donate button expire?

[inlandem]

Hi-

I had a link for my donate button, and in less than a month it expired.   The is the link:

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?token=g1Ms2VC8DnH4Hjjs00kX2nvF0QfvB4kNT_slsO4NfetwJLdsA9SHGaguRuzsHDe...

And it says:

"Your session is invalid or expired.

You've been inactive for a while, so we logged you out to help protect your account. Please return to the merchant and restart the payment process."

I had to go back and create another link through the donation button page.

Is there anyway I can prevent the expiration so that I don't have to make a new link every month?

Thank you in advance.

[sharpiemarker]

Donate buttons don't expire but the web session in which you used the button may have and you have to go back and click the button again and checkout.  So that link was to an expired web session where PayPal site has logged you out.

[inlandem]

then how can I make a donate button that doesn't link to an expired web session where PayPal site will log me out?

I've made on in the past before, but this new interface seems different and frustrating.

thanks in advance.

[sharpiemarker]

@inlandem

The link you provided is not how a donate link looks like at all.  It's an expired donation web token url.

An unhosted sample donate link look like this, all one line:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=YourEmailAddress&item_name=YourNameOfDonation&item_number=YourDonationItemIDToTellDonationsApart&amount=25.00&currency_code=USD

A hosted/secure sample donation link looks like this (PayPal generates a unique button ID number for each link or button created):

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=XXXXXXXXXXX

How to generate donate button/link:

https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/paypal-payments-standard/integration-guide/donate_step_1/

[inlandem]

Thank you for the instructions.

That is how I made my last link last time....

But I made another one:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=SADU3BFPHXCUS

will this link not expire now?

Thank you

ps. and my previous link was https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=2XEXYD6AGSPBS

pps. if you click on that link, paypal redirects you to a different address that looks like this: 

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?token=AIyruS9uLdcr4zTGMhQcp6jQSnhZ7TKcl1a_Lxr0Imss4PN85Ki6RDqhFIlJEeg...

[sharpiemarker]

Thanks for the response and you're welcome. 

All the links seem to work fine.  It takes me to the page to enter donation amount and to log in PayPal or use credit/debit card.

I notice the urls actually change from this format:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=SADU3BFPHXCUS

To this format, which I wasn't aware of:

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?token=9W2eJg-Twj8_GUll9OEYgyrEwgvkWW9nA7kvsmJm-ISQuJ4n6D-LauSW4oe6npU1XwHP2G

Generally the buttons/links shouldn't expire but PayPal lately had been changing and updating stuff so anything could happen.

If it happens again, it's fairly quick to make a new link.