About: Paul Foster

You may like to try this, as this was a problem I had at first.

In the PayPal Sandbox mode you will have a different PayPal generated account holder email address. (normally something like your normal one, but with numbers added.) Make sure that in your s2Member set up configuration for PayPal that you use this sandbox email, and not your normal paypal account email.

Hope that works for you.

PAF :)

PS: remember to change the email back again in your s2Member settings before you go live.

PPS: Re paypal sandboxing in general – I don’t use it anymore. I set my buy buttons and forms etc to just charge 0.01 USD, then ask a friend to test for me. A friend will always spot anything odd in the flow, that you may overlook since you are very close to the site, and your friend is basically a new user/member. You’ll also get the emails from PayPal and your site etc exactly as you would when you go live. – Just make sure you change the price back before you do go live!

@Scott, you are right in what you are saying, just make sure you have the ‘php execution’ plugin, then taht php goes straight into your HTML editor when creating the page.

Only problem is, it doesn’t appear to work, which is why I’ve joined in this thread.

As you can see from when you posted the code (use the code button above) the

= 30){ ?>

part of the code displays on the page.

(which is what I thought you were mentioning when you posted)

I’m just setting up the same thing as you.

@ Derek, @David

This affiliate plugin, would (unfortunately) just have to be a standard affiliate set up and recording/reporting script with the functionality described above.

A the end of the month, the site own would need to pay the affliates individually, like iDevAffliate, and indeed other other WP-Affliate plugins.

To have this as a part of S2Member would be excellent, since it saves trying to integrate other third party affliate plugins and indeed using affilliate plaatforms.

Following exhustive research on this I discovered that Affiliate platforms are able to use Adaptive Payments, since it is their account that is taking the money then passing it on to the others involved.

That is the platform (in Paypal terms, the primary reciever) can take the payment from the customer, keep his commission, then divides the rest up and pays up to five other people (called the secondary recievers), in what is called chain. Everyone is then responsibel for there percent of the fees, based on the money the recieve.

Secondary recievers in an affliate platforms case woulld be you, your affliate, a second tier affliate if you have them, and up to two jv parners, to make a total of up to 5.

In the case of a refund, you have to go back to the aflaite platform to issue one, if that is the buyer hasn’t already instiagted it via paypal.

The primary reciever’s acount ( the affiliate platform) is debited, and a request for money is then sent to the other accounts.

And yes @Derek, this would be is cause for concern.

However what actually happens is that when you join an affliate program to sell your product, you go through the paypal set up process through the affliate signup and in doing so give the platform permission to pay in to your account, and, crucially, debit it too, all done via the paypal api’s.

So if a refund is instigated, or requested, it is the afliate platforms account that is debited, since with the Adaptive Payments process, the primary reciever is liable for the return of the money to customer, no matter what happened to it after payment.

So as you can see, integrating Adaptive Payments in to S2member is sadly simply not possible.

The S2Member Pro User, you or me, for example, would need to have the an app set up using the paypal api’s that allows you to ask the affiliate registering with you to confirm that he will allow payments to made from you to his account as well as, crucilly as we have seen allow you debit. Your JV parners would need to register with you in this way to.

Look as this ‘app’ like setting up a ‘facebook app’ to allow you to create your own pages via tabs on your page. Just a bit more advanced since it’s money that’s in volved here.

Now, in order to be able to use this functionality of app apis in Paypal, as well as use their adaptive payments service, you have to be a limited company, and pass additonal credit checks, accreditation through paypal. (Which I wasn’t aware of when I first commented on this thread.)

And obviously not every S2Member user wanting an affiliate solution is.

So basically, our only option for this if for someone to develop an affilliate plugin that is designed to to work along side and provide more integration with s2Member rather than just be a stard 3rd party affliate plugin, and I’m pleased to say that @David has already offered to get going with some coding which is great!

Though as with all 3rd party affliate plugins, it will only do the tracking and reporting for you, you’ll have to do all the payments once a month manually.

So, sadly for me, I have moved any further on, and have decided to go down the route of changing the way my membership site works in order to be able to list on one of the affliate paltforms, which is a problem in itself, since they don’t return one of the most crucial parts of the paypal IPN – the item number, which interms of S2member is used to represent the member level number that the subscriber changes to.

Can’t have everything in this world.

Thanks to @Adam for raising the request for an s2member affliate add on. I feel I have maybe complicated the issue with refence to Affliate Platforms and Adaptive Payments, as I see that is never going to be possilble, with any plugin afflaite software.

Probably why only the affliate platforms are able to do it.

There is of course scope for me to develop and ‘Affiliate Platform’ specifically for s2Members so any s2Member user can have all the affiliate stuff, including reporting tracking paying etc taken care of.

As well as though obvious benefits, as soon as an s2Member user registers their site/product on the platform, all the ofher s2Member owners will be able to promote it too an there own sites. An instant s2Member family of affiliates, all promoting each other and paying each other comisiion immedialey, increased sales all round!!! Exclusively for s2Member users.

I like it.

Actually, that model isn’t new, The affiliate platform RAPBank.com came about as a way for owners of the Rapid Action Profits program to promote each other products, and now not only does it have a wp plugin for anybody to use and get commision on products sold through clicks on a blog etc, (similar to a various ClickBank ones) it also allows other people like you and me to register their own products.

So and afflliate platform specifically for s2Members that works in the way s2Members does re adding and upgrading downgrading new members.

Incidentally, RAPBank.com is is custom developed wordpress plugin, running beneath a custom developed wordpress theme!

I’m an excellent marketer, website designer, developer, but not a php coder. Any excellent coders fancy a joint venture partnership to build a kissass affiliate platform exclusively (at least at first) for s2Member users? ;)

Hi There, on a related issue, I too have the return from paypal. This is for a specific page access, there is no membership involed and no user created. The visitor clicks a buy button.

PayPal returns the PDT info and s2Member deals with this under the hood. I can set a success url, but I need those PDT variables as listed in the section regarding sending them to another url as well if I want.

Either I use default-return.php and user clicks continue to go to the locked page, or I use success=”http”//…”
I’m not understanding the success url though. I set it to be the url of the protected page, but since it is protected, and the user is not logged in (they will never have an account anyway) s2member redirects to the members options page.

I think I see now the success=”http://..” as being a simple thank you page, which is not what I want

The restricted page has a form on it. The vistor who has paid for access to that page will then enter two pieces of information allowing us to complete their order.

I need the PDT info as well, so it can be put into the form as prefilled data – name, paypal email etc and also hidden data, tractaion data etc. The buyer can then change the email if neccessary, enter the other requested inform and send, thus being redirected to a thank you page, and the data being put in to a databse ready for us to extract and fullfill the service ordered.

I used %%variable%% etc in the form, but it just printed that, rather than the data. I have used this free plugin before (Formbuilder) using the s2Member short codes for name email etc and it has worked brillanty for that.

My only current option as I see it now is to create a form with all those feilds, and then have the customer cut an paste that data from their specific page acess email -data I can easily put into the email using the %%variables%%.

Obviously, thats seems a totally silly way to do it.

Any ideas?

Also, no luck creating my own paypal-return.php with in wordpress theme – could do with an example if its been done by anybody – ie the page will be something akin to: &get_header(); s2Member stuff &get_footer; etc.

I get the page, but no s2member data in it.

Ideally i would like to do achieve the following:

buy button–>paypal–>paypal-return.php–>restricted page on which is a form using the %%variables%%

Any help appreciated, I’ve been going in circles trying different things, but no luck.

Thank you!