > log from PayPal can be imported autmatically to a spreadsheet or 
> > MySQL. They collect a range of data on each user and transaction.
> >
> > http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_shop-cat-ext&loc=40702

> I will be able to look at this after Friday (preferably after Sunday)
> because I have a Project running until there. Have you heard anything
> from the streaming guys? they promised us a testing site last weeks or
> so? is that one up? Maybe I should contact them again to hear whats 
> taking them so long ( I know that they have other big priorities but 
> they told me that they would put everything into this project to make 
> it work (because it's so good advertising for them). And yes they have
> their own payment system.

I haven't heard anything from the streamers and I don't think Amy has
either.  The homepage is just about finished, so we ought to figure
where this would go.

> How is it going to be with merchandise this year? Last year every
> attendant to the conference got a t-shirt, a cloth bag (dunno what it 
> is called in English) and posters. Is something like this going to be 
> there this year? 

The first priority is to obtain sponsorship for travel subsidy.  USENIX
has already said, "No" and they were the largest contributor last year.
Of course, we can mention it to the GF Advisory member companies, if
they want to also do these things. This is a tougher year than the first
two financially as so many companies have cut back.

> Im pretty sure that we have a couple of leftovers of 
> the T-shirts from G2 laying around in the conference center basement. 
> Could these be sold? as collectables maybe? should I bring these or 
> should we just give them away at the local LUG meetings in Copenhagen,
> Denmark (where I live)? 

We could offer them on the site store for pick-up in Seville.  If you
find these things, let us know how many there are....

> Well if Jaime or one of the others contact me by mail after Friday 
> about the paypal stuff then I sure will help figuring out how to 
> import data etc. 

Ok.  Thanks.  Once we get it set-up for payments, we can run a test log
and see the sequence of data fields.

tim

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HOW TO SELL WITH PAYPAL
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Selling on Websites - PayPal's Web Accept tool allows you to accept
payments directly on your website. Look for a demo of Web Accept under
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