Now, we probably haven’t been able to do one new feature a day, but if you throw in the enhancements, code clean-ups, and the bug fixes, then oh yeah, we’re doing well over that number.

And it’s one thing to do it for a year, versus doing it for 4 years straight (and well into our 5th year now!)

Can we get a what, what?

- Veena, Ravi & The DAP Team

We just found a bug in a new feature that was only recently introduced in DAP v4.4.

Who does it affect?

Only those using DAP v4.4.x.

Does it affect everyone using 4.4.x?

No. Just those using a particular new feature that was introduced in 4.4. Keep reading for details.

Should I do anything if I’m not using this feature?

No.

Does it affect anyone using 4.3.1 or older?

No.

What if I am on 4.4.x and my access to upgrades has expired?

No problem. If you are already running any version of 4.4.x, then this update is free for you even if your access to support and upgrades has expired. Just open a ticket and we’ll take care of this.

What is the actual issue?

On the Products > Manage screen, on the new Cancellation & Expiration tab, DO NOT set the Expiration Action field to Set End Date To Previous Day as it can cause access start/end dates of subscribers (in certain cases) to be set to invalid dates.

What should I do to fix it?

You can do one of two things…

Solution 1: Do NOT use the feature which has this issue (details below)..

(OR)

Solution 2: Upload a single file which basically removes this feature and you won’t be able to use it even by mistake (for now – we’ll address this in the next release).

———————————

Solution 1: Do NOT use the feature

If you have been using this feature, then …

• Go to each DAP Product’s Cancellation & Expiration tab
• Set the Expiration Action field either of these two options:
  No Action (or) Remove From Product
• Click on Save Product.

That’s it!

Solution 2: Upload a single file

In this solution, you can upload a single file (details below) which completely removes the “Set End Date To Previous Day” option from the drop-down, and then you would set it to one of the other options, and click on “Save Product”.

WARNING: Do this only if you’re on 4.4.x (if you do upload this file to an older version of DAP – 4.3.1 or older – the Products page will stop working)

• Download addEditProducts.zip
• Unzip to desktop.
• Upload the lone file inside – addEditProducts.php – to the /dap/admin/ folder.
• Go to each DAP Product’s Cancellation & Expiration tab
• Set the Expiration Action field either of these two options:
  No Action (or) Remove From Product
• Click on Save Product.

That’s it!

This fix has been included along with the regular DAP v4.4.3 files, so if you’re going to install DAP on a new site, then the files you will be downloading from our site already has this update. So you can just ignore this entire post.

What if I have users on my site who have already been affected?

No problem. Just open a ticket giving us the login info for WP Admin, FTP and cPanel, and we’ll take care of this.

- Veena & Ravi
PS: Feel free to post your questions and comments below.

We’re thrilled to announce that DAP 4.4.3 / Livelinks 1.8.3.2 is now out of beta.

Which means it is a "Final Release", and may now be used on a live (production) web site.

The files are available for download from the member’s area.

You can either newly install DAP v4.4.3 afresh on a new site which never had DAP installed before… OR you can also upgrade to the newest version from ANY previous version of DAP (including from v4.4.x beta).

• If you had previously already upgraded to/installed 4.4.x beta, then you must upgrade to DAP v4.4.3 and LiveLinks v1.8.3.2.
• If you’re going to freshly install DAP or upgrade to it from ANY previous version, then please be aware of these items below before you upgrade.

IMPORTANT: ACTION REQUIRED BY ALL PAYPAL / DAP USERS

In a bulletin dated October 18, 2011, Paypal announced that they will discontinue support for the HTTP 1.0 protocol starting February 1, 2013 and this change could impact the ability of  merchants to perform IPN validation.

We have identified that this Paypal change will impact DAP’s ability to perform IPN (Instant Payment Notification) post-back validation with Paypal.

So we have updated the DAP IPN post-back validation to use HTTP 1.1, and include the "Host: www.paypal.com" and "Connection: close" HTTP headers in the IPN post-back validation script as required by Paypal.

