How can I accept payments through PayPal with WP Courseware?

To configure PayPal, you will need to ensure you that you already have a PayPal Personal or Business account (PayPal Standard not Pro). To enable and configure the PayPal payment gateway you will need to perform the following steps:

  1. Click on WP Courseware→Settings
  2. Click the Checkout tab
  3. Click the Payment Gateways sub menu item
  4. Click on PayPal

There are several fields required to enable PayPal.

  1. First tick the Enable PayPal checkbox
  2. The title will display on the checkout page. This is the title of the payment gateway label which helps to identify the payment gateway method, incase you have 2 gateways enabled. It's probably a good idea to label it PayPal. 
  3. The description will show just below the title.
  4. The email address is the most important. This is your PayPal email address. If you are in Sandbox mode then this would match the account you created in your PayPal developer account (more detail about sandbox below).

Next you will need to configure PDT (optional) and IPN (required). They both perform the same function, but they have different delivery methods. After a payment is made on PayPal's site, PayPal needs to send your website information. Both of these are methods for sending the data to your website. PDT sends data immediately after the transaction, however, it will only send it that one time. If you site happens to be down when PDT sends data, then the information will not get to your site. That's where IPN comes in handy. IPN is not as quick as PDT to send data to your website, but it is more reliable. It will keep attempting to send data to your site until the data arrives and is confirmed. It is a good practice to enable PDT but IPN is absolutely necessary.

  1. The PDT token is located in your PayPal account. You'll have to enable the return URL, and fill in your site's domain. Then simply copy the PDT token to your clipboard and insert it into the PDT text field. 
  2. The IPN URL will be located in the PayPal IPN section (note - it will be different than shown below. It is unique to your site). Simply copy the URL to your clipboard and paste it in your PayPal account.

[NOTE] - If you are using the PayPal sandbox, you will need to configure the sandbox seller account with the correct IPN URL and the PDT token will be different than your live PayPal account.

The advanced settings are not necessary to enable PayPal.

  1. The PayPal Image must be 150px x 50px. Also, the image will only display for non-subscription type payments. It is optional and is not required.
  2. The PayPal sandbox is a great way to test. If this is enabled, the URL's on the front end will be sent to the PayPal sandbox rather than to the production server. In order to obtain a sandbox account, you must have a PayPal personal or business account. Once you have created your PayPal account, then you can login to the PayPal Developer site. Once you are in the PayPal Developer site, you can create test accounts. You can create seller accounts as well as buyer accounts for testing purposes
  3. The IPN notifications will enable or disable any email notification that is triggered when your site receives an IPN notification.
  4. You can choose to enable logging which will be available in the WP Courseware→Tools page on the System Log tab. No sensitive data is collected to the logs but are helpful if you are troubleshooting an issue.

The API section is also optional, however it is required if you choose to process refunds and subscription cancelations from with in your WordPress site. The API settings can be found in your PayPal account. You may need to enable the API, however, once enabled, you can obtain your API keys immediately.

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