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Crystal graciously reconsidered my thoughts for some kind of progress bar to track the monthly server costs and how much has been covered already.
As such, we'd started testing out an addon that improves on the default XF2 subscription structure with a more robust donation structure. This thread is an open question to the community whether you all want this much transparency into the donation process, and to what extend you want it tracked, etc.
At the core, what we were going for was a progress bar showing the monthly server cost and how much has been donated so far. This is tracks by way of 'goals', specific waypoints that we can define we're trying to get $X by Y date. My intent is to set these up with the $113 (it only likes even amounts so we're rounding up the 112.75 server cost) for each month, so we can see whether we're good to keep the lights on for the next 30 days. We'd also have the option of adding additional goals for the XF license renewal, etc. as necessary.
Right now, for demo we've stuck it under a tab that'll show at the bottom of the forum list, after Top Posters, etc. I think this aligns with keeping it out of everyone's face while still being accessible.
We already opted to turn off the latest/top donor portions of the above widget as we're not trying to turn this into a competition.
But essentially, if you click "Donate to goal" there, it'll give you the existing PayPal or Stripe options, and then present you with a more robust dialog.
This new menu will default to a one-time donation, giving you the option to pick either a pre-set amount or define your own custom amount. It's supposed to have functionality to do the currency conversion for you, letting you pay in whatever source currency you want, but I haven't fucked with the necessary APIs yet to get that working. As it stands, the only option is USD.
You can opt to make the payment amount a recurring monthly donation if you so choose. I could turn on the option for yearly recurring payments, but personally I assume I'd forget about that crap by the time a full year comes around, so I didn't turn it on for now.
Message can be whatever you want. We currently ask how you want your donation to be used, server costs, addons, misc or whatever, but that becomes a little redundant when we've set up specific goals. So defining what you want it used for wouldn't be a continued requirement.
There is finally the option to make it an Anonymous donation, so your username will not be associated with the donation or tracked anywhere throughout.
Then when you click the Donate button at the bottom, it'll take you to PayPal/Stripe to complete the payment. We do still have ongoing issues with Stripe. It seems the API callback after making the payment errors out, so you'll probably get an error saying something went wrong (as below), but it seems the payment actually does go through. It's just going to be a matter of us having to go in and manually confirm that the payment processed, and switch the status of the donation over, before it'll update on the progress bar or do any of the other junk.
The process will still add you to the Sponsors usergroup. I guess I didn't really test it, but it should be set up to where making any donation will add you to the group for 1 month, and of course a recurring donation will keep you in that group. Still no extra bells or whistles, just a hot pink username.
Now, all of that stuff I'm thinking is pretty OK and should be agreeable to everyone. There are a few features which I'm not sure whether everyone will want, however, so the following is more my community polling to ask whether or not you'd want these features too.
First of all, there's a separate page that will track the amount you yourself have donated. I'm thinking this would actually be useful to turn on, as it'll provide a personal audit as well as make it easier to cancel a recurring subscription should you ever want to.
What I'm thinking people may not want, is the "top donors" page, which will show everyone who's donated towards a goal and how much. This is where I'm thinking it steps into the "scoreboard" territory that we're not trying to create.
And finally, there's the option for it to automatically create a thread within the Donations forum whenever something is sent. I'm assuming that if you select Anonymous on the donation page, it just won't link to any specific user here, but it does pass through the message that you enter during the donation process. They'd get posted by the repurposed GWF Bot account once the donation is confirmed.
It also gives us admins a lot more visibility into who's donated what/when from the admin control panel, and helps troubleshoot some issue a little easier.
If we do agree to move forward with this new structure, I'll have to go through the existing subscriptions set up through XF's upgrade menu and disable those. We'd then have to ask anyone who wants to donate monthly to set that up again under this new system, so that it'll be correctly tracked.
SO, community thoughts? Is this something you think will be a benefit to the forums? Is there anything you'd like to see changed with how I explained it above? Please use this thread to discuss.
