PayPal Subscriptions?

[lisa]

Forgive me if this has been posted before... is there a way to integrate PayPal subscriptions into the shopping cart?

Gracias for any info on this subject...

[Mike Morrison]

Hi Lisa!

is there a way to integrate PayPal subscriptions into the shopping cart?
Most certainly. First off, take a look at paypal's developer documentation on the subject, and figure out what user-specific info paypal needs sent to them (i.e. account email), and what data is sent back in return. Then....

Modify this file:

/sohoadmin/program/modules/mods_full/shopping_cart/payment_options.php

....to add a place for the user to save/configure his specific info from within the product.

The website-side processing will likely just be a matter of modifying the existing paypal routine in this file:

/sohoadmin/client_files/shopping_cart/pgm-payment_gateway.php

...to pass the right variables for paypal subscription purchases. And then this file:

/sohoadmin/client_files/shopping_cart/pgm-show_invoice.php

...to format the return data.

Cart gateways are usually pretty straightforward. Essentially just a matter of submmiting a form with the right values to to a certain url. :cool:

UPDATE to my above post: That is old and somewhat-outdated info now. Although you'll still be modifying the same files listed in my above post to accomplish this, the preferred way to do it nowadays is by creating a plugin (http://wiki.soholaunch.com/index.php?title=Creating_a_basic_plugin) instead of just hacking the source files --- a plugin that "attaches (http://wiki.soholaunch.com/index.php?title=Hook_attach)" (via calls in its install_manifest.php file (http://wiki.soholaunch.com/index.php?title=Plugin_install_manifest)) to predefined hook locations that exist in each of those files (may still have to use hook_replace (http://wiki.soholaunch.com/index.php?title=Hook_replace) in a couple places where predefined hooks haven't been added yet...see one of the other gateway plugins available on the addons website for a starting point).

[Lloyd_B]

It would be nice if Soholaunch was in the Paypal's list of compatible shopping carts. I don't know what's involved in that, but I'm definitely interested in using the shopping cart feature in Soholaunch to manage a subscription based website through it.

PayPal's list of compatible shopping carts is here:
https://www.paypal.com/en_US/html/SolutionsDirectory/sd_wp-standard.html

Any chance Soholaunch might get involved in getting their name on that list?

I've really enjoyed using Soholaunch so far in creating two websites, one for myself and another for an organization I help with. The site I'm building for myself is the one I'd like to set up with a subscription based members' section. I just don't have any PHP programming skills.

Lloyd

[Mike Morrison]

Hi Lloyd,

You've touched on something that IMHO is one of our biggest downfalls here at Soholaunch: We're pretty good about adding new features frequently, but we're painfully bad about promoting the new product features that we keep adding all the time. As in, our product development far outpaces our marketing. Not so horrible for our users, but not exactly ideal as far as us getting our moneys worth out of our product enhancement efforts.

For example, we have built-in support for like 10+ payment gatways now I think, and as far as I can remember we're on the "supported carts" list for like two of them. That's a lot of traffic we're missing out on, and something that's usually pretty easy to do (just gotta get in touch with the gateway company, show them what we've done, send them a logo, etc). But we keep moving on to the next feature instead of stopping to tell everybody about the one we just added.

FWIW, I've been making efforts recently to start getting better about this. In an effort to outsmart myself (b/c I'm one of the worst about the whole stopping to promote what I just built thing), I've started to bug one of our non-development guys (Tom) about stuff like getting listed on the supported carts pages of all the gateways we've got integrated into Soholaunch. I'm nagging him about getting on the Google Checkout supported cart list at the moment. Getting on PayPal's supported cart page as you've suggested will be next after that. :)

[brianoz]

You're not listed on eWay's Shopping cart page either at:

http://www.eway.com.au/support/shoppingcarts.aspx

You may want to contact them at their support email address. They're the most popular small business payment gateway here in Australia, so not insignificant.

[Mike Morrison]

Thanks for the link --- will make it that much easier. I'm think the only one we are listed with is Innovative gateway, so I've got a lot of gateways to contact. And still a full plate of development work. :(

I swear with me it's like the easiest things are the hardest for me to make room for.

:idea: Don't know if this would work, but if you or anybody would be interested in submitting us to all these gateways and such there'd be some free Soholaunch licenses in it for you...and maybe some other carrot like I'll fastrack a particular product feature you really want or something.

Do you think that might be a viable idea, or is this something we really have to handle ourselves?

[RoscreaSPCA]

Hi,

Any update on getting listed with PayPal? I had a look now but can't find Soho on the list.

Thanks,
T