If you use Easy Digital Downloads and want an easy way to make an impact when it comes to reducing greenhouse gases by planting trees, check out a new plugin by Joshua Vandercar called responsibleWP. responsibleWP connects purchases made through EDD to Ecologi, an organization that funds projects to help reduce carbon emissions, and gives purchasers a chance to plant trees on their behalf.
The plugin was created when Vandercar noticed the following Tweet from GravityView.
Vandercar was in the process of launching a new plugin for GravityHopper and revamping the pricing for all of the plugins available on the site when he had an idea. “After being introduced to Ecologi, I noticed they had an API and since the purchase process was fresh in my mind, I thought “what if?” I definitely think most any opportunity we have to contribute to the stewardship of the Earth is a good one, so I put my head down and started coding,” he said.
Configuring the plugin requires users to go into the code and edit filters to set impact levels and breakpoints. The documentation clearly outlines how to add the Ecologi API key to the WP-Config file as well as the filter necessary to configure impact levels. There’s also a set of email tags that can be used in EDD emails to inform customers of how many trees their purchase has planted, the amount of carbon offset by the purchase, etc. You can see some of the shortcodes in action on the responsibleWP checkout form.
One thing you may notice when purchasing a license for responsibleWP is the Fair Price field.
It turns out, users can set their own price. “Since I’m not providing dedicated support for it, I figured I’d leave the pricing up to the user,” Vandercar said. “So, yes, that Fair Price field allows them to name their own price for access to lifetime updates on a single site. I’m not really looking to generate any recurring revenue with this, but wanted to enable folks to easily make this integration and provide their customers the opportunity to make an impact.”
Note that dedicated support for this plugin is not available. However, if you would like to report a bug or contribute to the project, it is available on GitHub.