copper heart

Copper Heart is an experiment.

Copper Heart gives us a way to receive monthly contributions from our friends, in the form of credit card payments, while conveying where the contributions are going, and promoting a dialog between the people receiving contributions and those providing them.

The main idea is to make a place where the meaning behind our money is brought to the forefront, and the numbers are an afterthought.

audience

The current audience of Copper Heart is self-employed computer programmers, or friends of computer programmers, who want a neat funding platform and are willing to hack around to get things to work for the time being.

The potential audience of Copper Heart is the self-employed, community-backed creators and volunteers of the world.

development state

Dear programmers,

This project is entering rough draft territory. That is, a few ideas are in place, implemented in a narrow but not blind fashion, with minimal error checking.

To become a fully realized rough draft, unit tests need to have their say, and reporting (errors and analytics) needs to be a thing.

end game

The second version of Copper Heart will be complete when:

• The setup process for installing it on your server is straight-forward and simple.
• Ideas gathered from conversations around the first version have their say.

getting started

Copper Heart uses Node.js, CouchDB, Redis, and Stripe. To begin:

1. Open an account on Stripe.com
2. Set up a Node, CouchDB, and Redis server (e.g. Nodejitsu)
3. Install Graphics Magick for development (Nodejitsu provides this)

configuration

You'll need to configure five components:

1. Stripe
2. CouchDB
3. Redis
4. Accounts / authorization
5. Google Analytics (optional)

Configuration is done via environment variables.

Stripe

• STRIPE_PUBLIC_TEST Your public test key (i.e. pk_test_...)
• STRIPE_API_TEST Your secret test key (i.e. sk_test_...)
• STRIPE_PUBLIC_LIVE Your public live key (i.e. pk_live_...)
• STRIPE_API_LIVE Your secret live key (i.e. sk_live_...)
• STRIPE_CONNECT_CLIENT_ID Your Stripe Connect id (i.e. ca_...)

CouchDB

• DB_NAME (stores patron and member data)
• DB_STATIC_NAME (stores images)
• DB_HOST (i.e. localhost)
• DB_PORT
• DB_USE_HTTPS true or false
• DB_USERNAME optional
• DB_PASSWORD optional

Redis

Redis is only used in production.

• REDIS_HOST (i.e. name.redis.irstack.com)
• REDIS_PORT
• REDIS_PASSWORD

Member setup

Copper Heart uses OpenID through Google for authentication.

• MEMBER_EMAIL_ADDRESSES comma-separated list of Google-account emails of people who can receive money
• ENTRANCE_USERNAMES comma-separated list of usernames of people on the front page

Google Analytics

• ANALYTICS_DOMAIN (e.g. mydomain.org)
• ANALYTICS_ID (i.e. UA-12345678-1)

Misc

• NODE_ENV production or development

CouchDB configuration

• Create the main and static databases.
• Add users to your CouchDB instance.
• Assign the "app" role to your database user.
• Grant the "app" role "admin" permissions on the static database.
• Grant your database user "admin" and "member" permissions on the main database.

It's a minor goal to have the code take care of this in the future.

authors

Phil Manijak <[email protected]>