update: f§*king wordpress mu won’t let me enter tags in my posts. I have tried the wordpress RAW plugin and other filters, but still. more updates on this tomorrow -> solution

There are different approaches to doing this (adding a paypal button to your wordpress page, or any html or php website):

You can copy&paste the code you find on most pages and wonder why you get really a lot of spam emails
or you can use the “secure merchant id” code from paypal
or you can grab a plugin at wordpress.org

To explain the first (revealing code)

<form name=”_xclick” action=”https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr” method=”post”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”cmd” value=”_xclick”/>
<input type=”hidden” name=”business” value=”user@spam-me-please.com”/>
<input type=”hidden” name=”item_name” value=”Customer Service”/>
<input type=”hidden” name=”currency_code” value=”USD”/>
<input type=”hidden” name=”amount” value=”1.00″/>
<input type=”image” src=”http://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif” border=”0″ name=”submit” alt=”Make payments with PayPal - it’s fast, free and secure!”/>
</form>

While this has its advantages: you can easily specify the parameters, it also has the problem that your email address is very likely to be scraped and spammed by bots. So next time you receive one of those fake paypal “you need to click here to reactivate your account” emails… guess why you are receiving it.

I use the second version, the paypal secured id, because I am not too keen to exposing (any) email address to spam bots. The code below will generate a paypal button with my id in it. To change that or to get your code you need to login to paypal and get it from the merchant tab. Or you can enter “paypal button” in the search field top right of the page.

2) Click on Merchant services.
3) Click on websites payment standards.
4) Click on accept contributions.
5) Click on get donation button.

<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_s-xclick"/>
<input type="hidden" name="hosted_button_id" value="10155388"/>
<input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" style="width: 100px; float: right;" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!"/>
</form>

And now to the fun part actually: you will not be able to copy and paste the code(s) mentioned above, because wordpress will strip the input fields and nothing will display. So unless you are putting this code into your template (e.g. by including it in a separate php file), it won’t work, I believe.

You can however grab a wordpress plugin, like this paypal plugin to help you out.

Also of help – this support post at wordpress

hope this helps anyone,
best,
jez