SponsorMe

Description

The SponsorMe plugin lets you organise your fund raising on your WordPress blog. It shows a graph of your target and how much money you have collected. It also lets users pledge an amount to you and sends them to PayPal to collect money directly from them.

Screenshots

Installation

1. Download the plugin file, unzip and place it in your plugin folder.
This makes the plugin available to WordPress and it should now appear in your Plugin folder. The zip file contains all the files you need. Please make sure all files end up in the “SponsorMe” directory.

2. Activate the plugin
This “starts up” the plugin, making it available to your presentation files (you know, the ones that make up your theme). At this point, the plugin is active, but WordPress doesn’t know where it should be displaying SponsorMe or what you’re collecting funds for.

3a. Add this snippet to your theme: <?php SponsorMe_sidebar(); ?>
This tells WordPress where to put a small Sponsor Graph and link to your Sponsor page. Place the snippet in the sidebar where you want the graph to appear.

3b. Alternatively, the plugin is also widget-aware and will appear in your widget list.
Go to your widget screen and drag the SponsorMe widget to the place you want it to appear on your sidebar.

4. Create a new page with some information about your sponsorship campaign. Add this tag to your page: <!--SponsorMe-page-->.
This will be your sponsorship page. The special tag above tells the plugin where to put the main graph and display any sponsorship you have received to date. You’ll need to take note of the ID of this page

5. Configure the plugin
You now need to go to the administration menu for the plugin and give it a number of settings that will be used to generate the graphical representations. Specify the currency you want to sell in, your Paypal address, your target amount and the Page ID of the page you created in step 4. (p.s. the newer version now can automatically scan for this tag)

6. Wait for pledges to come in!
When a user pledges an amount, they will be taken straigh to PayPal to donate money. Once you receive the PayPal email to confirm the amount has been received, log into the plugin page and click “Verify” next to the payment you have received. This updates the graph and moves the payment to the confirmed list.

Usage

The plugin can be used in one of two ways:If you are using widgets, just drag the widget onto the area of the sidebar where you want it to appear.If you aren’s using widget, add the following code: <?php SponsorMe_Sidebar(); ?> to your template where you would like the graph to appear. You also need to create a special page for the your sponsorship and update the plugin settings with the appropriate values.

Download

Download here: sponsorme

History

v0.2: Initial public release. Let it loose on the world and see what feedback comes back ..
v0.3: Added external styling ability and improved colour handling
v0.4: Added handling capability for non-Paypal pledges
v0.5: Added UI for non-PayPal pledges. Users can now pledge cheque payments OR pay directly by PayPal (should this be optional?)
coming next: cooler graphs …

52 comments

  1. Tried it but can’t seem to show the info page, does the Page ID on the config panel accept friendly permalinks?

    Cheers,
    Gene

  2. Also, could the sidebar widget be a little more discreet? It’s way out of proportion, doesn’t match most themes and AFAIK, textual info could be an option.

  3. @Gene: Thanks for the feedback. I’ll see if I can come up with an option to present textual information. Also, I’ll change the config panel to request the full URL so pointing it at your sponsorship page will be easier.

  5. Owen, I love this widget, but I am having trouble. I am sure it is user error.

    however, In wp 2.5.1 as a sidebar widget with the Theme peacemaker 1.0 by Nate from http://refueled.net/

    The code was put in a page(http://grizzlygroundswell.com/join-us-today) but I can not find the page id with the new wp 2.5.1 interface for manage/pages

    I hope all this helps troubleshoot.

    I appretiate your attention to this matter.

    And I really appretiate you developing this plug-in. Once we get it working it is exactly what I have been looking for.

    Thanks,

    Mr. Chad T. Everson
    http://grizzlygroundswell.com

  6. Hi Chad,

    If you edit the page and look at the URL you’ll see the ID at the end of the URL, something like &ID=xxx

    I’m working on a way to make this totally transparent to you, by providing a button where the plugin will scan your pages to determine what the landing page should be. Just haven’t got there yet, so watch this space.

    Hope this helps

  7. Hello!

    I have installed your plugin but the Donate page doesn’t display the donation form information.

    I enabled the plugin, placed the widget in the sidebar, placed the code in http://www.amfufu.com/donate/..