These changes to DAP scripts for Paypal compatibility are already included in DAP 4.4.3 / LL 1.8.3.2.

Your Action Required before February 1, 2013:

IMPORTANT: You have nothing to worry about – your Paypal Recurring Payments will NOT BE AFFECTED at all by Paypal’s changes. Your existing buy buttons will not be affected – those will continue working just fine. Paypal will still continue to charge your members as usual. Nothing changes as far as your actual subscription payments are concerned. It is just the ability of Paypal to notify DAP on your site properly and extend member access automatically, that is affected.

If Paypal doesn’t notify DAP correctly, then the access end dates of your members may not get extended automatically. So it is really more of an annoying maintenance issue, than anything else.

So if you don’t wish to renew, that’s totally fine – you don’t have to. You can just continue extending member access manually.

Your Options

1) You may do a full upgrade to DAP 4.4.3 / LL 1.8.3.2. This way you will have all the necessary updates for new Paypal Communication.

OR

2) If you do not wish to upgrade your site to 4.4.3 just yet, you can simply download DAP 4.4.3 / LL 1.8.3.2 to your desktop, extract the contents, and upload just the files /dap/dap-paypal.php and /dap/dap-thankyou.php to your site overwriting the current versions. You should take a backup of your current dap-thankyou.php and dap-paypal.php scripts before you overwrite it with the new versions

OR

3) Your access to DAP support & upgrades expired a while ago, and for whatever reason, you don’t wish to renew. Like we said above, your payments will NOT BE AFFECTED. Just the ability of Paypal to notify DAP and extend member access automatically, is what is impacted. So if you don’t wish to renew, that’s fine – you can just extend member access manually. Absolutely nothing else changes.

WARNING: Please READ THIS BLOG POST before you upgrade to DAP 4.4.3 / LL 1.8.3.2.  It lists all of the features added/improved. Read the ‘BEFORE UPGRADING’ section in the blog post before your upgrade.

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to ask via the comments below.

Cheers!

- Veena Prashanth & Ravi Jayagopal

PS: As always, please leave your comments & thoughts below

EXPIRED USERS

If you don’t see the latest files in the member’s area, that’s probably because your 1 year of free access to DAP Support & Upgrades has expired, and you may renew here. If you think you should have access to the newest DAP version, but don’t, then please open a ticket and we’ll take care of it. Thanks!

LINKS

Click here to read the 4.4 beta announcement that lists all of the features added/improved

Click here for instructions about Upgrading DAP

Hey Dapper!

We’re super thrilled to announce the release of DAP v4.4 and LiveLinks v1.8.3.

An incredible amount of time and effort went into this one – so we’re really excited about this new release!

There are tons of new features, improvements and bug fixes. A lot of the new features were based on your invaluable feedback – so thank you for that.

So without further ado, let’s dive right in!

