As time goes by, I could see the number of request to have some Paypal related modules growing and growing...

There is quite a number of "tries" here and there. And there is even a certain number of working solutions.

As I always tried to stay away of the "already done" thing... I decided that I will throw a rock in the water.

See the rest for the "what the hell is he talking about ?!?"

Like I said, I did tried to stay away from the "already done" thing. True, I made the advProfile. But I have an excuse. I did not do it to replace the Profile Plus from MagicX. I did it because there was a certain period where MagicX was a little bit vague about what he was going to do. And people were asking... what am I saying?... people were crying for a solution of replacement.

Now... Big MagicX is back o­n his usual track and developing like he was before... he o­nly does in a different manner.

Also... I can say that I have no more to add to the advProfile. It does what it should - Showing whatever you want!
So there is not much to add to it.

True also that I made the pncUserPoints... but heck, I think it speaks for itself without any pretention. And since I got no answer from the original devs when I gave them what I did with the original 3 or 4 years ago... There was no stop for me to do it from scratch.

Now o­n the Paypal subject... I decided that I would go o­n another route. I have a strange desire to work in the Paypal area.

I also decided that whatever is already existing... if it's old, if it's discountinued or not fully working OR not up-to-date... I will probably do my own. I always took the route to instead of using existing solutions, I would create my own. At the time, it was mostly because others were developing big things while I o­nly need small things. It was also because I'm a dev... so it's in me to create my own things. Otherwise, I wouldn't have done the pncUserPoints, the advProfile and a big bunch of the rest.

I will stay true to what I've always been... not repeating uselessly what is already existing. (I won't create at least for the moment a Shop cart thing... see the forums.postnuke.com... there is an actual solution for this.).

Also... I don't want to fall into the big big thing that use 15 payment gateways, doing a thousands things when most users need o­nly 2 things.

this blabla is getting long......

Anyway... What I will do :

pncIPN - This module will be the central IPN transaction mod. It will receive the IPN from Paypal, save it and depending o­n the type of IPN, will redirect the information to the module that is concerned.

Example - For a Donation IPN, it will send the IPN information information to the pncPayPal mod. For the moment, it is stand-alone as the pncIPN doesn't exist yet.

For a item sell, it will send the IPN information to the pnc[FileShop] (Single file o­nly for the moment, I do not want to the cart thing for the moment for the reason already said... the name is not set in stone and yes... there is a pnFileSeller... but it's old... outdated and voilà... I want to create my own.). This will be a Buy now thing for a single file. It'll be as simple as a Download mod except that if you set the price field to 0, it'll be free and immediatly available. If you set a price, it will use the Paypal thing and IPN to give either by email or by a limited timed download link the file.

For a subscription... pncPayPalSub (name still not set). for a subscription thing, it'll receive the IPN information from the pncIPN and register to a specific group. With time, I'm thinking about the possibility to be in different groups depending o­n the amount... there is a brainstorming to be done.

pncPayPalSubClear - This will be a hook. You will have to add a pnmodcallhook tag in your theme template, this hook will unregister a user from a X group if it's subscription is passed. This is o­ne solution... another solution could be that you use a block and this block do the check. Anyway... that is still to be determined. This will come with the Subscription mod but will also be available in a separate download.

So for the moment... I'll keep it that way.

WARNING - WARNING

All these will be SOLD !!!!!!! Yes... I will fall in the "NOPE... NOT FREE!!!" boring thing...

But here is the good side : All these things will be sold for a symbolic 5€.

Here are the reasons why... (Aside that if someone has no Paypal account, what is the use of those anyway)...

I am bored to death of some others selling a bunch of php files that is their rewriting (in the sense that it's already been done... not a copy) of already existing scripts. Do a google search and you'll get a tons of IPN scripts. There is nothing NEW... o­nly things rewrote or adapted.

Someone asked : "Why no o­ne has made a free postnuke paypal donation/subscription mod ?" and o­ne of the answer he got is :

"Why dev wouldn't sell something you'll be using to get money?"
This is a crappy question... selling such a mod comes o­nly from the developer's aspiration to make money. Otherwise, like any other mod, he could give it for free. Saying it that way could lead to think that because the end user will make money with it, your main aspiration could be "I'll make money o­n your back".

Being twisted, I could almost take that as an insult in some way.

This is o­nly a question of attitude toward what you are doing and what the end-user will do with it. In my case, I absolutly don't give a swat if you sell a theme 10 000$ with my FileShop. The money you will make with it (if you make money of course) will never be the reason why I did it, or why I sold it for a "symbolic" 5€, etc...

"Such modules take a long time to create and test properly due to complexity and the need for a working knowledge of payment gateways/processors as well."

Yawn... Probably to some extent... but we're not speaking about some incredible credit card gateway... and if you exclude other payment gateways like Authorize.net, iPayment, 2Checkout, etc.... wich was not in the question... there is not much difficulties to do it. The pncPayPal mod is so simple that such statement is telling you that you are dumb... so stay dumb.

And like I said... the number of already IPN script out there is too great to count. So there is no need to make people think there is a revolution there.

Finally... I will make these all separate not because it'll cost you more but because there is already a solution that "does it all" and while it may be good, I think there is a place for each of these little mods to be sufficient to itself.

Oh and o­ne last thing... and an important o­ne... I already said it in the past. I tried to give to the community either useful mods, nice mods or simple mods. They don't do the dishes but they are enough simple to help a dev wannabe to understand them, to scrutinized them and give some insight as to how to build a PostNuke module, how to code, how to whatever.

That was the main idea behind the pncSimpleStats(X), the advProfile, the Botlist... etc.

Each will be simple, will do simple things. I do not have any pretention to do a revolution, to sell you crap, to be someone I am not. And when I say "symbolic 5€"... I mean it. (1€ was kind of ridiculous because of the fees...). Am I a steal ?

I think not...

So that's it for now... I'll finish the pncPayPal mod for the moment. All is left to do is the language defines. That will be the (almost) last free Paypal related pnConcept mod. Next pncPayPal will also be stand-alone but will also be able to receive infos from the pncIPN.

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVE FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!

P.S. : Don't get me wrong... I respect every... well most of them... dev that did a great job until now in this area. My goal is not to make money o­n their back (5€ pfff please). I want my own solution, a solution that can be simple... a solution that others can look and understand without me and although I know I am not doing any revolution by doing so, to answer to the o­ne who said "Why dev wouldn't sell bla bla bla..."...

- Why not ?

- "I believe !" as a great tv character said.