    The graph or text are both showing but there is no information in the specified Donate page.

    Please help.

  8. @amfufu: Tried visiting your site, but I’m not even seeing the graph in your sidebar. Is your plugin activated.

    Remember, you need to have in the HTML of the page for the plugin to activate. Can you confirm you have this?

  9. Thank you so much for helping me out via “chat support”.. 🙂

    Cool plugin. Nice and supportive author.

    Keep up the great work Owen.

  10. I’ve installed it, but when i try and pledge money it gives me a thankyou message, but doesn’t actually update the amount, and no pledges are recorded.

    The initial $0.00 pledge also won’t delete.

    i have run the update.

  11. @Travis: I’ve just left 2 pledges for you (1 paypal, 1 cheque) and it seems to be working ok. Can you confirm they show up in the admin screen?

  12. Thanks Owen… I can see that your tests worked, and I’ve realised what it is I was doing wrong. I was writing The $ sign in the amount field. Perhaps you need to check for it and strip if present.

  13. @Travis: excellent suggestion. Don’t think I’m doing much validation in there at the moment …

  14. Any chance the graph bar could show percentage instead of dollar amount. Example a non-profit might be trying to raise money for a specific program, but doesn’t want to put a dollar amount out in public, but wants to have a percentage raised. (25% of target amount).

  17. @mike: looks fine from the end. The only thing that doesn’t work is the background image of the form (I sort of assumed that everyone had a white background .. how wrong I was).

    I’ll address that in the next version

  20. @chuck: could be one of the class names I used is also used in your theme. I’ll change them to something more unique in the next build

  21. @Toby: you won’t find a donation button on my blog, because that’s not why I write plugins 😉

    But if you like it, blog about it and tell all your friends. Always appreciate a bit more traffic 😉

  22. I have had issues with the plugin, and I want it to work so bad!

    It says that when people contribute, my Paypal does not accept US currency – and to ask me to change my PayPal settings.

    However, I do have them set to accept US currency – so I am lost. Can you please help me?

    I love this and want it to work so bad for me!

    Thank you,
    Jake A. Wheat

  23. @Jake: try setting your currency to USD instead of $. The next drop will have a proper currency selector as I realised this section could really cause trouble when you come to accepting pledges.

  24. Your Amazing! It works! Thank you so much for that – I had US instead of USD.

    I know… I goofed. Your plug-in worked flawlessly on the test!

    Thank God for you!

  25. Owen, a wonderful plugin and something I suddenly found a desperate need for. Thank you.

    A question though. How would I change the dimensions of the graph on the sponsor me page?

    You can see what I am tlaking about here. http://mexicotrucker.com/sponser-mexico-trucker-online/

    I need th graph to span 90% of the post area for balance and to display the header of the graph completely.

    Thanks again for your efforts. Your work is helping to make a reality of what I consider a worthy cause.

  26. What does “go to the administration menu for the plugin” mean? Sorry but I’m having a hard time with this and would GREATLY appreciate your help!
    THANKS

  27. Uh, where is the Sponsor me configuration screen?
    maybe you should write an “installing plugins for dummies” manual or something…Oh gosh I must be the only person who doesn’t understand this stuff…

  28. @rebecca: If you go to your Manage menu, you should see “SponsorMe” in your menu list. Clicking on this will take you to the Administration Screen.

    I’m in two minds whether it should be in Settings or Manage, but put it in Manage, as you manage your sponsorship entries there

  29. @Porter: I’m getting a “Page Not Found” on that URL. But .. I am working on a new version with a Flash graph that can be more easily resized.

  30. Thanks for your help!! I got it all set up…great plugin
    I don’t even have a clue how you do this stuff but it’s greatly appreciated, especially the free part!

  31. Owen,

    Good work!

    I had to hack up sponsorme a bit for my purposes, but I just ran a test of it through PayPal’s sandbox system and my sandbox accounts register a payment submitted and a payment received.

    Here are suggestions on upgrades.
    *Enable a configuration entry to specify real live production PayPal or PayPal SandBox testing. Since we are working with money most administrators are probably going to want to perform a little more testing with this plugin, even though PayPal is the entity actually performing the transaction.