New DAP Features

• NEW: Buy-Button Links are here! You can now generate Buy Links right from within DAP. Previously, the DAP buy buttons were a form code. Now you can have them be an actual link. Very handy when you wish to use a pricing table plugin that allows you to enter only links (and not buy-button form code).
• NEW: Negative Dripping Day for Email Autoresponders: To send an email X days before the user’s access expires to that product, set the usual drip day ("Day to Send") to a negative number on the "Email Autoresponder" tab. For example, setting the "Day to Send" field to "-3" would send out that email 3 days BEFORE the user’s access to that product ends. So you can use this to send out renewal reminder emails. And you can set up multiple of those too – one that goes out on -7 (one week before expiration), one that goes out on -3 (three days before expiration) and one that goes out on -1 (one day before expiration). Date of expiration (access end date) is actually day 0 – but DO NOT USE 0, because 0 is not allowed at this time. Reverse dripping HAS to be a negative number. So -1 would be one day prior to actual access end date.
• NEW: Encrypted Passwords with 2-way encryption: All passwords in DAP are now encrypted and stored in the database. For current DAP users, un-encrypted passwords will initially work as usual. And every time the DAP Admin updates a user’s password, or a member updates their own password, from that point onwards, the plain-text password will become encrypted.
• NEW: DAP Admin User can no longer see member passwords. DAP Admin can change everyone’s existing password (their own, as well that of others), but can no longer see what they are.
• NEW: Login As Member: Not being able to view a member’s password brought a new challenge: How can the DAP Admin login as a member to see what they’re seeing – a critical feature during initial testing as well as troubleshooting a live site when a member says they’re having trouble accessing certain content. So we have introduced a new "Login As Member" feature, where the DAP Admin would go to http://YourSite.com/dap/loginAs.php. This page will present 3 form fields:
  1) Email id of member you wish to log in as.
  2) DAP Admin Email
  3) DAP Admin Password
  So once DAP verifies that it is indeed the DAP Admin trying to log in as someone else, DAP will log you into the site as that member whose email id you entered in (1) above.
  NOTE: The Login As Member (LAM) feature does NOT mean that you can use just one browser to log in as both DAP Admin and regular member. You still need to use two separate browsers – one for DAP admin (like Chrome) another for regular member (Firefox). All LAM does is give you a workaround for logging in as someone else, because starting 4.4, the DAP Admin can no longer see what the member’s password is in order to log in as them.
• NEW: New tab on Products page – "Cancellation & Expiration".
  This tab has 3 new settings:
      1) Renewal HTML: You can enter HTML here that will show up on an expired user’s "My Content" page right under the product info (before the links are displayed).
      2) Post-Expiry Renewal Redirect URL: This is the URL to which a user is redirected to, right after they log in, if…
          a) Access to this product has expired,
              -AND-
          b) Setup > Config > Redirect Expired Users to Renewal Page Upon Login? has been set to "Y"
          However, if the user has access to multiple products, and access to more than one of those products has expired, then they will be redirected to the equivalent global field at Setup > Config > Post-Expiration Renewal Redirect URL (Global) right after they log in.
      NOTE: For any kind of renewal redirection to take effect upon log in, you must also set Setup > Config > Redirect Expired Users to Renewal Page Upon Login? to "Y"
     3) Expiration Action: Options in the drop-down are:
         a) No Action: Means status quo – nothing special or extra will be done if a user’s access expires to this product.
         b) Remove from Product: Very useful if you have a non-dripping subscription product, where if a user cancels their recurring subscription, you want to fully remove them from the product.
         c) Set End Date To Previous Day: This is a "rolling window" feature, useful if you want people to be able to pause their membership, come back and re-join, and get their access current (the entire period for which they were a member keeps rolling forward even if they left in between for 6 months, so that there is no "gap" in their access. So even if they leave in between for 6 months and come back and re-subscribe, it will be as though they never left.
• NEW: Autologin for Aweber-to-DAP flow. Previously DAP would only auto-log in those signing up from the DAP signup form. Now even those signing up through an Aweber sign up form can be auto-logged in to DAP.
• NEW: Super-simplified Aweber-to-DAP integration. Just point your Aweber list’s thank-you URL to http://YourSite.com/dap/signup_submit.php?productId=123. That’s it! No more fiddling with code, or renaming files, etc.
• NEW: Better looking default free signup form for DAP
• NEW: Custom Fields: DAP Admin can now make a user-facing custom field to be a "Required" field. So when it shows up on the user’s own profile, they must fill it out, and cannot update their profile without entering data in the field.
• NEW: DAP logs older than 5 days, will now be automatically cleared to make sure the log table doesn’t grow too big.
• NEW: DAP Admin Panel now displays "Logged in as: <First><Last>" at the top of every screen right below the menu. It will be a hyper-link that will take you directly to the User-Edit page for the admin where you can modify the DAP Admin user’s profile.
• NEW: Ability to configure Post-unsubscribe URL (see new CONFIG item below)
• NEW: Ability to delete saved Autoresponder emails (On Email > Autoresponders page) completely from system – which will also delete it from all DAP products that it has been added to.
• NEW: Option to automatically flush the login IP records of all users in the system, every X number of days. See new config item below "Flush Login IP Records How Often?"
• NEW: Ability to flush the login IP records of an individual user, by clicking on the new "Flush all Login IP records for this user" link on User-edit page.
• NEW: User-edit page shows all of the user’s login history with IP’s and time of log in
• NEW: Ability to exclude individual users from IP monitoring, like say those with a high IP reset rate because they have dialup, or because their ISP assigns them a new IP way too often than the others. New field on User-edit page "Exclude From IP Monitoring"
• NEW: Users > Manage page shows two new colums for every user: "Last Login Date" (date when user last logged in) and "Login Count" (how many times user has logged in so far) 

