About 12 people have signed up for PayPal via our link but haven't validated yet. If you want to validate (and get the $5.00 deposited in your account) you need to check your bank statement online or by phone and find out the two amounts that PayPal deposited in your account. Once you find these two amounts, you need to log in to your PayPal account and enter these amounts in the appropriate boxes.

Terry, why does it say that you don't accept International? Isn't that a major objective here?

Just send you my street address. Thanks! Want to see a mind-blowing pix? http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/read/Geo/42.29 for a little less serious one http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/read/Geo/42.28

I signed up for a Business Account, so I should be able to accept International Payments, it still says that? I'll work some more with PayPal and call them if necessary to straighten this out.

According to my account information, as a Business Account, I should be able to accept payments in these countries: PayPal is now available in the following countries: Australia Austria Belgium Brazil Canada Denmark France Germany Hong Kong Ireland Israel Italy Japan Mexico Netherlands New Zealand Norway Portugal Singapore South Africa South Korea Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom

And I did send an email query to PayPal. Have any International users been able to use this? Has anyone from these countries been rejected?.

*PayPal Users* have to use a special url to sign up! People from 26 countries around the world can now send and receive money online using PayPal. PayPal is already the #1 online payments service in the US -- over 4 million users have signed up since we launched our service one year ago. And now users from all over the globe will be able to take advantage of the world's fastest, easiest, and safest way to move money. It's simple to sign up [https://secure.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_international-register] for an international PayPal account. Just complete a brief registration form, confirm your email address, and add a credit or debit card to fund your payments. Registration is completely free, and all transactions are conducted in US dollars. PayPal is faster than mailing a cashier's check, and much cheaper than sending an expensive money wire. Also, all PayPal users in the US have automatically had their accounts upgraded to be 100% compatible with international members. Residents in the following countries are now eligible for PayPal accounts: Australia * Austria * Belgium * Brazil * Canada * Denmark * France * Germany * Hong Kong * Ireland * Israel * Italy * Japan * Mexico Netherlands * New Zealand * Norway * Portugal * Singapore * South Africa * South Korea * Spain * Sweden * Switzerland * United Kingdom

But when you click on the "Donate" buttons on Spring's main page, it says: terry@spring.net DOES NOT accept international payments. That will throw people off.

That will! I'll look in to a fix for this.

I sent out some more pictures this morning to donors. But I can't send out some because the folks who made PayPal contributions didn't have their address in the notes in the payment they made. So if you've made a contribution, now or at any time in the past, and would like a photo sent to you, please email me and I would be happy to send you one! Thanks to everyone for helping out!

. . . and I have a couple of emails in to PayPal about the foreboding message that the Spring doesn't accept International payments. This is the one I got today: Message 2/9 From PayPal International Dec 17, 0 02:58:45 am -0800 Dear Mr. Walhus, Thank you for contacting PayPal. You may receive or send both international and domestic payments. All funds are transferred in US dollars. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us again. Sincerely, Jennifer PayPal Customer Service

It doesn't matter what you post here, as people who want to contribute do not necessarily read this topic. When you click on a DONATE button on Spring's main page, you get this screen that says "Spring does not accept payments from non-U.S. users." Here is the screen from the click through. https://secure.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr Have you asked PayPal why it says this? That would deter people.

I have this question in to PayPal, it's in response to the email from Jennifer at PayPal Customer service. I think I may know the answer but it involves modifying the code in the link that PayPal generates. If I get time, I may experiment with this today. There may be a clue here: http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/hlp/help_global_intl-outside There are a lot of PayPal pending accounts that folks will need to verify if the Spring is to receive the $5.00 sign up bonus, as well as the person signing up. The key is to look at your bank statement and see the two amounts PayPal deposits in your account, then go to their verification screen and key these amounts in. I'm working on covering the bandwidth bill for austen.com primarily and charges connected with running a network connection to the sites. PayPal may be a bit complicated for some, I can see why. But it's worth the effort to figure out in that it may provide a secure intermediary to make Internet Payments. If you haven't received a card from me by Christmas, please let me know. There are some folks whose addresses I don't have who I would like to send cards and/or photos to. My apologies to those who may not get cards, I'm working on putting together a complete list of those who make up our austen, firth, and spring communities. Email me with your address or others addresses that you may know of please. mailto://terry@spring.net

Thank for the pictures, Terry, but where were you, dear?

I was behind the camera! That was my son walking in the woods, in the one.

Has the international PayPal donation question been answered? I am about to do an Austen.com fundraiser and I noticed that the PayPal buttons on the Spring.net front page still contain the code "no_intl", which suggests that this still is up in the air. But when you click through to PayPal, part of the message says: International account holders: In order to complete this purchase, you must first complete activation of your account. Please complete registration and activation of your account at www.paypal.com before paying this merchant. That is a bit of a confusing item. Does "registration and activation" mean just filling out the credit card and password info that appears on that page? Or does it mean something else? I found the International Registration page. Is the one that pulls up when you click through the PayPal button the same thing--or is that just for US folks? Do my overseas folks have to find their way to the Intl Registration page?

Good questions, I'll revisit this and check out the PayPal topic. Is anyone overseas willing to take part in a test and try and make a donation?

I am involved with an international trade association (which is based in the US), and to date, we have been unable to receive payments via PayPal outside of the US.

