The Donations Cloud

Your website has cool stuff and encourages people to donate for it, but nobody ever gives a penny? Give them something that they get only for a donation, e.g. a link on your website. A link is like a little ad space, the donor’s website will gain some popularity, and even (if you don’t use nofollow) some PR juice. And if the donation links are presented appealingly and at a prominent position, the motivation to donate will strongly rise. If you want to know how to go about it, read on. All you need is a PayPal account and a WordPress blog.

How to really get some donation bucks

Would you mind if somebody just gave you some money? Of course not. In fact, you deserve it! You have an informative website, you create free stuff, or you are just a nice guy. This is why you have a Donate button on your website.

But, honestly: Are you getting rich from donations? Certainly not. The reason is, people come by and think: “Why should I donate? I don’t have any actual disatvantages from not donating, while donating will loose me money.” In terms of sociology, it’s most people’s rational choice not do donate. Only people who value the advantages of donating (for example a good feeling) higher than a certain amount of money, will decide to donate.

A good idea is to offer people something in return. Of course, they already got your stuff (cool content or free software). But give them something only for the donation, and the motivation to donate will rise. A very good idea is to set a link to donors on your website. (Might seem obvious, but I myself had to be pointed to it – thx, Gobala.) Getting a link on your website is certainly a feature that motivates people to spend money.

However, a simple link list is rather boring … so we present:

The Donations Cloud – donating the 2.0 way!

The donations cloud is something like a tag cloud, only that it displays – donations. ;) The more a person donates, the larger the link to his/her website will be. (A special function ensures that small donations aren’t to tiny, and very big donations aren’t ridicioulusly large.) To see a “live” donations cloud, have a look at the sidbar of this page. ;)

 

Thank god, a WP plugin!

When you are raising funds, you want to get as many donations as possible. Unfortunately, the more donations you get, the more work you have managing the links. Also, it would be nice for the donors to see their link coming up instantly after the donation. Therefore, it is mandatory to have a system that manages payments automatically.

So, here’s the good news: Not only did we develop the ingenious concept of a donations cloud, but we also developed a WordPress plugin that will make the integration of your own donations cloud totally easy. And the best thing: This plugin which will make you so incredibly rich, is available for free — except from a little donation by you ;) .

A standalone (not WordPress-dependent) Donations Cloud solution will be available soon.

Download

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Installation

  • If you haven’t already, open a PayPal account (sorry, only PayPal at the moment).
  • If you haven’t already, get PayPal API credentials with a signature.
  • Download the plugin, unpack it, upload donationscloud to your plugins/ directory.
  • Edit the file settings.php to match your requirements.
  • If you use sidebar widgets, the plugin provides two widgets you can use: one for the form, one for the cloud.

  • If you don’t use widgets, edit your theme’s sidebar.php and insert two new sections that might look like:

    <?php if ( function_exists('dc_donation_form') ) echo '<li>'.dc_donation_form(false).'</li>'; ?>

    <?php if ( function_exists('dc_donations_cloud') ) echo '<li>'.dc_donations_cloud(false).'</li>'; ?>

    (You could also have the donations cloud on a dedicated page, if it’s very large.)

  • Edit the file popup.php to fit your website and your terms. If you have a non-english or multi-language website, you’ll also have to create popup-$locale.php files.
  • Finally, activate the plugin and lean back while getting rich! ;)

Integration hints

  • Make sure to place the donation form and the donations cloud at prominent positions. The more people people realize the form, the more will consider donating. The more prominent the cloud is, the higher is the motivation to get a link in this cloud.
  • If you are afraid that Google will punish you because of the lot of outgoing links, the plugin has an option in the settings to make the links rel="nofollow". If you choose to use this, please don’t forget to tell your potential donors. I myself don’t use nofollow in the donations cloud, because I think that people who donate deserve a proper link. Screw you, Google.
  • To be honest, this plugin might not be the best solution for everybody: For small sites, a link might not be worth enough to donate. For very large sites, the space taken by the donations cloud might be sold more expensive for another kind of advertising. However, be aware that a donations cloud is also a very easy, cheap (no fees except PP!) and appealing way to implement text link advertising.

Have fun with the Donations Cloud plugin! If you like it, spread the word and donate!

18 comments on “The Donations Cloud”

  1. Suzie Cheel on May 3, 2008 at 08:06 #

    Just followed you instructions to the T, and no box is appearing- yes if it works I will donate for 2 blogs

    is there something I missed , thanks

    Suzie

  2. Alex Günsche on May 3, 2008 at 10:24 #

    You didn’t quite follow it to the T … ;) The tutorial says “edit your theme’s sidebar.php”, you instead created a sidebar widget with the mentioned code, which is why the code is printed literally in the HTML source. Sorry, the plugin is not widget-capable yet, so you actually have to modify the sidebar.php file with a text editor.

  3. Suzie Cheel on May 3, 2008 at 21:18 #

    Thanks Alex,

    I did actually edit the themes sidebar, ie I put this code into my right hand sidebar. php not into a widget
    Donate and get linked’.dc_donation_form(false).'’; ?>

    Recent donations’.dc_donations_cloud(false).'’; ?>

    By the tutorial do you mean the setting.php file?

