Passing Donation Amount to PayPal Page - paypal

Question

In the past I was able to add a form so a user could add a donation amount on the website and it would send that amount to the PayPal checkout page. It seems that PayPal has changed how this works and I am having issues figuring out how to pass that amount. I am hoping someone here has gotten this to work. Here is my current code and dev site for testing purposes.
<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" target="_top">
<input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_s-xclick" />
<input type="hidden" name="hosted_button_id" value="VMUWQGHWEATL8" />
<input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
<!-- Text Input Boxes -->
<div class="donate-wrapper">
<input type="text" id="amount" name="amount">
<p style="color: #fff">Monthly donation options on the next screen.</p>
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="continue" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
</div>
<img alt="" border="0" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1" />
</form>
Dev site: https://braindonordev.wpengine.com/support-us/

Answer 1

You can do it. Create a new button via http://www.paypal.com/buttons , and in Step 2 uncheck the option to save the button at PayPal. Then when you have generated your button code, click the option to remove the code protection.
Now you have "unhosted" HTML you can edit.
The unfortunate thing when passing a donation amount is there won't be an option to make the donation recurring, so you would need a separate relabeled "Subscribe" button for that. Relabled meaning, replace the image with one that says "Donate".
Alternatively, just keep the basic Donate button that you have to serve both use cases (recurring and non-recurring). It's intuitive enough, and has a nice big amount box on the next screen and checkbox to make it recurring:
<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" target="_top">
<input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
<input type="hidden" name="business" value="paypal#redcross.org">
<input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
<input type="hidden" name="button_subtype" value="services">
<input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
<input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
<input type="text" name="amount">
<input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-BuyNowBF:btn_donateCC_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
<input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donateCC_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
<img alt="" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
</form>