New Affilate Features

• NEW: Affiliate email notification of Commissions earned as well as Leads generated. You can configure the content of the email sent to the affiliate under Setup > Templates.
• NEW: The "Lead" notification email is sent instantly when the lead/buyer is first logging in to the member’s area. The "Sale" notification email is sent at the top of the hour when the DAP hourly cron runs.
• NEW: The Affiliate Email Notification feature itself is configurable. It is set to "No" (don’t send notifications) by default. Just set it to "Yes" in Setup > Config to turn it on.
• NEW: You can enter merge tags like….
  • %%PRODUCT_NAME%%
  • %%AMOUNT_EARNED%%
    And if you want the affiliate to see their referral’s name and email, you can additionally use these in the email…
  • %%BUYER_FIRST_NAME%%
  • %%BUYER_LAST_NAME%%
  • %%BUYER_EMAIL%%
• NEW: "View Affiliate Traffic" button on "Affiliates > Reports" page that now allows you to see incoming affiliate traffic for a given affiliate and date range
• NEW: Allow affiliate payment in credits. You can now set up Commissions in "Credits" – You can assign Per-Lead Fixed, Per-Sale Fixed and Per-Sale Percentage all in "Credits" as well (previously, it was only "Cash" commissions). NOTE: In order for your affiliates to redeem those credits and use it to purchase your content, you will need the new CreditsStore plugin (previous known as "Self-Service Store" (SSS) which will be sold separately, and released shortly.
• NEW: Configure First-Cookie or Last-Cookie wins? Default: Last-Cookie
• NEW: Configure Affiliate Cookie Length (in days). Default: 365

New Merge Tags & ShortCodes

• NEW: New shortcode for customizing the user profile: [DAPUserProfile].
  You can now pick and choose which fields appear on the user profile page using this shortcode. You can also choose to display all user-facing custom fields (showCustomFields="Y"), or only select custom fields (showCustomFields="cbnick,ssn"). Default is "Y" for all fields – so even if you don’t enter showFirstName="Y"  for a field, it will show up by default.
  The full list below is the same as entering just [DAPUserProfile]:

  [DAPUserProfile showFirstName="Y" showLastName="Y" showUserName="Y" showEmail="Y" showAddress1="Y" showAddress2="Y" showCity="Y" showState="Y" showZip="Y" showCountry="Y" showPhone="N" showFax="N" showCompany="N" showTitle="N" showPaypalEmail="Y" showOptedOut="Y" showCustomFields="Y"]

• NEW: New Shortcode [DAPUpline]
  Basically, this shortcode shows a user their referring Affiliate’s (a.k.a Sponsor’s) information. So when a user visits the page that has this shortcode, it will display information of that user’s referring Affiliate – either from cookie (if exists), or if they’re already a member, then their current Affiliate’s information. And if neither the cookie is set, nor the user has an Affiliate attached to their account already, then it will show the info of the DAP Admin). So you can use it to show the user information of the person (affiliate) who referred them to the page. Think of it as a "Your Sponsor" tag.
      [DAPUpline showField="first_name"] – To show affiliate’s first name, use this
      [DAPUpline showField="last_name"]
      [DAPUpline showField="user_name"]
      [DAPUpline showField="email"]
      [DAPUpline showField="address1"]
      [DAPUpline showField="address2"]
      [DAPUpline showField="city"]
      [DAPUpline showField="state"]
      [DAPUpline showField="zip"]
      [DAPUpline showField="country"]
      [DAPUpline showField="phone"]
      [DAPUpline showField="fax"]
      [DAPUpline showField="company"]
      [DAPUpline showField="title"]
      [DAPUpline showField="paypal_email"]

