Creating a PayPal Donate Button

The PayPal Donate button can be used to accept member dues payments and collect donations from non-members or other organizations.

This procedure can be carried out by a Primary Coordinator; no Site Admin access is needed. PayPal will provide you with the button code and CW2 will accept the code in a new web page or link.

Please be aware that PayPal charges a small fee for each transaction made through your web site (2.9% + $0.30pertransaction as of July 2012, for a standard account).

The PayPal HTML code interacts badly with existing content of a CW2 web page. If you know HTML well you can get around this issue. For the majority of you, the donate button must be placed in its own web page, without any other code, text, or images.

If you have SA access, you will probably want to create a special Drupal “block” to house it, and then you can apply the block to any existing page. The following is an example of a PayPal block set to node bottom:

You can add the donation button several places on you web site, depending on the “parent item” you choose. This procedure links it to <Secondary Links> so it appears on each page of your web site, top and bottom, along side your Help link (it’s less likely to be overlooked this way). Once you get it working you can experiment placing it elsewhere.

What you need before you begin: A PayPal account, a credit or debit card, a Primary Coordinator login.

Procedure:

  1. Sign in to CW2 as a Primary Coordinator. Select ‘Add New Web Page’ from the Control Panel.
  2. Type the title “Donate”, make the menu link title the same, select <Secondary Links> for the Parent item. A weight of 10 will place it to the right of your Help link.
  3. Scroll under the Body Text box and expand ‘Input Format’, from that list select ‘Plain Text’. We are now going to navigate away from this page, leaving it just as it is, don’t close or save anything.
  4. Open a new tab in your browser (leaving your TB tab active) and surf to your PayPal account.
  5. Login to your PayPal account, click Merchant Services, and select “create payment buttons for your web site”. Choose the type of button you want to use “Donations”. Add the name of your TimeBank in the “organization name” field. Add an optional “donation ID” like Web Site Dues/Donations. Set the base currency, choose the various other options, and then click Create Button.
  6. Inside the “Website” box is the HTML code that defines your unique PayPal account. Click Select Code, copy all the code to your computer memory (Windows Clipboard, etc.).
  7. Click the TB tab where your new web page is waiting to be completed from step 3. Now scroll back up to the Body box and click in the left upper most corner. Make sure the box is completely empty, then “paste” the PayPal code from your computer memory. The contents will now appear as an undecipherable alien language, keep calm.
  8. Scroll down below the Body box and select Full HTML. Your new Donate button is almost ready for use, scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save.
  9. Now you need to test it. Click it and make a $1 payment test using your credit card. Hopefully everything worked, if not, go back over each step and verify it was done correctly. If still having difficulty, delete the page and start over.
  10. Login to your Primary PayPal email account and you should find a transaction notice. Login to your PayPal account and verify the $1 transaction.