Added: February/28/2005 at 10:20am | IP Logged

IMPORTANT UPDATE - READ THIS
http://support.cjwsoft.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=205& ; ;PN=1


The IPN Subscription Pack which is built in to ASPProtect 7 contains all the pre-built scripts you need to implement PayPal IPN Subscriptions with ASPProtect. IPN stands for (Instant Payment Notification). It allows you to set up scripts on your server so whenever a PayPal payment is processed the PayPal server sends info to your server regarding the transaction and vice versa. This is a fully automated process and allows you to charge users for access by the month or however long you like.

The Subscription feature of PayPal handles recurring billing automatically. The PayPal server will communicate with the ASPProtect system and keep everything up to date with users and their subscriptions.

This Support Pack basically gives you an additional signup and registration directory "paypal_sub_signup" and it should not interfere with any changes or customizations you have made to your ASPProtect setup. New users can register in this directory and sign up for a subscription at the same time. Existing users whether active or expired can be sent to this directory where they can lookup their account and start a subscription. You can also assign various Access and Group Levels during signup and you can set up various prices for various amounts of time as well. This is a real-time setup for the most part. As soon as a user pays via PayPal your system is updated and they will have access.

To use this all you need to do in ASPProtect 7 is enter your PayPal account name into the settings screen. It will be an email address. You'll need a business or premier account with PayPal and you will need log into your PayPal account and turn on IPN in you profile. They make you enter a default IPN URL. We do not use that so if you already have something there leave it there. If you dont have something there you can type in any the full url to any page on your server. It's probably best to send it to an empty ".asp" page or something.

Changing Payment Options

In the "paypal1.asp" file there are some sample payment options set up.

They look like this and you can have as many as you like.

<!-- Begin Payment Option Code -->
<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" target="_blank">

<% Label = "Membership (1 Month) $9.99 Recurring" %>
<!-- Begin Form Fields You Can Edit.. See PayPal Subscription Manual For Details -->
<input type="hidden" name="no_shipping" value="1">
<input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="1">
<input type="hidden" name="a3" value="9.99">
<input type="hidden" name="p3" value="1">
<input type="hidden" name="t3" value="M">
<input type="hidden" name="src" value="1">
<input type="hidden" name="sra" value="1">
<!-- Field Below must have 2 commas First two values are optional (access level,groups,user ID)-->
<input type="hidden" name="custom" value=",,<% =User_ID %>">
<!-- End Form Fields You Can Edit.. See PayPal Subscription Manual For Details -->

<!--#INCLUDE FILE="form_data_inc.asp"-->
<input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/images/x-click-but20.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!">

</form>
<hr>
<!-- End Payment Option Code -->
 

To really understand what these form values mean it is best to look through the PayPal Subscriptions Manual which is a PDF file you can get from the PayPal Site.

This link was valid the last I checked...
Subscriptions and Recurring Payments Manual

It also may be helpful to use their wizard to create some subscription buttons with different settings and then look at the code generated.

Bascially these are the important ones..

a3 - amount to billed each recurrence t3 - time period (D=days, W=weeks, M=months, Y=years) p3 - number of time periods between each recurrence

The custom field is something we are using to send info from ASPProtect to PayPal.
it allows you to set the access_level or groups access (groups support require the ASPProtect Option Pack)

<input type="hidden" name="custom" value=",,<% =User_ID %>">

or this example where we are setting the access_level to (2) and also giving the user access to groups (3 and 4)

<input type="hidden" name="custom" value="2,*3*4*,<% =User_ID %>">

Here is how it works.
The value setting (red) is essentially and array that can be made up 3 elements separated by comma's

access_level,groups,User_ID

If you do not want to set the access_level or groups access.. then you don't even need to edit the setting.

Values must be separated by a comma even if there is no value and there can be no spaces.  If you didn't want to set an access level or groups there would still be 2 commas at the beginning.  etc etc
Basically there must always be 2 commas but you only have to set last values which is the User_ID from the ASPProtect system.

The 1st value is the access level you want to user assigned to.
The 2nd option is the groups you want the user assigned to. (requires option pack if using version 6)
The 3rd option is the User_ID which the system takes care of. Do not edit this option. Leave it as <% =User_ID %>