      For Custom fields…
      [DAPUpline showField="custom_<customfieldname>"]

• NEW: New parameters for existing shortcode, [DAPUserLinks]
      a) showProductCount => ‘Y’: If set to "Y", then the message "You have access to (X) products" will be displayed. If set to "N", it won’t be.
      b) showRenewalHTML => ‘Y’: If set to "Y", new product level field "Renewal HTML" will be displayed giving clear indication that the user’s access to that product has expired.
      c) productId parameter can now accept multiple product id’s separated by a comma if you wish to show "My Content" only for a select number of products.
• NEW: 3 new merge tags for email, all available in a product-related context
  1. %%NUM_DAYS_TO_EXPIRY%%
  2. %%ACCESS_START_DATE%%
  3. %%ACCESS_END_DATE%%

New Configs & Internationalization

• NEW CONFIG: Flush Login IP Records How Often? Every….. ? Login IP records in the system will be flushed/reset as often as you configure here.
• NEW CONFIG: Last Flush Date of Login History: Shows date when all users’ login history was last flushed (reset)
• NEW CONFIG: Post-Unsubscribe URL: New config item. URL to which User is redirected to, right after clicking on the "Unsubscribe" link at the bottom of DAP emails.
      Defaults to /dap/unsubscribed.php
• NEW CONFIG: First-Cookie or Last-Cookie wins? New config that allows you to set the affiliate module to be "First Cookie" or "Last Cookie". Default: Last Cookie wins.
• NEW CONFIG: Affiliate Cookie Length (in days): New config that allows you to set affiliate cookie expiration days.
• NEW: New customizable variables in /dap/inc/language/english.php
  //———- Added in v4.4 ———//
  define("AFFILIATE_INFO_PERFSUMM_SUBHEADING","Affiliate Performance Summary"); //used only in dap/index.php
  define("AFFILIATE_INFO_HEADING","Affiliate Details"); //used only in dap/index.php
  define("MSG_NO_COMM","Sorry, no commissions earned yet.");
  define("USER_PROFILE_SUCCESS_MESSAGE_USER","SUCCESS! Your profile has been updated.");
  define("MSG_ERROR_EMAILEXISTSVB", "Sorry, this email id is already in use in our vBulletin Forum. Please try using a different email id.");
  define("MSG_SUCCESS_USERUPDATE_NOVB", "SUCCESS! Your profile has been updated, but could not register this username in our vBulletin Forum. Please contact the site admin for help.");
  define("AUTOMATED_AUTORESPONDER_EMAIL_SUBJECT", "New Content Available:\n%%CONTENT_NAME%%");
  define("MSG_INVALID_PASS","Sorry, the password you have chosen contains special characters. Only Alphabets and Numbers allowed. Please go ‘back’ and choose a different password.");
  define("COLNAME_EARNINGTYPE_TEXT","Cash/Credit");
  define("USER_PROFILE_NEW_PASSWORD_LABEL_DAPUSERPROFILE","Password<br/>(only if changing)");

List of Improved Features

• IMPROVED: Products > Manage screen will remain on same tab after saving the product – will not switch back to "General Settings" tab.
• IMPROVED: "Earnings Report By Product" report on DAP Admin home page now includes refunds (previously, reported only net – now separately reports Sales and Refunds).
• IMPROVED: Better support for Internationalization (non-English characters). Previously, on some DAP screens, junk characters were showing when name had certain non-English characters. That’s fixed now.
• IMPROVED: Affiliate > Reports page now shows today’s date as default for Start and End date (was previously blank and was confusing).

