1. When setting up API credentials for the PPConfiguration.php, does that need to only be done from the Business PayPal account which the admin designates as receiving percentage of sale, and/or the main account for the Xenforo Payment Providers -> PayPal entry?
The one you designate, this option is totally not linked to xF payment providers.
2. To double/triple check, users can post their own resources, designate their own PayPal (Standard or Business) account, receive payment to that PayPal account when a purchase is made, and the admin designated account will receive the percentage of sale? Do those things happen all instantly?
Yes through PayPal parallel payments.
3. What about users who add products under their own PayPal address, will they also need to setup checkout API's or do anything particular with their PayPal profiles to receive funds?
No, just their email address.
Another issue, I noticed in the code if a product is set "Maximum purchase amount" to 1, there's a "Insufficient permissions" error when trying to purchase an item. That seems a bit odd, as it seems very reasonable to limit buying 1 per customer. I don't see why that would block a purchase, and also, the error should tell a bit more information to know why.
Thanks, I'll investigate.
The user never has a chance to specify a shipping address, rather it takes them directly to payment and pulls from their PayPal profile. I feel this is detrimental for two reasons, 1. They may be alarmed and back out of a transaction upon realizing they are about to pay for something without having ever put in their shipping info. I've already encountered this while advising a client on using your addon at their site. And 2., online customers are very used to being able to control their shipping. I feel adding such a feature would make this addon look and feel much more like a familiar experience.
You don't need to input shipping data for digital products.
For physical products, there is a form, data is not pulled from Paypal. Unless I am mistakenly not remembering my code.
You issued that conclusion from actual testing ?
Further, there is no info anywhere I've seen where the addon explains to the user how shipping will be handled.
What would you expect exactly ? Like a tab stating the shipping costs ?
Secondly, it would be great to add a Cart system to this addon. Dragonbyte's shop addon has a cart system, but is unusable by all the members of this addon as only yours offers a multi-vendor marketplace system. If you could also implement a cart, it would be just fantastic and the best of both worlds.
I had investigated a little bit shopping carts in the past.
I would have to change the behavior of the payment system in that case because:
- xF payment profiles solution: payments are 1 to 1
- custom payment solution: Paypal parallel payments only allow up to 5 receivers, that would mean 4 sellers + the admin for percentage on sale.
So that wouldn't work and I would need to make the admin the money receiver and then the admin would have to push the money back to the sellers, kinda like I did for the Forum sales add-on of mine but the process is not automated, admins need to click on a button to issue the payment towards the seller.
Plus, if customers could control both their shipping AND use a cart system, this would be just like any familiar online shopping experience.
What do you mean by control their shipping ?
Right now you can control shipping by setting cost and changing the shipping status.