Slack Channel Funnel post. Stripe quickstart post.

_drafts/ham-technician-notes.md

@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+make a glossary of abbreviations and codes
+- CQ is an abbreviation for "seeking" as in "I'm seeking out the other stations that can hear me"
+- POTA is Parks On The Air
+- HT stands for handheld radio
+- CTCSS is Continuous Tone Coded Squelch System which is used to open a receiver
+- DCS is Digital Coded Squelch which can be used to encoded your transmission as a "secret"
+- DTMF is Dual Tone Multi Frequency
+
+notes:
+
+- simplex is point-to-point or line-of-sight (about 5 miles) (aka not using a repeater)
+- repeaters are pieces of infrastructure that exist to boost radio signals further than line-of-sight
+- technicians can transmit on the 28.300 MHz to 28.500 MHz frequencies which are part of the 10 meter band
+- frequencies as they related to bands:
+  -
+- don't interrupt anyone else on the air
+- PEP is Peak Envelope Power is how strong your signal can be, technicians are capped at 200 watts in HF and 1500 watts above 30 MHz
+- you are required to transmit (say) your callsign at least every 10 minutes and at the end of communication
+- bands are expressed in meters which corresponds to a range of frequencies
+  - the frequency range are bounded by frequencies which roughly correlate to the wavelength represented by the band
+- different areas in which hams can operate are referenced by bands
+- HT stands for handheld radio uv5r ft4xr
+- CQ is an abbreviation for "seeking" as in "I'm seeking out the other stations that can hear me"
+- q-codes are shorthand for common information https://www.arrl.org/files/file/Get%20on%20the%20Air/Comm%20w%20Other%20Hams-Q%20Signals.pdf
+
+- modes have to do with modulation or operation
+- modulation is how data is encoded into a carrier wave
+- 3 common modulation modes are Frequency Modulation (FM), Amplitude Modulation (AM), or Single Sideband Modulation (SSB)
+- common operating modes are Phone (voice), Digital, CW (Morse code)
+
+- physics of radio
+-

_layouts/post.html

@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@
 
 <div style="background-color: rgb(226 232 240); margin: 20px; padding: 20px;">
      <p style="margin: 0px;">
-          I recently launched a Slack app! <a href="https://channel-funnel.thomasstep.com/">Install it here</a>. I have extended the free trial to 6 months for a limited time. Feedback is welcome.
+          I recently launched a Slack app to help with channel bloat! Simply <a href="https://channel-funnel.thomasstep.com/">installing</a> it would help me out a bunch. I have 2/10 installations required to submit my app to the Slack Marketplace. Thanks for helping me reach that goal.
      </p>
 </div>
 

_posts/2024-10-24-introducing-slack-channel-funnel.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title:  "Introducing Slack Channel Funnel"
+author: Thomas
+tags: [ dev, entrepreneurship, meta, startup ]
+description: Introducing a new productivity app to Slack
+---
+
+My latest project has been inspired by others on Reddit. I noticed a pattern in my workflow a while back (more than a year ago really) where I would check a multitude of Slack channels for notifications. Most Slack channels do not normally apply to me but the ones that do matter need to be almost constantly monitored. The amount of notifications caused my brain to filter out the Slack notification noise, which eventually led me to miss messages. There are also new Slack channels that pop up weekly and sometimes I forget to monitor the ones that I need to. This led me to search for a solution to the problem on Reddit. There did not seem to be anyone with a tried-and-true solution, but others were experiencing the same issue. After going back and forth over DMs, I decided I was going to build an app to address this, which is the app that I am introducing here: [Slack Channel Funnel](https://channel-funnel.thomasstep.com/).
+
+The basic piece of functionality that this introduces to Slack is filtering messages from multiple channels (target channels) down into a single channel (funnel channel). Now instead of looking through multiple Slack channels, you only need to monitor one. This also allows you to create a social media-style "feed" of your messages. It makes it easy to search back over things and see the order in which they happened. The whole goal was to make Slack easier to monitor by condensing all of your important channels down into one.
+
+Please try out the app if this sounds like something that you also struggle with. Feedback is welcome. Together we can fight channel bloat!