As such, we'd started testing out an addon that improves on the default XF2 subscription structure with a more robust donation structure. This thread is an open question to the community whether you all want this much transparency into the donation process, and to what extend you want it tracked, etc.
At the core, what we were going for was a progress bar showing the monthly server cost and how much has been donated so far. This is tracks by way of 'goals', specific waypoints that we can define we're trying to get $X by Y date. My intent is to set these up with the $113 (it only likes even amounts so we're rounding up the 112.75 server cost) for each month, so we can see whether we're good to keep the lights on for the next 30 days. We'd also have the option of adding additional goals for the XF license renewal, etc. as necessary.
Right now, for demo we've stuck it under a tab that'll show at the bottom of the forum list, after Top Posters, etc. I think this aligns with keeping it out of everyone's face while still being accessible.
We already opted to turn off the latest/top donor portions of the above widget as we're not trying to turn this into a competition.
But essentially, if you click "Donate to goal" there, it'll give you the existing PayPal or Stripe options, and then present you with a more robust dialog.
This new menu will default to a one-time donation, giving you the option to pick either a pre-set amount or define your own custom amount. It's supposed to have functionality to do the currency conversion for you, letting you pay in whatever source currency you want, but I haven't fucked with the necessary APIs yet to get that working. As it stands, the only option is USD.
You can opt to make the payment amount a recurring monthly donation if you so choose. I could turn on the option for yearly recurring payments, but personally I assume I'd forget about that crap by the time a full year comes around, so I didn't turn it on for now.
Message can be whatever you want. We currently ask how you want your donation to be used, server costs, addons, misc or whatever, but that becomes a little redundant when we've set up specific goals. So defining what you want it used for wouldn't be a continued requirement.
There is finally the option to make it an Anonymous donation, so your username will not be associated with the donation or tracked anywhere throughout.
Then when you click the Donate button at the bottom, it'll take you to PayPal/Stripe to complete the payment. We do still have ongoing issues with Stripe. It seems the API callback after making the payment errors out, so you'll probably get an error saying something went wrong (as below), but it seems the payment actually does go through. It's just going to be a matter of us having to go in and manually confirm that the payment processed, and switch the status of the donation over, before it'll update on the progress bar or do any of the other junk.
The process will still add you to the Sponsors usergroup. I guess I didn't really test it, but it should be set up to where making any donation will add you to the group for 1 month, and of course a recurring donation will keep you in that group. Still no extra bells or whistles, just a hot pink username.
Now, all of that stuff I'm thinking is pretty OK and should be agreeable to everyone. There are a few features which I'm not sure whether everyone will want, however, so the following is more my community polling to ask whether or not you'd want these features too.
First of all, there's a separate page that will track the amount you yourself have donated. I'm thinking this would actually be useful to turn on, as it'll provide a personal audit as well as make it easier to cancel a recurring subscription should you ever want to.
What I'm thinking people may not want, is the "top donors" page, which will show everyone who's donated towards a goal and how much. This is where I'm thinking it steps into the "scoreboard" territory that we're not trying to create.
And finally, there's the option for it to automatically create a thread within the Donations forum whenever something is sent. I'm assuming that if you select Anonymous on the donation page, it just won't link to any specific user here, but it does pass through the message that you enter during the donation process. They'd get posted by the repurposed GWF Bot account once the donation is confirmed.
It also gives us admins a lot more visibility into who's donated what/when from the admin control panel, and helps troubleshoot some issue a little easier.
If we do agree to move forward with this new structure, I'll have to go through the existing subscriptions set up through XF's upgrade menu and disable those. We'd then have to ask anyone who wants to donate monthly to set that up again under this new system, so that it'll be correctly tracked.
SO, community thoughts? Is this something you think will be a benefit to the forums? Is there anything you'd like to see changed with how I explained it above? Please use this thread to discuss.
