service posts page 2

WordPress.com redirects don’t support HTTPS

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Gah. Apparently wordpress.com is discouraging ‘https’ for self-hosted blogs: Their redirection service does not allow any protocol but ‘http’. I could swear it did when I first set it up, as I remember typing in my URL with ‘https’ and I thought I tested it with curl -I to make sure it works, but the docs have an explicit note saying:

Note: Site redirects will only point to a non-ssl ( http:// ) url.

I don’t remember seeing it before, but the wayback machine suggests it was there since 2013, well before I switched to self-hosted.

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Google finance adds split handling

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Looks like it’s been a good while since I’ve posted on this blog. My “professional” blog, which gets much more traffic, has been getting my focus, and I’m still not sure what will be happening with this blog.

Anyway, on with the post.  I use Google Finance for my everyday checks on my stock portfolio and the market in general.  I check for prices and news.  It gives me a basic idea of my returns for each stock and for my overall portfolio, though it doesn’t seem to match perfectly with my tracking in Quicken.

A while back they began tracking dividend payouts.  They are not entirely accurate, which is probably why the numbers are off.  They also are not applied to the returns of individual stocks, only the whole portfolio.  Since Quicken can show me per-stock returns with dividends, this provides a nice comparison between market returns and overall returns.

So just today I looked at my portfolio after having not payed attention to it for several days or so, and suddenly my returns were way up (from around 60% overall to 80%).  I was somewhat excited for a second, but confused because the overall market had not jumped that much, and as I looked through prices, none seemed that different from where they were.

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WordPress.com: Webmaster Tools and Site Explorer

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I’ve been using Google’s Webmaster Tools and more recently Yahoo’s Site Explorer for my other sites.  They allow me to see crawl errors, keywords and some query ranking info, crawl statistics, and some other search engine related info as well as set some settings for how these engines handle my sites.

Because of the way these sites validate ownership of submitted sites (an uploaded file or a meta tag), I didn’t think I’d be able to use them with WordPress.com.  However, with a little searching, I found this page, which says how to do it.  In fact, had I payed more attention when exploring the admin section of my account, I might have noticed that the capability is built into the “Tools” page.

You just submit the URL like for other sites, then choose to validate with the meta tag.  Copy the meta tag and paste it into a specified field in that “Tools” page.  “Save Changes” and then press the validate button on Google or Yahoo.

This worked instantly on Google.  For some reason, Yahoo is just saying “Failed”.  Since it says it may take 24 hours to validate, I guess I’ll have to wait.  You’d figure a message other than failed would be used to say that it hasn’t been validated yet, but I’ve looked at the source of the page and verified the meta tag was there.

[Update 1/24/10] Finally Yahoo has validated by retrying. I had done this a few times spaced out after the initial setup, but it had just failed. I’m not sure why it finally worked. [update]

Nonprofit Donation Services

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I am researching services that will take online donations for nonprofits. There seem to be many available, but it is hard to find good information on them. I found a large list at The Nonprofit Matrix.  Unfortunately, unlike most matrixes, it doesn’t organize them or allow easy comparisons.

From a previous Web II class, a student named Sarah found Justgive.org.  It seems to be the best that I’ve found yet.  Some have lower transaction fees but much higher (than free) monthly fees.  Since Stearns will likely not get enough to offset those monthly fees, it makes sense to go with Justgive.  Some Details:

  • Cost: no setup fee, no monthly fees, 3% transaction fee
  • Services: Collects online donations using credit cards (of course).  Provides a tax receipt for the donor, allows recurring donations to be made, maintains a donor list for the organization, and mails checks of earnings monthly.
  • Reviews: Forbes, FoundationCenter, KillerStartups
  • Example sites using: SMSFolk.org (justgive page)

If I find more information, I will update this post or link to another.

[Update] A comparison table can be found at AffinityResources with many options and their fees.  An article discusses the options (generally, not specifically).  Another unrelated article discusses options, with more information about building your own donation app versus using an external one.  Still, justgive seems the best option.[/update]

[Update 11/06]Google Checkout seems to offer a nonprofit option for accepting donations.  This one has 30¢ plus 2.9% transaction fee.  High volumes (greater that $3000 a month) get lower transaction fees, but I highly doubt Stearns will get there.  Google has an API for putting a form on your site and has the recognition of Google, but it doesn’t have special tax receipts that I’m aware of, doesn’t have a donors list that I’m aware of, requires regestration with Google (stores credit card, etc), and evidently states require some sort of registration with them that places like JustGive have taken care of (since they are pass-through).  These legal concerns are things I’m unsure about.  Paypal seems to be about the same.[/update]