How to: Setup Bitcoin Meta Tags (Protip Integration)

Tldr:  Use the 2nd code snippet on your header.php in your WordPress theme to embed hidden BTC addresses (for unobtrusive donations).

For the rest of your who were born before 1997…

So If you’re reading this post, chances are that you compete with me for page views.  You have your own fancy bitcoin website and create informative posts to captivate and invigorate the minds of your readers?  Like me, you do like the financial benefits of donations, but don’t care to solicit for them?  Well, there’s a new platform named Protip. Developed by Chris Ellis, protip scans a website for a donation address and can be configured to periodically send bitcoin directly to this address.  Something like Pateron without the middle man earning a cut of fees, powered by, what else, bitcoin.

I’m pretty late to this party as it was developed a few months back.  I mention it now because a friend wanted to shoot me some coin and had only picked up the old donation address linked to the isabel sign crowdfund that I ran back in October.  Though, as mentioned in the paragraph above, I don’t like to plaster my website(s) with donation addresses but am okay with unobtrusive ads.  So since my pal asked about a donation address, I decided to give this configuration idea whirl.  It goes like this:  Most of the internet these days uses open meta tags to interchange data between sites (such as between this blog and twitter or facebook or even reddit).  Therefore, if I can configure my wordpress installation to inject the meta tag including my bitcoin address into the site header, then it should (in theory) allow protip to scan my site for this donation address without needing to publicly reveal the address.  Why inject it into the header?  Well, I’m being lazy and not careful, if you’re not as lazy as I am and want to better analyze what is and what isn’t tipworthy- then you could set your post to ‘text view’ like shown, 

and simply fill in your meta tag, per post, such that the address the page was on would be tipped.  For my situation, I need to edit the wordpress template file so it injects into the header.  To do this, I simply navigate to Appearance>Editor.  From there, click on Theme Header (header.php).  From there, if you’re not familiar with code, then search this page for the following tag: </head>  Immediately before or on the blank line above enter in the meta tag (mine for instance is):

<meta name="bitcoin" content="1bitcoin_addressXXXXXXXXXXXYZ" />

Save the header.php template and you’re done!  Non-obtrusive bitcoin donation address!

Though it seemed flawless to implement, there was trouble in the waters for me:  Protip seemed to butcher my address and get it wrong.

so I did some digging into the protip extension itself, (which is on github if you’re interested in seeing the internals) and saw a sample meta data snippet built in:

<meta name="microtip" content="1BitcoinAddresstousehere" data-currency="btc">

Trying out this code instead yields the proper configuration!:

And that’s all there is to it!  Thanks for making this tool Protip!  Good luck to my fellow Bitcoin bloggers out there too!  Keep in mind that this applies to anything beyond wordpress.  I simply have outlined the method I used to integrate it onto honeybadgerofmoney.com but the mechanism could work for any template or website desired.

 

Post Author: Frankenmint

From the pristine land of the internetz, the Frankenment was bred from machine. While looking to embrace the new world Linux regime he is truly a windows bred. I've come from the darkness to the light to share with you other internetz fol-ken to share the message of virtual money. Through our actions, we can make the virtual world yet again beyond the decree of the internet, with the decree of internetz money! Bitcoin, the Supercurrency, the official tender of the internetz that will be accepted by all countries and all fol-ken Alike!