Welcome to the Web Monetization station!
🔊Community and Advocacy
Conference
On April 25th, our very own Peter-Paul Koch, who focuses on Developer Relations, spoke about how to Pay the Web forward with Web Monetization at the CityJS London conference.
Engineer, Darian Avasan, did a great job showcasing our new tools that make it quick and easy for publishers and creators to get started with Web Monetization.
Anna Sheard, our Director of Communications was also in the house making meaningful JS community connections and discussing why we care about paying the Web forward.
Work week
From May 6th to the 8th, the city of Cluj in Romania hosted 14 people who met in-person, with 5 people joining virtually. Our intention was to align on key topics, collaboratively define future products and features, and to use the benefit of focused, face-to-face discussion and design sessions to make progress on critical decisions. More on this soon 😉
The Web Monetization Extension
Every 2 weeks, a new Web Monetization extension release brings enhancements and bug fixes to make using the extension smoother. In April, GateHub digital wallets added support for Web Monetization. The latest extension version, v0.7.1, released on May 12th, includes improved handling of web monetized embedded content, and allowing more currencies.
Embedded content
A web page can have embedded content that changes periodically, like stock market data. If the embedded content adds or changes its web monetization tags a little while after the page loads, the extension now correctly detects the monetization changes whenever they happen. Additionally, the extension now checks embedded content for multiple monetization link tags, instead of just checking for the first one.
Currency codes
Previously, the extension handled a maximum length of 3 for a currency code, for example USD or ZAR. Typically, currencies adhere to the ISO4217 standard, so they have a maximum length of 3. Non-standard currencies, on the other hand, can have a longer or shorter code. So, we removed the length constraint such that the extension can handle non-standard currency codes.
Monetized websites
To enhance the developer experience, the extension now handles localhost websites that are monetized, without needing an https://
Digital wallets
GateHub recently added Web Monetization support to their digital wallets. To recap, GateHub is a digital wallet provider that provides the financial account for anyone to send or receive payments.
Why does this matter?
- Website visitors can now sign up for a GateHub wallet, and use it with the Web Monetization extension to pay.
- Publishers or anyone who wants to get paid with Web Monetization, can now sign up for a GateHub wallet, and use it as the receiving wallet on a web page.
Did you know that EU and non-EU residents can sign up for a GateHub wallet?
Drop a comment if you answered yes 😉
🧰Publisher Tools
Banner tool
With the Banner tool you can easily create a script to web monetize a site, and display a customizable banner inviting visitors to support you. Previously, the Banner tool was unable to generate the script for ilp.dev payment pointers. The tool now correctly handles payment pointers that belong to the ilp.dev domain.
What’s next?
- UI and UX redesign to align the visual identity of the Publisher tools.
- Overhaul and simplify the architecture of the Publisher tools to improve code maintainability and simplify the deployment process.
- Expand the tools to give publishers the option to add a customizable widget or a button to encourage their audience to support them.
- Improve how the extension pays a web page that has a large number of receiving wallets.
You're invited
We want you to be part of our open source community 📖, and we would love your contributions. Please do connect with us in 3 spaces:
- We have Community Calls on the 2nd and 4th Thursday, every month. The next one is on May 22nd. Check your time zone and use this meeting link: https://meet.google.com/fjy-vjef-ogj
- For the Web Monetization extension, contribute to these good-first-issues on GitHub.
- Follow Web Monetization tools for publishers on GitHub.
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