Dr. Spooky / Paypal Information

[taz]

Just to let everybody know, DrSpooky has kindly agreed to accept some administrative duties that pertain to user and technical issues. If you have any problems with errors or timeouts or anything like that please feel free to either PM myself, him or spookygirlfriend (as I think she might have a direct link somewhere ). This should increase response times to issues as I am unavailable periodically and DrSpooky has a vast amount of technical knowledge and is willing to use it to keep the site running smoothly.

Thanks DrSpook!!!

Also, this is NOT a request for any donations, but many people have been asking about a paypal account being setup to submit for help funding the site. If you wish to do so the account is setup under the email address taz@elviscostellofans.com.

Thank you,
taz/jason

[Misha]

Thanks for calling the Doctor in.

Don't know what I would do without my board...

[sulkygirl]

As far as PayPal goes...

(and as financially challenged as I am)....

I would LOVE to make a contribution to the board fund, but I refuse to own any Credit Cards, so the best I'd be able to do is a money order.

Is there any way to make that work??

NOTE: Previous terminology for my particular finanical status:

***Poor White Trash (also "PWT")***

New, POLITICALLY CORRECT Terminology:

***Financially Challenged Caucasian Refuse***

[Misha]

Sulky,

On Paypal you can use your checking account, if that helps at all.....

[sulkygirl]

Don't have one of those, either...hubby had a REALLY bad habit of bouncing checks, got tired of paying $30 fines on $5 checks...

[BlueChair]

Wow. No credit cards or cheques?

[sulkygirl]

Nope, cash only. If we don't have the cash, then...we don't need it!!

[Misha]

Sulky,

You need to be in charge of my finances.....wait....that would mean no EC tickets...nevermind....

If it doesn't work for Taz with the money order, you can send it to me and I will pay it on my PayPal account, but I'm sure it will work to send it to Taz directly.

[sulkygirl]

Actually, I DO find meself in need of a CC on some occasions...internet ordering, etc. In which case I just give my Dad (or brother) the cash, & borrow their info in order to place my order. Maybe I could work something like that....

[DrSpooky]

This is a shameless plug...

Just a note to let you know that we are in the process of setting up links to shopping sites like Amazon (US and UK), CD-Now and any others that you might suggest. If you have some Internet site in particular you plan to do some serious shopping, please let myself or Mrs S know. We can at least set up something temporary just for you.

Just to be upfront with everyone, the new expenses are slightly more than the previous
hosting expenses. At this point, the site is hosted on an extra (old) computer of ours
so we can ignore that was free until it breaks . The recurring and one-time expenses are:

• Additional monthly cable modem fees for "small business" account
• A keyboard/video/mouse switch so we can share a monitor.
• I plan to get two UPS' for this weekend (server and router)

So without being too pushy, we would like to encourage people to click through when they can and send the commission to the board. It is the Christmas season so some shopping should be going on. We are not begging... yet.

Thanks. Now back to the regularly scheduled discussion.

[verbal gymnastics]

How about contacting play.com or playusa.com?

I buy loads of stuff from there and I'd rather have some of my money helping us in some way.

[DrSpooky]

I don't see anything on either site about being able to link to play.com/playusa.com. They keywords are affiliate, associate, commision, link to, etc.

Do you see anything like that either?

I found Barnes and Noble, NetFlix and thought I had seen reel.com earlier.

[SweetPear]

I'm sure you've been through this all before, so I apologize for having you go over it again....but in a nutshell......what do you have to do to make a donation? Like, if I buy something on Amazon......how does that work?

Thank you!

[VonOfterdingen]

I don't no how you donate either. How about a link to www12.cd-wow.com

[DrSpooky]

I think I have the basics for Amzaon US, Amazon UK and PayPal working now. http://ecfans.dyndns.org/helpthesite.html is not pretty or finished but I THINK the general links work. And I think the explanation of "general" versus "direct product" link is explained. I am building a set of direct product links so the commision from Amazon is 2% higher. Corect me if something looks wrong.

