Since Paypal has supported paypal.me for a long time, the button for a Paypal donation really should be updated to let you use paypal.me instead of an email address. This makes it so bots don't necessarily pick up your email address that you used for Paypal. I didn't notice this until recently since I was going to update the installation instructions for one of my plugins and tried using my paypal.me instead.
Makes sense and while I know you are implying this change for the extend section this is also something to ponder for existing donation projects perhaps also, though existing donation projects would most likely need to add additional settings and templates for the transition to the more simple link format of the .me links as they are called completely differently and more simplistically right?
Ie: paypal.me/uname/amountwithcurrencylocale
paypal.me/{$plug_setting_uname}/{$plug_setting_amount}{$plug_setting_currency_locale}
So in theory old formats like:
<table border="0" cellspacing="{$theme[\'borderwidth\']}" cellpadding="{$theme[\'tablespace\']}" class="tborder" style="clear: both; border-bottom-width: 1px;">
<tr>
<td class="thead" colspan="1">
{$collapse}
<strong>{$lang->simpaldonate_thead_name}</strong>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<tbody style="{$expdisplay}" id="post-donate_e">
<td class="trow1">
<p align="center">{$mybb->settings[\'simpaldonatemessage1\']}</p>
<p align="center">{$mybb->settings[\'simpaldonatemessage2\']} ( {$mybb->settings[\'simpaldonatelimit\']} {$mybb->settings[\'simpaldonatecurr\']} ) {$mybb->settings[\'simpaldonatemessage3\']}</p>
<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" style="text-align: center">
<input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
<input type="hidden" name="business" value="{$mybb->settings[\'simpaldonatemail\']}">
<input type="hidden" name="lc" value="{$mybb->settings[\'simpaldonateloc\']}">
<input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="{$mybb->settings[\'simpaldonatereas\']}">
<input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
<input type="" name="amount" value="{$mybb->settings[\'simpaldonatelimit\']}">
<input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="{$mybb->settings[\'simpaldonatecurr\']}">
<input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donateCC_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
<p>
<input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/{$mybb->settings[\'simpaldonatebtnloc\']}/i/btn/btn_donateCC_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
<img alt="" border="0" src="https://www.paypal.com/{$mybb->settings[\'simpaldonatebtnloc\']}/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
</p>
</form>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Would then have to add additional templates, conditions and settings to compensate for if the user wants to use the conditional paypal.me link rather than thier old paypal email way of doing things, right?
I never put a dollar amount for things in my Paypal.me link unless I specify the cost of something.
The suggestion won't apply to the Extend site anyways. Neither can we add support for plugins in such depth for specific platforms as MyBB isn't affiliated to any or single one and third party developers are free to use any platform they wish.
Edit: I think the suggestion is aimed to third-party plugins (like MyDownloads, marketplace plugins, etc).