{"id":163,"date":"2007-12-12T13:06:37","date_gmt":"2007-12-12T18:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/12\/scratchback-topspots-review\/"},"modified":"2009-08-14T16:20:39","modified_gmt":"2009-08-14T21:20:39","slug":"scratchback-topspots-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/12\/scratchback-topspots-review\/","title":{"rendered":"ScratchBack TopSpots Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I signed up for the <a title=\"Online Tip Jar and Link Exchange\" href=\"http:\/\/www.scratchback.com\">ScratchBack TopSpots<\/a> program a while back to see what it was all about and this is what I learned.<\/p>\n<p><strong>ScratchBack Service Summary:<\/strong> The TopSpots widget provides a place for your site&#8217;s visitors to easily publish their links in exchange for &#8220;tips&#8221; that they leave in your PayPal account.  You can read the <a title=\"FAQ for TopSpots\" href=\"http:\/\/www.scratchback.com\/faq.php\">ScratchBack FAQ<\/a> for more detailed information.  Of course this simple out-of-the-box functionality comes at a price but fortunately ScratchBack is only charging a very reasonable<a title=\"ScratchBack Commission Fee\" href=\"http:\/\/www.scratchback.com\/blog\/news-scratchback-pays-90-during-beta\/\">10% commission<\/a> for all tips generated through its service.  This percentage will increase once the program leaves the Beta testing stage but hopefully they won&#8217;t go overboard.<\/p>\n<p><strong>My ScratchBack Experience:<\/strong> Nearly all information regarding setup and installation is easy to follow and find.  I only encountered one stumbling block but unfortunately it was a rather large one<!--more-->.  All of the standard <a title=\"Standard TopSpots Design Choices\" href=\"http:\/\/www.scratchback.com\/images\/sb_widgets_big.jpg\">design choices<\/a> seemed to clash with the colors of my site and using the <a title=\"ScratchBack Helps Create Custom TopSpots Graphics\" href=\"http:\/\/www.scratchback.com\/design.php\">Custom Widget Design<\/a> service didn&#8217;t really get me where I wanted to be.<\/p>\n<p>Here is where I wanted to go&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img src='https:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/pixelwit-topspot-1.png' alt='pixelwit-topspot-1.png' \/><\/p>\n<p>and this is where I ended up&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img src='https:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/pixelwit-topspot-2.png' alt='pixelwit-topspot-2.png' \/><\/p>\n<p>My greatest concern with the <em>custom<\/em> design is that the center background color is white rather than olive.  Apparently the white background is hard-coded into the ScratchBack widget&#8217;s script and it cannot be changed.  This may be fine for most people but that great big field of bright white just didn&#8217;t fit in with the other <em>muted<\/em> colors used in my sidebar so it had to go.  In other words, I ditched the entire ScratchBack TopSpots service because of the way it looks.  I feel so judgemental.  <\/p>\n<p>Hopefully later versions of the ScratchBack widget will better facilitate personalization and customization.  I think I&#8217;ll wait until then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A quick review of the ScratchBack TopSpots online community tipping service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[40],"class_list":["post-163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-site-development","tag-widget"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}