Earn1KaDay Forum Now Has “Buy Me a Beer” Function

I’m very happy to have implemented the “Buy Me a Beer” function for the Earn1KaDay membership forum.

I had figured it out at the 5bucksaday forum before, but I wasn’t happy with that implementation. What I did there was steal the MSN instant messaging slot in the database and changed that to a PayPal address, and just used code in the forum software that would display your MSN IM address. I know, not many people have filled in that parameter anyway, but a few have, so I decided I wanted the beer button to be a separate field in the database.

It took longer than I wanted, not because it was complicated coding, but because there a lot of different modules and templates in the phpBB software, and it took a while to find them all. I think I have now.

OK, the purpose, and the implementation.

The implementation is simple, just go to your forum profile and type in your PayPal address.

What this accomplishes is that it allows any registered member of the forum to send you money, just by clicking on the icon in one of your posts, filling in an amount, a reason, and sending the money.

I think that the members of Earn1KaDay are a pretty helpful and friendly bunch, many times I see people going out of their way to help others. One member wrote an application to do something very special for article marketers recently, and is allowing all our members to use it, from his server, using his bandwidth.

Another example … recently staff member Tim Gorman listed several dozen of his niche topics that are giving him a good return on investment. He’s creating competition for himself, obviously.

Another example … a member was having a problem because Windows Vista did an automatic update and then Firefox wouldn’t work, even after reinstalling it, so someone offered to help troubleshoot the problem for her.

Even with this history of giving without expectation of reimbursement, I feel that this new feature will encourage more people to do even more. We all like to be shown that we’re appreciated, after all, and this will enable members to show other members that we do appreciate them, just by sending them a couple bucks here and there for a job well done.

After all, in a regular job, if someone helped us out, we’d buy him or her a beer or a cup of coffee or lunch, right? The same reasoning applies.

The hacks necessary to get this functionality into phpBB aren’t all that difficult, once the research is done to find all the places that changes need to be made. It probably took me about 24 working hours all told to do the research, changes, and testing. At this point, while it’s fresh in my mind, I’m considering writing it all down, and maybe doing a video of parts of the process. If anyone is interested (the target audience would be anyone who runs a phpBB forum), make a comment, leave your email address with the comment, and I’ll let you know when it’s ready.

It won’t be free, but it will be reasonably priced, I assure you. When I was first looking for this function, I found a script that was selling for $50, and almost pulled the trigger on it, until I read the fine print and found that it really didn’t do a good job at all.

I’m thinking around $27 or $37 for the “how to” manual, but cheaper for Earn1KaDay members.