phpBB & PalPay

Would this work?

[wruk999]

Forgive me if this is in the wrong category, but here goes:

I have a phpBB message forum, but want it so that people have to pay to use the site. I want it free-to-view, but then cost an annual cost for posting to the site etc.

How would I integrate PayPal (as I believe this is the best processor for the job) into the register system, and make sure that it wasn't possible to *cheat* the system, like being able to register without actually paying.

Oh, and it needs to be completely automatic! :)

Anyone done something like this? How did it work?

Feedback and thoughts appreciated.

Regards,
William

[dive into perl]

wruk999,

I don't know of a system that currently does what you are looking for, but it would be quite easy to modify the code.

phpBB sends and email to the new subscriber, asking them to click a link to verify the account.

You could modify the script which sends out that email, so that it sends a PayPal payment link to activate the account.

Once the user has visited PayPal and made their payment, you could use PayPal's automatic notification system to send the payment details to a new script on your server, which takes the details and updates the user record in the relevant phpBB table to activate the account.

Thanks,

[paladin]

PayPal has a function for subscriptions that can interact with your web site (IPN I think).

You do something like:
User signs up in your site and then pays with paypal.
Once payment is received paypal send the payment confirmation back to your site that that specific user has paid.

Next time the user logs in you have the info if he paid or not and if to allow him to post.

Good Luck

[amoore]

I'd use paypal's subscription featues to bill the users. Then, use the IPN notifications to keep your database up to date on who has paid. Modify your board software to check the payment status before allowing posts. You can probably get some more help at paypalipn.com.

Here is an example of someone doing it with PHPNuke and PostNuke: [pal.y2kinternet.com...] I suppose you can do it in a similar way.