Donations Tracker for PayPal

New Mobile QR Codes available

2012-02-16T14:30:00.004-05:00

We've added new QR codes for all the donation tracker images, you can copy the address of the QR code image for use on your website or printed media to easily jump to a donation page using any compatible smart phone or tablet.

Find the QR codes on the edit view page:

ISP Maintenance

2011-11-14T21:20:00.002-05:00

Our web hosting provider is having some maintenance which could affect all services 11pm-3am Eastern:

MAINTENANCE WINDOW: Wednesday 16th November 2011 12:00AM - 04:00AM CST
PURPOSE OF WORK: Network Provider Maintenance
IMPACT OF WORK: Suboptimal routing to all hosting services, though no loss of connectivity is expected as redundant links will be utilized.
MAINTENANCE DESCRIPTION: Our network provider has provided the following details,

Our upstream provider, Suddenlink, will be performing hardware maintenance.

During this window, we will shut down the connection to Suddenlink and will bring it back online once their work is completed. This may result in two brief periods ( approximately one minute) of suboptimal routing as routes reconverge on the network. The remaining providers in our architecture will remain up, reducing impact.

Please accept on sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused.

New Facebook Sharing

2011-07-31T00:31:00.002-04:00

With all the changes to Facebook limiting profile boxes, we're moving over to use the web sharing part of Facebook to post campaign and tracker images in your Facebook page or group:

On the Edit View page under your campaign, click the Share your campaign on Facebook link:

Add a comment and select where the fundraising campaign will be posted:

The post appears in your wall and others news feeds:

Facebook Donations Tracker Updated

2011-04-16T23:51:00.004-04:00

We've upgraded our Facebook app to the latest version with support for https views and the new login procedure (for those having trouble loging in). It's looking like Facebook has quietly dropped tabs from user profiles, leaving the only place to show application content on group pages. Long gone are the wall boxes of your profile which were taken away with a previous update.

Security updates

2011-02-20T23:34:00.003-05:00

We've been busy rolling out some new updates including some security enhancements - no passwords are stored on our site or emailed to users. We are using a neat hashing system which includes a per-user salt and purposely introduced collisions to make recovering a password highly unlikely (you must now follow an email link to reset your password). With some recent media reports of other major websites having their databases hacked and leaked publicly, we decided that with a good chance a lot of our users re-use passwords for PayPal or email accounts, we should make reversing our hashes as difficult as possible - which is why we're only storing partial hashes making a brute force password guessing attack less successful. Combined with incremental timeouts for incorrect passwords, and 128 bit SSL encryption of logins, we think our secure account system is the standard all sites should strive to meet.

PayPal tracking issues with IPN

2011-02-06T17:44:00.003-05:00

We've received a few reports over the weekend of the Profile based IPN setting overriding the transaction based IPN notify_url which is set automatically by DonationsTracker.com.

Normally the notify_url variable passed in a buy or donate button should override any profile set IPN url. If you are having issues with Donations not tracking - you can check the PayPal History section's IPN History to see the IPN URL used for past transactions, and to correct this issue - delete any Profile IPN setting and set the IPN to off to allow the transaction based one used by DonationsTracker to function.

Login issues

2010-12-16T16:01:00.004-05:00

Corrected a login issue this afternoon where after login you would be prompted to login again due to software patches modifying the permissions of the directory where the login sessions are saved.

Group fundraising

2010-10-15T11:23:00.002-04:00

We're currently diligently working on some new features for group fundraising to track individual contributions to a campaign, watch this space for more details.

Relaunch of partner site

2010-09-14T23:43:00.004-04:00

Relaunched a partner site for Ottawa, Ontario based business consulting company - Professional Business Solutions specializing in supporting Quickbooks, Sage Accpac, Simply Accounting, Crystal Reports, and bookeeping (day to day transactions, reconcilliations, and year end preparations).

Twitter OAuth Support Added

2010-09-04T13:14:00.003-04:00

The Donations Tracker twitter feed now supports OAuth which allows us to post donations updates to your twitter account without the need to provide your password to us. The previous api function has been discontinued by Twitter. To re-activate your twitter feed, log into DonationsTracker.com and find your twitter view, then click the Sign in with Twitter button to begin the process of authorizing the DonationsTracker.com Twitter application.

Automatic sizing for top and recent donations lists

2010-08-20T17:29:00.004-04:00

We've made a few changes to enhance the Recent and Top donor views based on customer requests:

The title Recent Donors has been changed to Recent Donations.

User comments are now indented three spaces.

And the top and recent donors views will now automatically resize their height based on the number of donors displayed - if all donors are to be shown the list will grow to show all.

Facebook 2 - New users adding Donations Tracker

2010-08-03T23:51:00.004-04:00

Here's a quick how to for once you've added the Donations Tracker Facebook application. Once you've selected the campaign to show, there's now a Add Profile Tab button. Click it.

That brings up a confirmation:

And finally the addition is complete - you'll have a Donate tab on your profile with a donation image, and customization heading and paragraph of text.

Facebook changes

2010-08-03T23:47:00.003-04:00

Facebook recently removed the option for new application users to add the profile box, from now on people adding applications can only add the profile "Tab" which appears at the top of your profile:

If you recently added Donations Tracker you can toggle the showing of the Donate tab like from the Application Settings page under "Account" at the top right of the page:

New Feature - hide totals in the thermometer and bar graph

2010-06-16T21:19:00.003-04:00

We've added a new feature to optionally hide the financial amounts from the thermometer or bar graph images, check it out:

New feature - create your own website on DonationsTracker.com

2010-06-06T22:00:00.004-04:00

We've added a new feature to Donations Tracker - a webpage on DonationsTracker.com. You can pick any directory on Donations Tracker such as DonationsTracker.com/yourname/. When you add a new "view" to your campaign, select "Webpage on DonationsTracker.com/yourname/".

