Ichthus77

My friend over at RazorSwift asked me how to add a donate button on a WordPress site. One of our mutual friends referred him to me, thinking I would know. So, of course…I tinkered around until I figured it out!  Now all my sites have one (feel free to support my work), and I thought I’d pass on this little secret to help my readers out.

Part One:  Creating the Donate Button on PayPal

1.  First, sign in to PayPal.  Follow this tab trail:  Products and Services >> Get Paid >> Fundraise >> Accept Credit Cards >> Create a Donate Button Now.  Do your thang, and remember to save your button.

2.  Once saved, you can find information about your buttons later by following this tab trail:  Profile >> My Selling Tools >> PayPal Buttons.

3.  Click on Action for the donate button you created, then select View Code from the drop-down.  If PayPal ever gives you an error message, just click Refresh.

4.  Find the line of code that looks like this:  <input type=”hidden” name=”hosted_button_id” value=”ABCDE1AB12345“>

5.  The part in your line of code that corresponds to the bold characters in the line above–you need to copy and paste that into what WordPress likes to call the Link URL:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=ABCDE1AB12345

Part Two:  Adding the PayPal Donate Button to Your WordPress Site

Now, sign into your WordPress site and go to your Dashboard >> Appearance >> Widgets.  Drag the Image widget to where you want it to appear on your page.

1.  Insert this address into the Image URL field:  https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_SM.gif

You can also add the Image URL of a button you find or design.  That’s a different tutorial.  We’re going for easy here.

2.  Next, insert the Link URL you found earlier, this being only an example:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=ABCDE1AB12345 (You would need to change the information in bold to correspond with the information you found earlier when you viewed your button’s code.  Start over and follow directions if you’re like “Whaaat?!”)

3.  Fill out the rest of the information as you prefer and click Save.  Go to your website and test out the button by clicking on it.

And…you’re welcome!  See the Donate button to the right, if you’re really grateful.  ;0)

Any questions?

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