This would have to be the best idea I've had in a while

Site donations are cool, but I'd like to suggest an extension to this idea. Member donations.

It would work similar to how vb.org handles the "Support Developer" - Click on support developer [DBTech] vB Optimise v2 (vB4) - vBulletin.org Forum

1. It would have a similar usercp set up like vBulletin.org Forum
2. User group permissions. Set which user groups can enable Member Donations.
3. Integrate it into the footer where you have Contribute. Make it work as a pop up like on vb.org
4. Have a member contribution stats page. This page will outline which members have received donations, and how much they have received and when, and have it ordered from highest to lowest.

Why? Because if I enable this feature on a certain user group it will 1. Entice people to join that usergroup. 2. Make people want to contribute more and improved content. Overall this feature will make the community more active, and that is a win win.

Its late, I'll just say, I like it!

To be honest that would require quite a bit of doing.

I never tried the support developer on vb.org but I would assume they somehow collect the contributions for the developer, then sent the developer the money.

If it is not done that way and the contribution goes directly to the developer, there is a couple of issues with that.
1) It would require the member to provide you with his paypal email address and trust that that information is kept secure.
2) I don't think it would be possible to auto confirm the contribution, when someone contributes, PayPal sends a pingback to the person getting the money and that is what I use to auto confirm, I don't know if I can intercept that info before it goes to the person getting the money.
3) If the above can't be worked out, then it would be up to the individual to confirm the contributions manually, thus needing to give them admin rights to the front end of the mod.

I am sure there is some other things that could go wrong but that's quick off the top of my head, maybe @Decado can take a look at this thread and give his opinion.

Take a look at the links I posted. The usercp at vb.org gives you an area to input your paypal. The payment would go direct to the paypal account. No need for site owner to approve or do any forward payments. @Decado can confirm.

OK then the issue would still remain on how to handle the confirming of the contributions, like I said I don't know if I could intercept the ping from PayPal after a payment has been made to a member to auto confirm the transaction, but it's possible.

Like I said this would be a big feature, and require some extensive testing before it was ever to be implemented.

Member Donation

Originally Posted by hornstar

3. Integrate it into the footer where you have Contribute.

Maybe one option would be to have the Contribute for each member on the post if they have entered their paypal info.

In other word...just use the Contribute button.

Would need usergroup permissions.

Yes, @Ozzy47 it's a big feature and I would think it would need to be in the Pro Version down the road in development.

Yeah that mod is set up to mimic vb.org, I used that mod quite some time ago.

To be honest it strikes me as slightly outside of the scope of vBDonate - vBDonate is based around coming up with ways to get your members to contribute to your site, and reward them for doing so.

The entire aim of a mod like this would be completely different and it would severely split focus and dev time from the primary purpose of vBDonate - especially bad when it's a feature most forums won't make use of.

As a standalone mod I think it's an intriguing idea, as a feature addition to vBDonate I think it's just too big of a feature with too different a focus from the main mod to be honest.

Iain