List of Bug Fixes

• FIXED: Currency symbol issue in aff details page. Instead of a currency sign (for the Euro) "€" was showing up. That’s fixed now.
• FIXED: Use paypal email in mass pay if exists – if not use main email id
• FIXED: There was a fatal error when WP admin tried to update a regular user’s password via WP Admin User profile page. Fixed now.
• FIXED: Syncing was not working when using two blogs protected by one installation of DAP. It was syncing to the first blog visited by user, but not to the other one(s). Fixed now.
• FIXED: "States" in the User Profile page is now a free-form text field. Both User (on user profile page) and DAP Admin (on user-edit page) can edit this and type in free-form text in this field.
• FIXED: "Payer Email" field in the transaction table is updated when user changes their own email in their profile AND also when DAP Admin changes email of user from the DAP Dashboard
• FIXED: When a user updates their profile info, confirmation message will now show below button too (and not just at the top of the form, where they would miss seeing it if they didn’t scroll up). Not even applicable any more with the new [DAPUserProfile] shortcode.

WARNING: READ THIS BEFORE YOU UPGRADE

There a few critical things you need to remember to do BEFORE you upgrade.

BEFORE UPGRADING

Self-Service Store Users: DO NOT UPGRADE

Due to the new version of "Credits Store Plugin" (SSS) coming out shortly, the current version of SSS will no longer work with DAP v4.4. We will work with you offline to make sure you’re able to upgrade. Please open a ticket for that. For now, if you are currently using SSS actively on a live web site, then do not upgrade to 4.4. But if you just own a copy of SSS, and are not currently using it, then you may go ahead and upgrade.

This release is BETA – not for use on already LIVE web sites with ongoing sales

If you’re already running a live web site that’s generating sales, then you should probably skip this beta release, and wait for the final release.

However, if you’re just getting started with DAP, or if you are at least 2 weeks from launching, then we highly recommend that you upgrade to this version, as it has so many usability features and fixes to nagging issues from the past, that it will make things a LOT easier for you during setup and maintenance.

You MUST log out WP Admin & DAP Admin Before Upgrading

Before you upload the files, simply log out of WP Admin. If you’re on 4.3.1, then you will also be automatically logged out of DAP Admin. But if you’re on an earlier version of DAP, then be sure to visit http://YourSite.com/dap/logout.php to log out of DAP Admin. Only then upload "dap" as well as "DAP-WP-LiveLinks" files (see instructions below).

ALSO COMING SOON

The features listed above are just the part of core DAP that has changed.

We still have 2 major releases coming up very soon!

1) The spanking new "Credits Store" plugin

This plugin was formerly known as "Self-Service Store" (SSS). We’ve completely built this new one from the ground up.

If this is something you’ve been wanting to do, then you’re absolutely going to go nuts when you see the kind of features we have included in this new plugin. It even has a couple of related child plugins for WordPress that will allow you to some really cool stuff!

It will all be part of the new Credits Store plugin that will be released in 1 week.

2) The fully updated "Paypal Upsell-Tree" plugin

An all new, exciting look & feel for the cart, and many more enhancements. You’re going to absolutely love this if you wish to do Upsells with a Paypal Standard account.

And this one comes out in 2 weeks.

So, we hope 4.4 was worth the wait for you . We would love to hear your thoughts, so don’t forget to leave a comment (or two) below.

Cheers and happy holidays!

- Veena Prashanth & Ravi Jayagopal
DAP Queen & DAP Daddy

PS: Don’t forget to leave your comments & thoughts below

Resources:

Click here to download DAP v4.4 and LiveLinks v1.8.3

Click here for instructions about Upgrading DAP

Click here for instructions about Upgrading LiveLinks

NOTE: If you don’t see the latest files in the member’s area, that’s probably because your 1 year of free access to DAP Support & Upgrades have expired, and you can renew here. If you think you should have access to DAP v4.4 and LiveLinks v1.8.3, then please open a ticket and we’ll take care of it. Thanks!

DAP turns 4 years old today.

And we made this cool video to share our joy with you.

So turn up your speakers, and watch it in full-screen mode.

And don’t forget to leave a comment behind!

Cheers!

- Veena & Ravi
DAP Queen & DAP Daddy

How often does one get to say “World’s First….” for anything they do or make?

Or “Second”… or even “Third”?

