February 5, 2004

Gift Subscriptions

This is something that has been requested by many of our users, and I had originally hoped to have it in place before Christmas. Well, I finally got around to finishing it, so Christmas is coming a little late (or early).

You can now give a gift subscription to OD Plus to any other member of Open Diary. Giving a gift is easy: just go to the contents page of their diary, and click the link that says “gift subscription” in the left side menu. You will be taken to a screen where you can select whether to pay for your gift using a credit card, through PayPal, or by mail. Please remember that we accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express through our secure credit card payment page.

The cost of a gift subscription is the same as any other OD Plus subscription – $12 for six months, or $24 for a full year.

Once the payment has been completed, your gift subscription will be added immediately to the diary of your lucky friend. If the recipient is already an OD Plus subscriber, the subscription will be added on to extend their existing subscription. If your friend is not an OD Plus user, they will receive a brand-spanking-new OD Plus subscription, starting right away.

Some of the benefits of an OD Plus subscription are:

No advertising or popups appear anywhere on the site.
Note history keeps copies of every note you ever leave so you can see them again.
Diary chapters lets you organize your diary into separate chapters for easier reading.
Diary and Note search allows you to search any diary or notes for words or phrases.
User blocking lets you select other OD members to block from reading your diary.
Reader passwords can be given to your friends so they can read your private or members-only diary.
An OD Plus diary is immune to inactivity removal – a Plus diary will not be taken off the site, no matter how long it is inactive (as long as the subscription is current).

So, OD Plus (I think) is a pretty cool thing.

Added later: if you want to get an OD Plus diary for somebody who doesn’t have any diary, start a new diary for them by clicking the “Start a New Diary” link on the front page. Give it a name and fill out the information (they can change it later), and then go to the diary and follow the above directions to give that diary a gift subscription. Then, when you turn the diary over to your friend, they can change the name and whatever else they want to.

Added even more later: at this time, the system does not post a notification to the recipient that they have been given a gift subscription. There are several reasons for this, including that some giftgivers want to remain anonymous, and I’d like to avoid automatically generated system messages dropping into diaries (the evil road to spam lies in that direction – not that I would ever do that). So, if you want the recipient to know about your gift, it is up to you to let them know through a note or an e-mail. I will, however, think about adding an optional message in the near future.

The DiaryMaster

Very cool! I wish I had known about this before I picked my gifts for the poetry contest.

Very cool idea. 🙂

will you notify them that they were given a gift subscription? and by whom???

Yay for you! This is excellent. Um. Question. I know we already have Friends Only and OD+ only, and FOD blocking and all that snazzy stuff, but I was wondereing if it was possible to fine tune things even further (we’re never happy, are we?) with FOD-Friends only? This would work like OD+ only with the exception of only FOD people on our friends list. See- now you’ve gotten us spoiled. :/

I only ask because I like the OD+ only feature, but I do have a few FOD friends and the whole reader’s-password-being-a-hassle thing still applies.

Wouldn’t it be smart to let the diary user (recipient of the gift subscription) to at least know they got ODPlus, that way they don’t freak out or just not notice it? just a thought!

I think you should add some type of option to let the person know you were thoughtful enough to send them a gift.

“even more later”? That kind of grammar makes me sad DM! “Even later” would have done. 🙂

ooo… uve been busy today. HOW COOL ARE U!! thats so awesome. *plans out this years christmas list* this is so sweet! love ya mr dm!! isabel

I can’t think of a gift that would bring so many hours of enjoyment for the price! I gave my sister a subscription and she loves this place! She tells me when her subscription is running out and I renew if for her using the paypal. I am wondering is we could ask for someone to donate a subscription to the Rose Garden prayer diary. If that against rules, let me know. Great gift idea. Love,

hey. the front page is running ads for Women’s Wall Street………..and i have od+. is this normal?

help! now im getting the front page laid over the favorites page and can’t click up a page without hitting refresh too. damn damn damn…..i have norton. is this not being fixed by norton? im sure you’re tired of seeing my name around these parts.

Wow…I think that’s an awesome idea…

I am having a really big problem on my OD. Not with the way the site fuctions or anything but it is a personal security matter. I am sure a lot of people come to you for this… But is there anyway You could note me back or e-mail me? If you note me please leave a private note. My email is Si1ence@notme.com the L in Si1ence is the number one. ThankYou So Much.

and i do have a free open diary… so i dont know how inclined you will be to help me.

Please let us knwo when your contacting emails are back up. I was wondering why i had no place to complain Hehe.

This is so cool!! That is a really neat idea!

I might sound stupid saying this, but is there something wrong with my dfiary? because every layout i ever try, keep breaking up and its leaves all these codes all over the place, i’m not sure whats going on, if you know anything that could help, thank you. if not, well..sorry for wasting your time..haha.

you should really do something about “itchycoo” she’s rude or he…and she/he decided to give me a threat note in my diary. im not a bad person y’know im just saying that you should do something about it. ’cause im really mad at what she wrote to me.

I have a question. Why don’t you make an option to turn off line breaks and new paragraph tags from automatically being placed both on the front page of our diary and in the entries? It’s just not natural to crunch all of our JavaScript code onto one line to prevent tags from breaking our code. Also, why isn’t JavaScript allowed in entries? Was there abuse somewhere and now we pay for it?

Just letting you know, TOD hasnt been working for awhile and we’re all wondering when 4.0 is coming out… I tried emailing about it, but it got sent back to me.

How do we pay for the OD subscription if we don’t have a credit card? What’s PayPal?

ryn: Nudity. OOoops, my bad, I deleted one other entry that was slightly questionable. Sorry! Won’t happen again!

i have a question. if i was to upgrade, would i be able to trak the notes i left BEFORE i upgraded? or would it just be the notes after?

Do you think you could add an “edit note” button? Or, maybe even a “preview note” button. I either have trouble with typos in my notes or I just change my mind after posting. I also ask that, if these features are added, that they be avaliable to the users who are not full OD members. I personally (being unemployed) find the price for an online diary to be a bit expensive. Thanks in advance.

HELP! I just did a GIFT OD to “Emmers” but she did not get it!