Updated: January 5, 2012
Thanks for using our Crowd Funding plugin. I hope you’re able to use it to launch the project of your dreams.
This document will guide you through setting Crowd Funding and creating your first project.
Crowd Funding is a standard WordPress plugin. You can download it from the WordPress plugin directory and install it just like any other plugin. The official WordPress documentation covers this in detail.
You need to enter your PayPal credentials so that Crowd Funding can interact with PayPal on your behalf. Crowd Funding stores your credentials in your own database. It wont send them to anyone besides PayPal. Use a reliable web host to ensure your credentials stay secure.
Start by acquiring your PayPal credentials. Once you have them, go to Settings > Crowd Funding in your WordPress admin.
Enter all your details and change the mode from sandbox to production then click save.
Crowd Funding uses standard custom post types, so its interface will feel familiar. Hover over projects (with the heart icon) in your WordPress admin, then click Create Project.
The project settings metabox lets you define some vital settings for your project.
When someone funds your project, you’ll want to offer them a reward for their contribution. This might be a limited edition of your product, signed material or even an enhanced version of a digital download. It’s up to you to be creative.
Click Add Reward to add your first reward. You’ll be able to enter a title, description, minimum funding amount and availability.
The minimum amount is an amount the user must fund in order to choose this reward. Enter this as just the number, without the currency sign. Keep in mind that PayPal will charge you a fee for each funder. This fee includes a fixed component of $0.30 per transaction, which can quickly eat away at smaller contributions, if you choose to accept them.
Click on a reward’s title to edit it. Delete it by clicking delete.
Your funders will show up in this metabox as you receive contributions. You can collect the funding at any time. You should stick to the spirit of crowd funding by only collecting after you’ve reached your target. Contact your funders if you plan to collect earlier.
Click the collect funding button to start the collection process. To export your funders as a CSV file (which you can use with services like MailChimp), click on download.
Copyright 2012 SiteOrigin - Powered By WordPress
your plugin seems to have great potential, but i’m running into difficulties. I seems your paypal api credentials might be hard-coded, because when I add my own, i still always go to platform sdk’s Test Store. Another thing, it would be great if you could have a test mode where you didn’t need to get paypal api credentials setup to just test out the plugin and see it’s functionality. thanks, i look forward to using the plugin, and perhaps even contributing in the future. One more idea, maybe include your own sandbox buyer email and password, like you supply your full paypal api (maybe a mistake) so other can test it out. For example, I can’t even use your demo without your sandbox buyer email and pass.
Thanks for the vote of confidence Deryk! The plugin as it stands now is really just an indication of what the final 1.0 release will be like. Having people like you who are willing to test and contribute to it is what will get it there.
Unless I made a bit of a blunder along the way I dont think the credentials are hard coded. I’ll double check this though. I have been known to make the occasional serious blunder in the past
I’ve also added “make more tester friendly” to my issue tracker with a link to your comment. Thanks for the ideas!
Hi Greg,
I am noticing your details are already pre-filled and saved under settings -> crowd funding also. Than when I clear them out and add my own and click save it says my changes are saved, but if I get out of the settings and go back in, your details are there and not mine. I am not sure it is even saving my details at all. Though, I have only been using the sandbox feature so far while I test it out, and work on the look and feel for my site.
Is that the reason why? Do we have to use your details in sandbox mode?
I am having trouble with saving my API credentials under Settings–>Crowd Funding. After I enter all of my info and “save” it confirms that it was saved but if I leave the page and come back it is all the same old example version of API credentials that were originally there when I downloaded the plugin.
I am still awaiting approval of my application from PayPal, and am wondering if the plugin will accept my info and save it once PayPal approves my application? Has anyone else had this problem?
Greg,
I would love to use this plugin on a new site I’m working on. However, I want to make sure I will be able to do multiple products this way. Would each one just have it’s own product page? I’m assuming that I could aggregate all the products and put them on a “homepage”.
Thanks so much
Hey there Joshua. You guessed right – my plugin can definitely handle multiple projects at once. Each project will have it’s own page. It’d be up to your theme to handle displaying all the projects on your home page though.
http://globalbem.com/project/conference-funds/
I installed and waiting for account approval. Fixing css now. I’ll keep ya updated
Great Sam
Any feedback you could give will help me improve this documentation.
Greg, this looks great – I have been looking for a Crowdfunding script based on wordpress for a while – I would love it to be able to run multiple projects, so that it is more like kickstarter – how would this be possible using the plugin? – i have been looking at guruscript previously, but I am more familiar with wordpress, so that is the ideal platform for me. Count me in for any beta testing !!
Mark
This is a promising plugin. Consider using other payment gateways, like credit cards and premium sms. When are you planning on the next release, I cant test this because I dont use paypal (not availaable in our country).
What country are you from Pearson? I actually chose PayPal because it’s the most widely available payment platform. Adding other payment gateways will only become viable if the plugin gets really really popular… so help spread the word!
in setting up the project using the firefox, the amounts of money for the rewards do not stay when I save or update.
I can’t figure out why, Its the same using the google browser, so right now if someone asked me I would say it doesnt work.
any suggestions?
Hi Dr Wright – hrmmm, that sounds like something I need to look into. Would you mind posting your issue in our support forum? It’ll be easier for me to help you there, plus anyone else having the issue will be able to follow what’s going on. We’ll get it sorted out.
I have tried to post this in the support forum, but posting is not working. I tried numerous browsers, but none of them work.
I have a full width theme and as a result my plugin is showing up with the details on the far left and the contributing/funding details on the far right.
I have pages with boundaries, but I can not figure out how to tell the plugin to use a certain page. Is there anything I can do to get a more centered look?
How do i put this on a menu?
Or how do i include it to the home page (together with the posts)?
I cant even add it on menu. help!
I am noticing the same problem. Is the any way to add a shortcode to create an anchor page, or allow the projects to show up like a post so that they can be used as a feature plugins or as featured articles in a theme.
When I create the project and preview it and click commit to funding, nothing happens, the screen just stays white blank.
Please help
I am getting this error when attempting to install this plug in:
Warning: require_once(PEAR.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in D:Hosting8108305htmlwp-contentpluginscrowd-fundinglibPayPalSerializerSerializer.php on line 53
Hello,
I am also getting this error – did you get a result with fixing this?
S
HI, i am having a problem, i created a project and can preview the page, but how do i insert that project into one of my post or pages? is there a shortcode or something because their is no way that i know where i can tell my wordpress, to “display projects in my website” please help! Thanks for the plugin!!
Hey Mate,
This looks great – I just tried to install and got this…
Warning: require_once(PEAR.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /var/www/vhosts/MYSITE/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/crowd-funding/lib/PayPal/Serializer/Serializer.php on line 53 Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required ‘PEAR.php’ (include_path=’.:’) in /var/www/vhosts/MYSITE/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/crowd-funding/lib/PayPal/Serializer/Serializer.php on line 53
Any ideas?
S
Great plugin!!
got a error saying Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /mysite/wp-content/plugins/crowd-funding/lib/PayPal/Log/error_log.php:96) in /mysite/wp-content/plugins/crowd-funding/crowd-funding.php on line 232 only chrome works without problem.
but using “wp_redirect($url,303);” instead of “header(‘Location : ‘.$url, true, 303);” seems fixed the problem. Maybe my poor setup of the site.