Not too often, as you can imagine.

Well… we get to say it this time (after doing a lot of research first )

We’re insanely excited to announce the launch of…

TwitrChat: The World’s First WordPress Chat Plugin Integrated With Twitter!

Read all about it on our sales page.

Cheers!

- Veena Prashanth & Ravi Jayagopal
WickedCoolQueen & DAPDaddy

PS: The last time we said “World’s First…” was back in 2008, when we launched the World’s First ContentResponder

We’re thrilled to announce that DAP 4.3 is now out of beta, and we’ve just released DAP v4.3.1 and LiveLinks v1.8.1 – both of which are now available for download from the member’s area.

You can directly install DAP v4.3.1 afresh on a new site which never had DAP installed before… OR you can also upgrade to it from ANY previous version of DAP (including from v4.3 beta).

• If you had previously already upgraded to/installed 4.3 beta, then you must upgrade to DAP v4.3.1 and LiveLinks v1.8.1.
• If you’re going to freshly install DAP or upgrade to it from ANY previous version, then please be aware of these items below before you upgrade.

WARNING: READ THIS BEFORE YOU UPGRADE

There a few critical things you need to remember to do BEFORE and IMMEDIATELY AFTER you upgrade.

BEFORE UPGRADING

Make sure you are not combining FREE and PAID users in the same DAP Product.

Starting with DAP v4.3, if a user has access to a product, they will get access to content within the product (as per drip dates and access expiry, of course). The only thing that changes is…. you no longer have to make sure that content is marked as FREE in order for FREE users to be able to access it, or worry about mistakenly adding a user as FREE to a paid product, and forgetting to mark them as PAID, and then they have an issue accessing the content. This is the biggest issue for most people starting with DAP, so we’ve finally decided to fix it the right way.

So the thumb rule here is: If a User has access to Product, it doesn’t matter if they’re a free or paid user, and it doesn’t matter if your content is marked as free or paid; the user WILL get access to the content in the product (depending of course on their access start and end dates, drip days/dates, etc – no change to those things).

Restart Browser

Log out of DAP Admin and WP Admin panel, clear browser cache, restart browser, and then log back in first to WP admin (that will also log you in as DAP Admin – one of the new features in 4.3).

AFTER UPGRADING

Revisit ALL of your FREE products and set "Allow Free Signup? = Yes"

DAP 4.3 has a new field on the "General Settings" tab of the Products > Manage page, called "Allow Free Signup?". If you are using a free DAP signup form (also known as "Direct Signup Form" or "Free Signup Form" in DAP) to sign up people for free to a DAP Product, OR if you are doing Aweber-to-DAP integration (where you sign them up for free to Aweber first, and then have Aweber add them to DAP), then be sure to set this new field to "Yes" for all such FREE products.

You need to do this only for your free products. If you don’t do it, your free DAP signup forms will no longer work.

By default, after upgrading to v4.3, all of your DAP Products will be set to "Allow Free Signup? = No" – so there will be no impact to your existing paid products.

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to ask via the comments below.

Cheers!

- Veena Prashanth & Ravi Jayagopal
DAP Queen & DAP Daddy

PS: As always, please leave your comments & thoughts below

PPS: Have you checked out WickedCoolPlugins.com (WCP) yet? With this new release of DAP, you can now install and use DAPTicket, our support ticket plugin fully integrated with DAP. If you already have access to DAPTicket, then you can download it from the member’s area at WCP. If you don’t, then you can purchase DAPTicket separately.

LINKS

Click here to read the 4.3 beta announcement that lists all of the features added/improved

Click here for instructions about Upgrading DAP

Click here for instructions about Upgrading LiveLinks

EXPIRED USERS:

If you don’t see the latest files in the member’s area, that’s probably because your 1 year of free access to DAP Support & Upgrades has expired, and you may renew here. If you think you should have access to DAP v4.3.1 and LiveLinks v1.8.1, then please open a ticket and we’ll take care of it. Thanks!

We’re absolutely ecstatic to announce the release of DAP v4.3 and LiveLinks v1.8!