    *While the public contribution tracking may be great for some purposes for others it is not, I would include a configuration option for administrators to turn it on/off per their need. I went through the code and found the relevant lines that display the public contribution reports and disabled those lines.

    Cheers!

  32. @Mark,

    Thanks for the suggestions. I’m still putting some more things into the plugin, it’s far from baked yet, so I will be taking your suggestions on board. Playing with a funkier graph at the moment (Flash based) .. next version should be a bit prettier 😉

  33. I just wanted to thank you for an excellent plugin Owen! It is really working out nicely.

    See it: http://www.sevhs.com/ways-to-help/make-a-donation/

    A few things that didn’t quite fit my needs I had to adjust…

    1. I disabled the viewing of the chart. Main reason is because I wanted to use it for general donations instead of going for a specific goal. They may have specific goals at times, which then I can uncomment those lines.

    2. I would LOVE to be able to have multiple donation campaigns going. Mainly just for this particular site because they have several types of donations (general donations, memorial donations, specific donations like building funds, etc.).

    3. Right now I am trying to figure out how to display the “recent donations” list in other areas of my theme. I haven’t really spent much time on it, but it would be neat to do.

    Anyway — still such an excellent plugin and exactly what I was looking for to hopefully cut down on maintenance. Keep up the awesome work!

    Rene

  34. Hi,

    I am developing a blog, in which I have to use a thermometer image. So is there any way I can replace the default image in the plugin by the new thermometer image? Is it easy to do that?

    Thanks,
    Ani

  35. Is it possible to have the mutilate donation drives running at once. I am looking to set up several pages for a charity website, were each page is for the team working towards their individual goals.

  36. Hello Owen,

    Thank you for an absolutely great plugin.

    May I suggest ability to edit the provided link from the admin area?

    It would also be cool if the sponsor could leave a link in a tag cloud like supposed in the ‘WP-donators’ plugin.
    I don’t use that one because I can’t get it to work properly with my theme, but I find the feature appealing.

  38. Installation went well, once I remembered a small posting detail. 🙂

    There is one feature I’d like to see incorporated in a future release. When they start playing for the day street musicians drop what bills and cash they have on hand in their instrument case, hat, whatever. This encourages donations, people figuring since others have contributed, they might as well. This is known as “priming the pump”. I’d like to be able to prime the pump, especially since I’m hoping to raise money for a new iMac. As it stands now, I can’t add the six dollars I currently have in my PayPal account to the running total. If you could it would be most appreciated.

  39. I activated the plugin; went to design-widgets and made it active / placed it on page; but can’t configure : when I go to manage-sponsor me i get:
    Fatal error: Cannot redeclare maybe_create_table() (previously declared in /hide/hide/public_html/wp-admin/install-helper.php:13) in /hide/hide/public_html/wp-admin/includes/upgrade.php on line 777
    Help needed – Thanks!

  40. The installation of SponsorMe was very easy however I can not get the graph to show. Using the text version in the widget works fine. I’ve checked my mod_security logs to see if it was interfearing. PHP with GD is installed. Any help would be great.

    Here is the site on error:
    http://www.helpbryce.com/donations/

    -Thanks

  41. I also noticed that once payment is completed via paypal that the donator is left at a static page at paypal’s website. It would be nice to be sent back to the donation page after payemtn is completed.

    -Tom

  43. Hi Owen,

    Thank you so much for sharing the Seth Godin interview.
    He is most entertaining and share so much deep insight.
    Very clever man ….. !!

  44. I installed the plugin and it works like a charm. I love it. I did (probably continue to) edit some of the code in both the css and the php. Just a little so that it looks better with my site.

  45. Hey. The only problem with the graph is that it doesn’t fit into the look of my site. Is it possible to customise the look?

  47. Hello,
    I really like what i’ve seen from this plug-in on other people’s pages. I’ve got everything installed, followed the directions carefully, and can’t seem to figure out how to get the info to display in one of my pages. I have the widget working great, I just need some help with getting the info to display in a content page.

    Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!

    http://www.kidsagainsthungerpbc.com

  50. Would love to see this for use with Amazon Payments instead of (or in addition to) PayPal.

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