You may choose to integrate WSN Links with PayPal or 2checkout to allow members to purchase category sponsorships. Follow this process:

1) Under Admin Panel -> Settings -> Sponsorship, activate "topic type promotion".

2) Create a new topic type with the appearance you want to give sponsored topics and place the needed html in your templates. To make it show up above all other topics even if you're mixing link types, you can set "Separate sponsored links from other types" to "yes" on your sponsorship settings page.

3) Back on the settings page in the sponsorship section, type the name of the topic type you just created into the "Sponsor Link Type:" box (if you wanted to have multiple levels of sponsorship, you could type multiple names here separated by commas).

4) Still in sponsorship settings, set the "Incrimental Fee" you wish to charge people for maintaining their topic in the sponsored topic type. This amount will be deducted from the topic's funds each day if you've kept "Deduct the incrimental fee every ___ days" set to 1. If you wish to make a one-time sponsorship which never expires you can set the deduction to be every 9999 days or every 0 days.

5) If using 2checkout, login to your 2checkout account and create a new product. Set the price to be the same as the price you set on your sponsorship settings page. Set the approved url for the product to be http://yoursite.com/wsnlinks/2checkout.php

6) If using paypal, login to your paypal account and activate PayPal's IPN (instant payment notification). Tell it to use the URL http://yoursite.com/wsnlinks/paypal.php as the script to pass information to. See paypal's help for details on IPN. If you already have another IPN script you have the option of specifying the return url inside the button instead -- if you do that, use yoursite.com/paypal.php?showsite=1 so that it'll pass people back to your site.

7) In your sponsorship settings set the item number to be the number of the product your created in 2checkout, or to an item number you are not already using for something else in PayPal (use 1 if you're not already selling any other products). You will probabaly want to create your own payment button for PayPal, be sure to give it this item number and place it in your topic sponsorship template. With PayPal the dollar value you set for the item doesn't matter, set it to what you want and WSN will correctly detect it and add that amount to the topic... note of course that this will be the incriment in which your sponsors can pay by selecting a quantity.

8) If using 2checkout, supply your 2checkout merchant id number in your sponsorship settings. If using paypal just supply your paypal email.

9) If you want to require all topics to be sponsored before they're displayed, choose "Require all topic submissions from non-admins to be sponsored?" on your sponsorship settings page.

This is all you need to do. When a member views their own topic details or goes to their member home, they will see an option telling them they can sponsor the topic. You can customize the sponsorship page in your templates. When their payment is processed, details will be passed back to WSN Forum... WSN Forum will automatically add the purchased amount of funds to the topic. (Please note that if a payment is made by e-check, it may take 3 business days to clear and the funds will not be added to the topic until it has cleared if using paypal.)

Each day or other length of time that you've specified, the fee you have set will be deducted from the funds of every sponsored topic. Note: Not from the member's paypal account -- the member deposits the funds whenever they choose and the full amount is credited to their topic, for gradual daily depletion. When the funds for a particular sponsored topic hit $0, that topic is automatically changed to the original type it was before it was sponsored (usually 'regular'.

By default sponsored types aren't shown, instead you click the sponsor checkbox. If you want tolet people select the topic type and be autodirected to the payment page when they do, just replace the selector in your templte with a hard-coded one containing all your type options. You can then remove the sponsor checkbox from the template.