Well I have just lost another day and a half on what should have been such a simple choice. In essence, if I am to spend more time working on this project I have to be able to justify switching my time from client work. That means requesting payments (donations) from the users of APF and its accompanying bits and pieces.

I have researched quite a few Paypal modules for Joomla and frankly I am disappointed. The upshot is that I have had to build my own paypal module. 

My needs are seriously standard - nothing overly fancy required, certainly nothing too out of the ordinary.

I need the module to:

Allow the user to specify the amount they want to pay and the currency.

Select whether they want to make a one off contribution or a regular payment.

Produce valid xhtml code

Allow me to specify whether the button is an image or a 'plain' submit button.

Facilitate easy styling of the form elements through CSS - with classes and ids as appropriate. 

Significantly - and this shouldn't need saying - the module should NOT display hardcoded currency symbols next to the amount input box that can be used for multiple currencies. 

 I tried a few modules and I read reviews and support forums from others and it has to be said, I was not especially impressed by any of them. So I started to build a module, initially just for my own use but as I proceeded I realised others might benefit from a more robust implementation of such a module so I built in a few options that I may not use but which other people would probably request sooner or later.

Obviously one man isn't going to be able to comprehensively test all of the possible options of such a module - but in a week or two, when I have time to polish the code a little, I will release the component to anyone willing to act as a beta tester and put it through its paces. I am probably abusing the term Beta tester here - the code is probably currently 'alpha' quality, apart from the options that I will use which will receive more immediate attention.Maybe tomorrow, I will be able to get on with installing and testing APF Bridge on this site, tweak a little template or two, install the mambot and get down to some serious work.

Just maybe.