ZATZ Lab Notes
It’s not the years. It’s the lines of code.
Must read: The sunsetting of Seamless Donations
Effective today, Seamless Donations will no longer be updated. Existing add-on licenses will continue to function during their license period but will not renew, at which point they will cease functioning. The add-on store for Seamless Donations is closed as of today....
How to export donation data from Seamless Donations
I previously showed how to export donor information. In this Lab Note, I'll take you through the process of dumping data from all your donations. Export any WordPress data to XML/CSV As before, I recommend you install a plugin called Export any WordPress data to...
A plugin reunion
Eight years ago, I adopted a set of WordPress plugins from a developer who suddenly found himself in a caregiver role and wasn’t able to maintain them. I adopted them to keep them alive, secure, and supported for the tens of thousands of users who relied on them (and...
Seamless Donations 5.2 introduces completely new PayPal interface
This Lab Note contains instructions for setting up the new PayPal interface in Seamless Donations version 5.2.0 and later. Be sure to read the guidelines below. A lot has been going on behind the scenes. Since early 2022, I've been working with the development team at...
Two big bug fix updates (and a few new features)
I'm happy to announce that My Private Site and Donor Pays Fees are each getting updates today. My Private Site 3.0.5 My Private Site moves to version 3.0.5, marking what I hope is a final fix for a long-vexing bug: various incompatibilities with the super-popular...
Anatomy of a web site: How this site works
If you've ever wanted to know how this site works, what plugins it uses, and how it's set up, this is your lucky day. Over on ZDNet, where I write my DIY-IT column, I wrote a detailed anatomy of the ZATZLabs site. It's part of my ongoing series about web hosting and...
ZATZ Labs 2020: Looking back at the year that seemed like a decade
In the fourth season of Star Trek: Voyager, there's a two-episode story arc called "The Year of Hell." The plot involves a "time ship" that alters history, changing the timeline and plunging the crew of the starship Voyager into a deadly, brutal, uncompromising year...
Tricks for fixing https and SSL problems on your site
So here's the bottom line: you must have a consistent, working SSL implementation on your website. Failure to do so will result in punishment by Google and the inability to function with PayPal and Stripe. In this post, I'm not going to go into how to set up a SSL for...
How to let people view, but not edit your private site
This post was inspired by a great question from user Krista, and the answer is a pretty simple set of steps. First, though, it's good to understand how My Private Site works. That, too, is pretty simple. My Private Site will block pages and posts from users who are...
Please help beta test Seamless Donations 5.1
I've just completed a massive update to Seamless Donations, resulting in what is about to become Seamless Donations 5.1. While there are few user-facing changes to Seamless Donations, the internal architecture of Seamless Donations has been extensively modified in...