Check out our sample at http://www.donationstracker.com/sample/. You can add any HTML to the page you'd like and copy/paste one of the previously generated tracking images such as a thermometer etc. Included images should be available from somewhere on the internet.

New Thermometer Style

2010-05-25T23:20:00.002-04:00

Hello,

We've updated the thermometer style to better show the goal when you're very close to it, previously the goal was not displayed when the donations hit 95% or higher which can be confusing, now the goal appears at the top in plain font and the current amount will appear below in bold.

Upgraded server

2010-05-15T00:25:00.003-04:00

Hello,

We've added a new heavy duty server overnight at CrucialP's datacenter in Dallas, Texas, increasing our resources x 4 to handle the steady growth we're seeing in new DonationsTracker.com accounts on a daily basis. Our main IP address also changed as well, if you get a maintenance page instead of a login, you're seeing the old site and may need to flush your DNS cache. The move over had zero downtime and all images were continuously available as were the incoming donations. If you do notice any issues that could be related to the move please contact our support page or through this blog's comment capability.

Adding Donations Tracker to a Facebook page

2010-05-08T18:16:00.008-04:00

Here's how to add a Donations Tracker box to a "page" on Facebook. To add to your profile you just need to click the Donations Tracker app login from Account - Application Settings .

Go to your Facebook Page, click the Edit Page link under the logo.

Then you get the edit page:

Click edit in the Donations Tracker App settings box:

Then Login to your Donations Tracker account:

Pick Campaign from the list:

Pick the Image to add - thermometers fit the best:

Then you can enter a box of text to appear below the image, and add the box to your profile.

Donations Tracker Image sizes

2010-05-06T19:13:00.003-04:00

If you want to edit the width or height of your images, here's the page to do it - Edit Campaign - Choose the View/image to edit, then you'll get this screen. For Facebook - remember that if you want to have the image fit to the side of the Wall page, it will need to be about 180 pixels (px) or less width.

Upgrading to a PayPal business or premier account

2010-05-06T17:57:00.004-04:00

Hello,

Today's topic is PayPal account types, there are three - Personal, Premier and Business. We recommend that all of our users be Business or Premier - this will ensure that credit card donations are automatically accepted and paid into your account. The default personal account requires you to manually log in and approve each donation payment before it's credited into your account and then show up in the DonationsTracker.com campaign. (So if you received donations and your campaign is not showing the credit card ones - this is why). Personal accounts usually have a $500 limit before you must do the free upgrade to business or premier. While personal accounts can receive free PayPal transfers up to the first $500, a premier or business account is needed to regularly accept credit card donations or transfers totalling more than $500.

To upgrade to a PayPal business or premier account, visit https://www.paypal.com/UPGRADE.

Pick list of multiple campaigns

2010-05-04T22:51:00.007-04:00

We recently had a question from someone looking to have an advanced drop down list of campaigns to track separate totals, along with pre-filling out the donation amount, and asking if the donor wants to remain anonymous. The first option list uses the donation web address from the donation button generated on DonationsTracker.com. And this is all put on your own website (modified to look as needed), and the donor will be automatically clicked through to PayPal as all the options are pre-entered.

<form action =" http://www.donationstracker.com/donate.php" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="v" value="1.1">
<p>For:
<select name="donate">
<option value="c3f03bee5983e71b5dc1c2ac1b0fedef&cid=14&vid=15&uid=1">The Euro Fund</option>
<option value="74ad8848a1190545a6745950af847be2&cid=16&vid=17&uid=1">The Pound Fund</option>
</select></p>

<p>Anonymous?
<select name="anonymous">
<option value="no">No</option
<option value="anonymous">Yes</option
</select>
</p>

<p>Amount: $
<input type="text" name="amount" size="8" maxlen="15"></p>

<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Donate">
</form>

Demo:

Tweet donations to Twitter.com

2010-04-19T00:32:00.001-04:00

New Feature - now you can create a "twitter feed" view within a campaign to tweet new PayPal donations as they are received, along with totals, and a link to make a donation - all automatically by DonationsTracker.com.

New Feature - Keep your email address secure from spammers

2010-03-23T22:08:00.002-04:00

New feature - you can use the "Secure Merchant Account ID" from your Business or Premier PayPal account Profile page so that your PayPal email address does not appear in the donation button html source. Just add the Merchant ID to your DonationsTracker.com Account page.

FaceBook Donations Tracker auto-updates

2010-03-22T22:17:00.003-04:00

Hello,

We've worked out the FaceBook auto-update images (they were caching the images instead of reloading as they changed). Every time there's a new donation (or when you save the campaign with or without changes) the Facebook image such as the thermometers etc will be reloaded by facebook. If you haven't received a donation lately and your Facebook image is out of date, just log into DonationsTracker.com, go to the campaign and click Save Campaign to update it.

Payment-Tracker.com

2010-02-21T21:04:00.002-05:00

We're pleased to announce the launch of our invoice tracking site at www.Payment-Tracker.com. Use the new site to collect credit card and PayPal payments from your customers easily and export the revenue data to your accounting software.