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Using PayPal Ordering Buttons |
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PayPal provides several features for creating ordering links such as "Buy Now" and "Add to Cart" buttons and item listings that can be posted on social media or sent in emails. These buttons and ordering links are more secure than the type of buttons that SoftSeller can create -- in particular, they hide your email address to prevent "harvesting" by spammers, and they cannot be faked or altered -- so we recommend using them. Ordering buttons generated in PayPal will work with SoftSeller, but you will need to add some additional information to link the transactions back to SoftSeller.
First, the PayPal button generator will allow you to specify a "return" page which customers will be sent to after completing a successful payment. With SoftSeller, this page will allow the customers to download items immediately without waiting for an emailed link.
In the "Customize advanced features" section of the button generator, find the entry labeled
"Take customers to this URL when they finish checkout", check the checkbox, and enter this URL:
https://softseller.com/cgi-bin/odb.exe/ss/odb/SSReturn.odb
(Note that you can also define a page to transfer to if the customer cancels the transaction, but that can be any page on your website -- it should not be to SoftSeller.)
For this "return" page to work properly with SoftSeller, it is also necessary to tell PayPal to post the transaction data to this page. In the "Customize advanced features" section, there is an entry box labeled "Advanced variables." Enter the following line in the box:rm=2
Next, you need to tell PayPal to send Instant Payment Notifications (IPNs) to SoftSeller.
While it is not necessary to use the "return" page for instant downloading if you prefer not to, this "notify" link
is required because SoftSeller uses the IPNs to trigger sending the emails with download links.
The IPNs also insure that data is captured in SoftSeller whether or not the customer actually goes to the "return" page.
You can set up this "notify" URL either in your PayPal account preferences (which is most convenient if you have
a lot of items, but note that it will apply to all transactions sent to your account), or you can set it
directly in each button.
This can be done by adding another line in the "Advanced variables" box:
notify=https://softseller.com/cgi-bin/odb.exe/ss/odb/SSNotify.odb
To set the "notify" URL in your account profile so that it applies to all transactions: On the home page hover over your
account name in the upper right corner, then click on "Account Settings" in the drop-down menu that appears.
On the following page, click on the "Website payments" option near the bottom of the menu list on the left side of the page.
Several options will appear in the panel on the right side of the page, one of which is "Instant payment notifications."
Click on the "Update" link for that option (on the far right side of the page).
Enter the following Notification URL in the entry box, and also ensure that "Message delivery" is set to "Enabled":
https://softseller.com/cgi-bin/odb.exe/ss/odb/SSNotify.odb