In general, if you use those links to purchase something, click on our button, go to the shopping site, add stuff to your cart and checkout.without leaving their site. If you leave their site, it may eliminte the commission.

www12.cd-wow.com has an affiliation program but I can't see what the commision is. If you don't get USD40 within 6 months, you lose it all.

We will try to add more if people have favorite shops but the cw-wow.com model scares me.

[DrSpooky]

Mrs S thought I should pass this information on.

We were not alone in suffering from a break in due to this security hole. There iis a single thread with 16 pages over at the phpbb site with people moaning about it. Even our old hosting company doesn't stand out as bad -- other people had similar stories from other providers. Here are a few threads about this:

http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=241300
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=241369
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=245887
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=245932

One post mentioned that all you had to do was google for "powered by phpBB 2.0.X" with X < 11 and you can find every vulnerable site.

It doesn't make one feel better but it was and still is a real problem for a lot of people.

[SweetPear]

Thank you, Dr. Spooky, for your time.

I do have one question (If you can bear with me.....I'm one of those techically challenged people who has all they can do to log in and out correctly. And heavens, if something goes wrong with that, then I don't know what to do!)

You had said if we were going to make a purchase on Amazon, to "click on our button" and then go to the site.....can you clarify that? What is "our button"?

[DrSpooky]

Our button isn't much right now.

I have set up the working html page http://ecfans.dyndns.org/helpthesite.html which has
some links (not really buttons yet) to Amazon (US and UK) along with a PayPay donation link. If you click on an Amazon.com link/button from this site, it will have the information it is supposed to soAmazon can track the reference back to this site.

For ease, here are the US and UK Amazon links:

• US - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redir ... /home.html
• UK - http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/red ... azon.co.uk

If this still doesn't make sense, we can let Mrs S translate from Geek into Human. I am bad about speaking Geek when I need to speak Human.

I hope I get a chance this weekend to make them real "buttons" on the upper right hand side of the pages. For security purposes, I went back to the "as distributed" phpBB software with NO local modifications.

[bobster]

Does NetFlix "link"? Or maybe not, since it's a subscription service...Anyhow, if/when I take the Netflix plunge, I'll let you guys so you can get a piece of it

[DrSpooky]

I saw some site where you could get a commission on NetFlix sign ups. I dismissed doing it at the time but maybe I should add it back to the list.

Barnes and Noble also has a program if that is of interest to anyone.

[DrSpooky]

We now have a static IP address which will hopefully very soon be associated with elviscostellofans.com. The ecfans.dyndns.org address continues to work.

I have added a link to http://www.ecfans.dyndns.org/helpthesite.html to the top level entrance page. The Help the Site page has a PayPal button as well as shopping links. Read the stuff on direct item links -- they do make a difference. I am happy to set you up a custom one. In fact, I added the one for Halo 2 just so we could order it.

[DrSpooky]

Just a quick note to let you all know that the Amazon referral link is working. A few of you have purchased things from Amazon and the commission is showing up.

At the bottom of the help the site page, I have put up links for a few items people have asked about. The commission is 2.5% higher when we do this type of direct link.

Thanks to those doing Christmas shopping and helping the Board at the same time.

[DrSpooky]

There has been a little traffic on Amazon -- mostly our Christmas shopping.

I have come across a couple of associate programs that might be of interest:

http://www.resturants.com is a discounted gift certificate place. They have a number within about 150 miles of us and they are all like $10 for $25 in food. Is anyone interested?

Netflix? Only on new subscribers. Anyone interested?

[DrSpooky]

By the time you read this, I am sure you have noticed the new links on the front page. I hope they encourage everyone to remember The Board.

Mrs S reminded me that Amazon has sites in other countries not covered including Japan, Germany, and France. Is there anyone on the board who would use one of those?

Similarly, is there any other site we should click-through to?

And let me assure you that the Spooky's are not getting rich on click-throughs. There has been nothing bought on a click-through during January and our own Christmas shopping was a large portion of December.

[Goody2Shoes]

I'm sorry, I hate to complain, but I have a smallish monitor and the pages don't fit any more. I'm getting a headache!

Is there any way at all to put the click-through thingies on, but shrink it back to the way it was?

Thank you!