In this tutorial we are going to learn how to configure the IPN to be able to correctly use Paypal as a payment gateway in Gravity Forms.
When we use PayPal as a payment platform, we need the platform to indicate the result of the operation to our website. The actions that we will carry out will not be the same if the payment has been made successfully or if there has been a problem with the transaction in PayPal.
To tell us the result, Paypal has a protocol called Instant Payment Notifications which means Instant Payment Notifications or IPN for short.
We will create a small purchase form, we will configure Paypal and finally we will activate, both in WordPress and in Paypal, the IPN protocol.
If you want to know all the possibilities that Gravity Forms offers you, you can review the course we have. The two plugins we will use (Gravity Forms and Gravity Forms Paypal Standard Add-On) you can find them on our intranet.
1. Create a purchase form with Gravity Forms
If you already know how to create a product sales form with Gravity Forms, you can skip this step.
So, first we are going to create a small form with a name, email, a product selector and a Paypal payment button and it will look like this:
The first two fields are of the type Text Line and Email. The selector is a Product field with radio buttons and the total is shown by a Total field. The latter in Price Fields
To display the fields in columns and the checkboxes in a line, we use the Gravity Forms CSS Ready Classes that you can see in .
The text of the button is defined in Settings> Form Settings> Form Button
Once we have our form prepared, we are going to see how we link it with our PayPal account.
2. Set up PayPal account in Gravity Forms
As indicated in , the account adjustment is made in each form, so that we can send the payment to different accounts within the same form or that each form has a different Paypal account.
We are going to create the payment feed or route that the pay button must follow. If we don’t have any, let’s click on “Create one”
If, as usual, we are only going to use a PayPal account, we can leave the default name.
- In email we put our PayPal account (in which we will receive the money).
- In mode we indicate “Production” or “Tests” if we are going to use PayPal Sandbox.
- In type of transaction we indicate Products and Services.
- In amount of payment we indicate the Total Form.
Next, in “Other Settings” we indicate which fields correspond to our form.
In this example we only have Name and Email. We also indicate a logo if we want something more personalized as well as the URL of an existing page in case the user cancels the purchase.
When the customer fills out the form, it will send them to log in to their PayPal account. If the customer does not have Paypal, they will be given the option to pay by card. And if you want to see how to set up recurring payments with PayPal, you can follow our tutorial.
With this we already have the form ready and now we will proceed to activate the IPN so that Paypal can tell us if there has been a problem with the transaction.
3. Configure the IPN in Gravity Forms and Paypal
In this phase we have to make a global adjustment because at the end of the day the notification will be made to our website regardless of the PayPal account we use.
To do this, in our WordPress menu we go to Forms> Settings> PayPal.
As shown in the image above:
- We check the box that confirms that you have configured your PayPal account to activate IPN.
- We copy the url that tells us https://domainname.com/?page=gf_paypal_ipn
- We click on the link that takes us to the specific configuration of our Paypal account https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_profile-ipn-notify
Once in PayPal (using the indicated link) we will see this page if we have never configured the IPN. Click on the Select IPN Configuration button.
On the next screen we paste the URL of our site and check the Receive Notifications option.
And attention, because after saving, we already have our IPN correctly configured in Gravity Forms and PayPal. Congratulations!
Now when someone buys something on our website through Gravity Forms, PayPal will send a notification to our website saying if the payment has been made correctly or if it could not be completed.
Summary and conclusion
To have PayPal correctly configured as a payment solution in Gravity Forms we need to configure the IPN. A very simple process that will give us greater control over transactions.
To do this we must configure Gravity Forms on the one hand with information from our PayPal account, and on the other hand PayPal with information from our notification URL. In this way, both websites can “talk” to each other.
And that’s all! You already know, if you want to know, take a look at the rest of . This will give you access to the , and more than 6047 videos available. If you are interested, we are waiting for you inside! 🙂
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