Buy GreekChat a Coffee (chip-in if you can)

[John]

Chances are that I dislike asking this much more than you dislike hearing it. It's been around 10 years since I've posted anything like this and even now I still hesitate.

But I need to say it...

Short version: Please "Buy GreekChat A Coffee" to help support further development & costs for GC: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/greekchat

I want GC to be around far into the future. And I would like for GC to be doing much more, providing more value to the site members & audience.

There's a lot of work to be done on GC plus various expenses.

This is just some of what I need to work on:
- server software
- hosting software & setup
- email server software & proper setup
- email list & site account cleanup
- forum software
- server equipment is approx 10 years old
- server seems to be overloaded quite often recently (causing significant site slowdowns)
- & other stuff to do depending on how things go

So, with this, I'm asking GCers (and anyone else reading who is also so inclined) to help support these efforts.

I don't have high expectations for this, but what I'm hoping for is that this will at least enable me to take GC off the development back burner for a while and get things kickstarted here again.

Chip-in if you can and Thank You in advance to everyone who does.

[John]

A special shout-out to LaneSig for being first to chip-in. Thank you for your contribution and for the coffee!

Shout-outs / thank yous post automatically to GreekChat's Twitter page at https://twitter.com/greekchat and include any comments left by contributors. You can see LaneSig's comment on that page as an example.

Thanks again, LaneSig!

[AZTheta]

Was just thinking about GC fund raising this morning, and here is John as if he was reading my mind. Glad to offer $ support. Cheers!

ETA fixed the name issue, no big deal.

[cheerfulgreek]

Thank you, John!

[APhi4Ever]

Happy to support!

[carnation]

I gladly sent mine. There's no way I could put into words what this site has meant. There are so many friends I've met here and then in real life, there's so much I've learned...

[Titchou]

Thank you, John!

[PGD-GRAD]

Thanks so much, John! Just chipped in…

[FSUZeta]

Just chipped in. Thank you so much John, for all you do!

[Phrozen Sands]

I don’t feel comfortable putting my cc info on here, so I went out and bought a $25 gift card for nothing. It won’t accept it. Sorry, John. I tried.

[John]

Thank you to everyone for chipping in and for the kind comments! I appreciate it all very much.

Originally Posted by Phrozen Sands

I don’t feel comfortable putting my cc info on here, so I went out and bought a $25 gift card for nothing. It won’t accept it. Sorry, John. I tried.

Totally understandable. Thanks for trying!

GreekChat isn't involved at all in the transaction processing part.

The crowd funding site being used for this is BuyMeACoffee.com which is similar to GoFundMe, GiveSendGo, etc. Probably even more similar to Patreon as Buy Me A Coffee seems to be geared towards enabling audiences to support creators. They host the crowd funding page for GC on their site at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/greekchat

BuyMeACoffee.com uses Stripe.com for all transaction processing and my understanding is that only Stripe handles the payment info. They are an official Stripe partner, listed at https://stripe.partners/directory/buy-me-a-coffee Also found the below quote at https://help.buymeacoffee.com/en/art...e-and-reliable

We don’t store credit card data on our servers. Payment processing is handled by and Stripe (PCI Compliance Level 1)

I went with Buy Me A Coffee as the crowd funding platform for this as I've been seeing them being used more often over the past few years on many sites. They seem to be a very popular funding platform these days. Also because I noticed that the developer platform GitHub (a Microsoft company) just started using Buy Me A Coffee for their GitHub Sponsors funding program https://github.blog/changelog/2024-0...tform-options/

Wasn't able to find any specific info about whether buymeacoffee.com has any issues with gift cards for payments, but I'll email their support contact to find out.

Thanks again for trying, though. Maybe we'll be able to figure out the issue with using gift cards soon.

[cheerfulgreek]

Phrozen, I just bought a coffee for you, from you. You said you and your live-in partner are planning to see the Mall of America. You can pay me back by buying me a coffee IRL, when the two of you visit, lol. I’m going to hold you to that.

[FSUZeta]

There is an option to use Apple Pay.

[Sciencewoman]

My AmEx has the option to create a virtual card, which I used. It's another layer of security and I just set it up about a month or so ago.

Thank you, John!!

[Phrozen Sands]

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

Phrozen, I just bought a coffee for you, from you. You said you and your live-in partner are planning to see the Mall of America. You can pay me back by buying me a coffee IRL, when the two of you visit, lol. I’m going to hold you to that.

Lmao! You definitely can hold me to it. I’ll save and use the same gift card I just bought for this occasion to buy you a real cup of coffee. Thanks, CG!

Originally Posted by FSUZeta

There is an option to use Apple Pay.

Yeah, I saw the Apple Pay option, along with a link. One time somebody somewhere out in Cali bought $300 worth of food on my card. It happened right after I used cash app.