    Thanks
    Suzie

  4. Suzie Cheel on May 4, 2008 at 00:15 #

    if I can’t sort it what donation woud you like to help me?

  5. Alex Günsche on May 4, 2008 at 01:55 #

    I see. Is it possible that you inserted the code &gt; instead of a literal > character (and vice versa with < )?

    A donation would be very much apprechiated … donate whatever you feel like my plugins are worth. ;)

  6. Alex Günsche on May 4, 2008 at 10:17 #

    Attention to all users of the plugin: There is a bug in the plugin which causes the verification of the Transaction ID to always fail. This is not particularily dangerous or evil, it’s just that the donation won’t be inserted automatically, but it has to be added manually. Everything else works fine. A fixed version will be available soon.

    False alarm: The bug was only in a slightly modified version for my own usage, the public version was not affected. Anyway, v0.1.1 is available now.

  7. Suzie Cheel on May 4, 2008 at 12:50 #

    checked everything not sure what to do next- think this plugin has so much value. Can i get you to help me install it?

    This is important to me now\

    thanks
    Suzie

  8. Alex Günsche on May 4, 2008 at 20:19 #

    Suzie, I do usually not provide indivdiual support on a “quick’n'dirty” basis, because there’s too much risk to mess up someone’s WP configuration/installation. However, I’m willing to make the plugin widgets-capable, which should pretty much solve your problem. If you want, you can donate a nice amount of money, which would certainly speed up the development of the new version, and which would also be some sort of paid support.

  9. Suzie Cheel on May 4, 2008 at 20:43 #

    That sounds great Alex,
    Happy to donate, would you let me know how quickly this could be done and what are you see a a fair amount I have a big hairy goal and this tool would be just the thing, problem is Have been working since last week to get something as site is launching tonight. I would need to know when i could tell my readers when they would be able to link etc

    Hope to hear from you soon.
    Suzie

  10. Alex Günsche on May 5, 2008 at 10:54 #

    Suzie, I won’t give any actual figures, because I don’t want to raise the impression that I provide direct paid support via donations. If you want to know what web development costs, have a look at gulp.com or rentacoder.com what a web developer costs in a European country, and consider that developing software takes much time for coding, testing, etc. I don’t expect you to sponsor the entire development of a new version, I just want to point out that I always have the choice between coding freely available software and being hired for projects, and I’m always interested in a good return on the invested time. ;)

    Anyway: Any donation is welcome. Also, depending on how busy I am this week, the new version of the plugin might be ready by Thursday.

  11. Alex Günsche on May 8, 2008 at 19:25 #

    Version 0.1.1 with widgets support and some minor bugfixes is available. Have fun. :)

  12. Barbara Ling on May 9, 2008 at 12:27 #

    Hi!

    Excellent plugin - what if you want to give someone a free link in the donations cloud? How is that set up?

    Thanks!

    Barbara

  13. Barbara Ling on May 9, 2008 at 12:44 #

    Also, I’m getting a Paypal error:

    “We cannot process this transaction because there is a problem with the PayPal email address supplied by the seller. ” Does it take time for Paypal to active an email address?

    Thanks!

    Barbara

  14. Suzie Cheel on May 9, 2008 at 13:04 #

    Thanks Alex,
    this is great , where are the widgets, don’t shoe anywhere?

  15. Suzie Cheel on May 9, 2008 at 13:28 #

    If you use sidebar widgets, the plugin provides two widgets you can use: one for the form, one for the cloud.

    how do you get them into the widgets in wordpress 2,5

    Normally when I put in a plugin it shows in my settings this one does not so I can’t see what to do next, have had a friend who know how to do coding look and they can’t get it to work either.

  16. Suzie Cheel on May 9, 2008 at 14:03 #

    widgets in but all over the place zenlawofattraction.com

  17. Barbara Ling on May 9, 2008 at 15:34 #

    Solved the email problem. Yay! Tell me, is there a way to view the database in Admin to see what links are there?

    I’ll be blogging about this great plugin,

    Barbara

  18. Michael Oeser on May 11, 2008 at 20:54 #

    Cool plugin but unfortunately I get an error in my WP admin after activating:

    WordPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ‘CURRENT_TIMESTAMP(), `donation_email` VARCHAR(127) CHARACTER]
    CREATE TABLE `wp_prinzdonations` ( `donation_id` INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY, `donation_date` TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP(), `donation_email` VARCHAR(127) CHARACTER SET ASCII NOT NULL, `donation_txnid` VARCHAR(127) CHARACTER SET ASCII NOT NULL, `donation_amount` DECIMAL(6,2) NOT NULL, `donation_website` VARCHAR(50) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci NOT NULL, `donation_linktext` VARCHAR(40) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci NOT NULL, `donation_active` ENUM(’0′, ‘1′) DEFAULT ‘0′ ) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci ENGINE = MYISAM

    I´m running PHP Version 4.4.8 and MySQL Client API version 5.0.32

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