Mmm, sounds like you've done some homework on this Lisa. Any suggestions on how we could go about this, Lisa?

Anyone figure this out yet?

Still working on it, Ann. I may have to call Paypal today.

The Pledge Drive is open! We had a huge hit last month, over $1,000 in bandwidth expenses mostly due to the Bridget traffic, so keep those cards and checks coming in, and click on the PayPal donate button in the upper left corner of http://www.spring.net please!

Our goal is to bring in $1,000 in contributions to pay for our huge bandwidth and other bills from last month (which total more than this actually). So far we're 23.5% of the way there with $235 in donations in the last week. One was for $100! Thanks and keep 'em coming! They help keep us going and growing.

Terry!! I'm getting permission denied to FTP into my directories. More Front Page nonsense??? Isn't there some way to exclude my subdirectory from all your Front Page rules and regs?

Karen, I cannot ftp either. I emailed him earlier in the week about it. Arrrgh!

More effects of Frontpage, I just got off the phone with Karen and I believe we have the permissions reset. I'm just getting back from the movies and dinner in town so I've been out of pocket. I'll check Marci's permissions now!

Thanks ! I get to see baseball tonight... if I can stand to go with troll.

Terry, I still am in limbo with Austen.com. I'd love to go ahead and move the site over--since it is very confusing for my people to be stranded between two sites and 2 IP addresses, never knowing which site "Austen.com" will land them in--but I still can't set up my CGI boards. Right now only 2 of my directories are processing the CGI, the rest treat a script like plain text and print it out on the screen. I'm heading into my 3rd week of confusion over on Austen, and I'd like to get it all worked out. (And this afternoon the 208.171.121.122 digihost site is either really slow or not responding at all when I try to pull up pages.) BTW, why is it that some days "Austen.com" sends me to the new site, then on others it sends me to the old? It seems pretty random and swings back and forth. It makes it really hard on me and my e-mail too, because I can only access my Ann@Austen.com e-mail when it is routing to digihost; it gets blocked when it routes to datapipe. That is my primary e-mail and I can't help wondering how many messages are going astray. Yesterday I could get my e-mail, the day before I couldn't, and I can't today either. I go days without getting it, then get it for a day, then lose it again. Also, I sent you over $400 in checks today from my people. I think that brings the Austen fundraising total--not counting credit card payments--to about $625.

That's terrific, tonight I'll work with you and Barry on getting CGI going. Wecan keep the site where it is for now, but eventually we'll have to move it.

Terry, it's too confusing where it is. My people are going nuts. I have posts diappearing. I have people be routed randomly to the new or to the old site--and since the two sites do not have identical content at the moment, that means it appears as if things are disappearing and reappearing. I need to get this settled down.

OK. I'll set up the dns to run under ns1.spring.net and ns2.spring.net so we can point it where we want. It can point to the new site or the old site but not both. You will still be able to reference both sites by ip number. This will get things settled down. I'll make this dns change now!

What I need most Terry is the ability to run CGI scripts on the new computers. Currently I can only do so in the board and writers directories. I need to be able to do so also in the derby, novel, and people directories at least--would like to have control of that myself, if I could.

I'm going to get with Barry on this as he has a better understanding of it and just went through this exercise on repeater.org, another of our web pages on this server. bdunlap@austin.rr.com, please email him these details and I'll follow up and work with him.

Ann, as you heard from Barry, the following directories have the .htaccess file in them: / /babble /board /derby /novel /people /writers /boardarc /giberish This allows the use of .cgi files and should clear up your board problem. You can inspect the contents of these files and examine the permissions settings if you need .htaccess in any other directories.

Starting today, we're going to have four quarterly fund raising drives to pay our isp bills, make improvements, do backups and expand and add new features (faster server with bigger hard drives, etc). The pledge drives will be held on October 1-15, 2001 January 1-15, 2002 April 1-15, 2002 July 1-15, 2002 The goal of the current pledge drive is to pay all or a good portion of the $900 per quarter hosting fees we pay, plus another $600 to initiate a schedule of full backups to our server and an emergency preparedness plan. This quarter 25% of all donations will go to the newly established college fund for children of the survivors of the World Trade Center attack. Send your checks to: The Spring 182 Clover Road Cedar Creek, TX 78612 Use these logos to sign up (if you aren't a Paypal member and to make donations): target="_blank">   If you want to send your donations to Ann or Karen directly, and have them forward them to me, that's fine. Ann has handled this extremely well in the past and that way I can track which site they're earmarked for. This pledge drive includes Spring, Drool, Firth and Austen. Thanks! Your contributions have been generous in the past and have kept this place rolling along. We hope to be secure, safe and more robust in the future as a website where you can freely express your thoughts and feelings and honor your heroes.

I got the first donation of this drive today, $50, which is one sixth of the way to paying this months hosting charges of $296.00. That's a start! I'd like to see the load spread out among more folks, and not weighing so heavily on myself and a few others. I'm encouraged by today's Paypal contribution. If you would like to give, please click the Paypal button to "donate" at http://www.spring.net. Or send check payable to The Spring to: The Spring 182 Clover Rd Cedar Creek, TX 78612 I sent a $12.50 check to the college fund for WTC survivors today, a fourth of the contribution I received.

Our new paypal for donations to the Spring is banking@wholetech.com Right now, they'd be appreciated as I've just laid out quite a bit for a new server and another year's hosting is due.