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Sell digital downloads with PayPal and Google Checkout

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PHP-eSeller is a PHP / mySQL application that you install onto your web site and interacts with PayPal or Google Checkout to automatically sell digital files.  When the customer makes a purchase, the process of delivering the files is automatic and so provides a 24 /  7 solution.

Once PHP-eSeller is purchased, there are no additional fees for the application, except fees that you pay to PayPal and Google Checkout.  The purchase of PHP-eSeller is a one time purchase.

It can be used to see any type of digital download.  See

http://www.withinweb.com/phpeseller/usersites.php

which lists some of the sites that are using the application.

How to set up an external smtp service

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This describes how to set up the SMTP email for use with PHP-eSeller, PHP-SecureArea, PHP-KeyCodes.

You may find that you web server is not sending out emails as well as you would like.  Shared web servers sometimes have issues with how quickly the email is sent out and the headers in the emails.

To use an external SMPT service all you have to do is change the config.php file.

If you look at the config.php file there are some settings near the bottom of the page which should explain it.

$smtpuse    =     false;                                     //set to true if you are going to use smtp
$smtphost    =    “smtp_server_host_here”;    //The smtp host that you are using
$smtpusername     =     “smtp_user_name_here”;        //Your smtp username
$smtppassword    =    “smtp_passord_here”;             //Your smtp password

You change the smtpuser to true and you need a host name, username and password for the SMTP service.

Update to csv import file for PHP-eSeller

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The csv import script has been updated to include a fuller range of product item fields. This now covers more or less all the fields in the product item list.

The fields are :

item_number
item_name
mc_gross
item_title
item_description
item_description_full
maincategory
subcategory
folder
filename
filename_small_mp3
item_image
pagetitle
metadescription
keywords
sortorder

The new file a_csv_import.php can be obtained by emailing us and replaces the file in the admin section. The file is applicable to all versions of PHP-eSeller that has the import script.

PHP-Keycodes now with Google

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PHP-KeyCodes is now able to use Google checkout as well as PayPal. 

In some ways Google checkout provides a better user experience than PayPal as the key code can be displayed to the customer on their Google checkout page. 

PHP-Keycodes can be used with a response handler (the code that monitors the transaction returned from Google checkout) but this requires SSL (a site that has https) or it can be used without the response handler and so your web site does not require SSL to handle the return data from Google.  Without a response handler you do not get the updates of Google sales back at your web site, but otherwise it operates in the same way.

WordPress plugins

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The following is a list of some of the more interesting WordPrss plugins.

* http://akismet.com/ Akismet – Kills spam comments, dead.

* http://www.1pixelout.net/code/audio-player-wordpress-plugin/ Audio player – An easy to embed audio player (possibly for use with podcasts)

* http://semperfiwebdesign.com/portfolio/wordpress/wordpress-plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/ All in One SEO Pack – All your search engine optimization needs in one package

* http://jamesmckay.net/code/comment-timeout/ Comment Timeout – Stop getting comments on posts older than X amount of days.

* http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/ Google XML Sitemaps – Easily create a Google-ready sitemap for your blog.

* http://www.smackfoo.com/plugins/sig2feed/ RSS Feed Signature – Add an extra line to your RSS feed (great for ads or plugs)

* http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/subscribe-to-comments/ Subscribe To Comments – Allow your users to get updates on when more comments are left on a particular story.

Posted in SOE

Installing on Windows Web Server

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PHP-eSeller and PHP-KeyCodes can both be installed on a Windows Web Server which runs PHP and has a mySQL database.  This is quite a common arrangement now, and many hosting companies provide this, enabling PHP applications to be installed on Windows Web Servers. 

Both of the applications work fine on Windows servers and normally work straight out of the box installation.

The only possible issue is sending emails.  Both applications need to send out emails from the server and this can be done by configuring PHP-eSeller and PHP-KeyCodes to use SMTP if the standard PHP email has not been set up.  This requires minor configuration changes to the config file which means entering the SMTP host, username, password.  All of these details should be available from your web site host if you donot know them.

You do not have to use the web server SMTP details, you can use an external SMTP mail service such as http://www.authsmtp.com.  Sometimes, these provide a better mail service than your host and may be more reliable.

Can different applications use the one PayPal IPN account

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Can I use the same PayPal account for different PayPal applications.

Yes you can. The way you do it is to pass the url of the IPN script in the purchase button using the notify_url field.  PHP-eSeller, PHP-SecureArea and PHP-KeyCodes are all able to operate on the same PayPal account because they all send the IPN confirm url within the button.  This means that if you an application that uses your IPN PayPal account, you can still use withinweb.com applications on your site. 

In fact, withinweb.com applications create the and post the data to PayPal dynamically.  The relevant information is extracted from the database and, collected together and then posted to PayPal.  This method means that you can control the data centrally using the admin panel.

Extracting data from myPHPAdmin

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A question I am often asked is how can I create better reports from the data that is in the mySQL database for transactions processed by PHPeSeller or by PHPSecureArea.  Both of these have sales history displays but you may wish to process the data in another application such as MS Excel or MS Access.

One approach is to extract the data from mySQL using your web server control panel.  Login into the control panel of your server and find the section that deals with mySQL.  You should have a link to myPHPAdmin or a similar database tool.

Navigate to the correct database in myPHPAdmin.  Navigate to the table that you want to export and at the top of the page you should see an EXPORT tab.  Click on this.  You will need to select a particular format for the export. This is normally CSV for Excel or CSV.  CSV stands for Comma Separted Values and is a very common method of transfering data to and from different application.  That should then allow you to download the file which can then be opened in your required application.