_posts/2024-10-24-quick-stripe-guide-for-saas.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title:  "Quick Stripe Guide for SaaS"
+author: Thomas
+tags: [ dev, entrepreneurship, startup ]
+description: Setting forth a quick start guide for integrating with Stripe
+---
+
+I recently discovered a combination of services in Stripe that is a super quick and easy way to get things up and running for a SaaS. There is minimal coding on your side to get things working, and you can probably get around handling PII or any subscription modification actions. There are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to your data model, but other than that, Stripe will handle all of the money-related inner workings.
+
+Let's start with the data model that I mentioned. There are two important pieces of information that we will need to keep track of; the user's ID and the Stripe Customer ID. The user ID should be pretty stock standard. I would hope that this piece of data is already stored in a database somewhere and easily accessible. The Stripe Customer ID will also need a place in your database schema and will need to be linked to the user's ID somehow. I'll explain how we connect those two dots in a minute.
+
+The first of the Stripe services that are part of this combination is [Stripe Checkout Session](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/build-subscriptions?platform=web&ui=stripe-hosted&lang=go#create-session). A Checkout Session is a hosted portal that handles accepting a user's payment and processing it. The developer gets to define what is being paid for and how much needs to be paid in an API call to Stripe, and then Stripe gives us back a URL for the hosted portal. We redirect our user to the Checkout Session URL. After the user completes payment Stripe redirects the user back to a preconfigured URL, which is most likely back to our SaaS site. Here is a code snippet of some of the parameters in action that I used in a recent project.
+
+```go
+params := &stripe.CheckoutSessionParams{
+  Mode: stripe.String(string(stripe.CheckoutSessionModeSubscription)),
+  LineItems: []*stripe.CheckoutSessionLineItemParams{
+ &stripe.CheckoutSessionLineItemParams{
+      Price:    stripe.String(config.PriceId),
+      Quantity: stripe.Int64(1),
+ },
+ },
+  SuccessURL: stripe.String(config.successUrl),
+  CancelURL:  stripe.String(config.cancelUrl),
+  Metadata: map[string]string{
+    "userId": userId,
+ },
+  SubscriptionData: &stripe.CheckoutSessionSubscriptionDataParams{
+    TrialPeriodDays = stripe.Int64(int64(30)),
+    TrialSettings = &stripe.CheckoutSessionSubscriptionDataTrialSettingsParams{
+      EndBehavior: &stripe.CheckoutSessionSubscriptionDataTrialSettingsEndBehaviorParams{
+        MissingPaymentMethod: stripe.String(string(stripe.SubscriptionTrialSettingsEndBehaviorMissingPaymentMethodPause)),
+ },
+ },
+    // We want metadata on the subscription object itself too
+    Metadata: map[string]string{
+      "userId": userId,
+ },
+ },
+}
+```
+
+There are a few things that I want to point out in the snippet that might not be easy to understand at first.
+
+The `Price` uses `config.PriceId` as its value, which is something that I manually set up in the Stripe console. I then took the ID of the created price and passed it to my app. You can instead automate this process, but I took the single manual step to make things easier.
+
+The `SuccessURL` and `CancelURL` are redirect URLs for different cases of the user exiting the Checkout Session portal.
+
+The `Metadata` is a very important piece. This is what connects your user ID to a Stripe customer. After payment is processed, you can configure Stripe to send you a webhook. Creating a Checkout Session in this way (without a `Customer` parameter) means that Stripe will create a new Customer object for you automatically. The webhook you receive will contain the relevant Stripe Customer information including the new Stripe Customer ID and the `Metadata` that we include here. We can then link the Stripe Customer ID in our database to the user ID because we will have both pieces of information as part of the webhook payload.
+
+I glossed over a lot of the Stripe webhook setup in that last paragraph, so let's fill that information in. Using Stripe comes with the option to receive tons of different events as webhooks. For more information about setting up a webhook endpoint, [please read here](https://docs.stripe.com/webhooks). Discussing webhook endpoints is out of the scope of this post. After your webhook endpoint is set, you should be configuring Stripe to send you the [`checkout.session.completed` webhook event](https://docs.stripe.com/api/events/types#event_types-checkout.session.completed). There might also be other webhook event types that you will need to configure for your application.
+
+Now, we have a Stripe Customer ID that is linked to our internal user ID and is on an active subscription. But what if they need to update their subscription? I certainly don't want to write all the logic and create all the pages to help them handle that information. In comes the second Stripe service to aid us in this setup: [Stripe Billing Portal](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/build-subscriptions?platform=web&ui=stripe-hosted&lang=go#create-portal-session). This is another hosted portal that Stripe offers to handle any billing updates that a user might have like updating an address, updating payment information, or canceling a subscription. Here is another code snippet of some of the parameters in action that I used in a recent project.
+
+```go
+params := &stripe.BillingPortalSessionParams{
+  Customer:  stripe.String(customerId),
+  ReturnURL: stripe.String(config.returnUrl),
+}
+```
+
+Setting up a Billing Portal is much easier. Here we can see why we needed to save the Stripe Customer ID though. Stripe needs that ID to properly generate the portal on their side with the customer's information. And the whole thing is opaque to us. We do not need to store any of the customer's/user's PII.
+
+I tie these two things together by having an endpoint in my backend that is capable of creating both the Checkout Session and the Billing Portal. Whenever my frontend hits that endpoint, the backend checks whether or not the user already has a Stripe Customer ID attached to it. If there is an existing Stripe Customer ID, then I create a Billing Portal Session and send the URL back to the front end. If the user is not an existing Stripe Customer, then I create a Checkout Session and send the URL back to the frontend. The front end can tell which type of session URL is being shown and redirects or shows a button accordingly.
+
+And just like that, you can have subscriptions set up for a SaaS. Stripe continues to impress me. The developer experience is one of the best that I have ever come across. I hope this has helped you get Stripe set up with your SaaS. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.