This release is jam packed with oh-so-many goodies: Tons of new features, UI and Usability improvements, enhancements to many of the little nagging items, and of course, a few bug fixes too.

And with this new release, you can now also install and use DAPTicket, our support ticket plugin fully integrated with DAP (details further below).

New WordPress Integration Features

• NEW: When you log in as WP admin, or browse any part of WP admin, you’re automatically logged in as DAP admin (DAP admin user with the least user id, in case you have more than one DAP admin user). No more having to log in separately to DAP. This is also configurable (default is YES). In case you do not want WP admins to be auto-logged in as DAP admin, then you can set this to NO under Setup > Config.
• NEW: When you log out of DAP by going to http://YourSite.com/dap/logout.php, you will now also be logged out of WordPress, whether you are WP Admin or regular WP user
• NEW: When you log out of WordPress, regardless of whether you are WP Admin or regular WP user, you will now also be logged out of DAP.
• NEW: Reverse sync from WP to DAP now available. So, if a regular user goes to the standard WP profile page, and updates first name, last name or email id, their corresponding DAP record will also be updated. This also disables regular users from even updating their password in the WP profile page. So, the only place they can update password is via the DAP profile.
• NEW: Shortcode [DAPUserLinks]: Allows you to heavily customize how the links are displayed when you use the merge tag %%USERLINKS%%…
  [DAPUserLinks showProductName="N" showAccessStartDate="Y" showAccessEndDate="Y" showDescription="Y" showLinks="Y" orderOfLinks="NEWESTFIRST" howManyLinks="10000" errMsgTemplate="SHORT" productId="ALL" dateFormat="YYYY-MM-DD"]
• NEW: "Coming Soon" Shortcode [DAPComingSoon]: Allows you to display links that are coming soon.
  [DAPComingSoon showProductName="Y" showAccessStartDate="Y" showAccessEndDate="Y" showDescription="Y" showLinks="Y" orderOfLinks="NEWESTFIRST" howManyLinks="10000" errMsgTemplate="SHORT" productId="ALL" makelinksclickable="N" dateFormat="YYYY-MM-DD"]
• NEW: Merge tags for WordPress: %%USER_ID%%, %%PASSWORD%%, %%SITE_NAME%%
• NEW: Shortcode Features:
      – "publicUntil": You can set a date UNTIL which a blog post is public (no protection or rules will be applied from any other shortcode parameters.
      [DAP publicUntil="2012-12-31" hasAccessTo="1"]This message will be completely public UNTIL (and including) December 31st, 2012[/DAP]
     
      – "publicAfter": You can set a date AFTER which a blog post will become public (no protection or rules will be applied from any other shortcode parameters.
      [DAP publicAfter="2012-01-01" hasAccessTo="1"]This message will be completely public AFTER (and including) January 1st, 2012[/DAP]
     
      – "hasNoAccessTo": A much requested feature. You can now specify a list of products that a user does NOT have access to, like this:
      [DAP hasAccessTo="2" hasNoAccessTo="1,3" ]This message will appear only to active (current) users of product 2 but don’t have access to 1 or 3[/DAP]
     
      – "startday" and "endday": Now you can specify "startday" and "endday" in the shortcodes to make the contents stop being shown after a certain end "day". Previously available "day" variable has been deprecated and replaced by "startday" instead. However, if you already are using it somewhere, it will continue to work as is. However, if you wish to use the "endday" variable, you must now also use "startday" instead of "day". Very useful for, say, displaying a message on the Welcome page only on the first day.
      [DAP hasAccessTo="2" startday="1" endday="1"]This message will appear to you only to users of Product 2, on Day 1 and no further[/DAP]
     
      – Negative Days: "startday" and "endday" can also be a negative number.
      For eg., [DAP hasAccessTo="2" startDay="-6" endDay="-3"]Howdy[/DAP]
      This basically means, the message "Howdy" will be shown starting 6 days before the "Access End Date" of the user’s access to the product with Id "2" (specified in hasAccessTo). So you can use this to display a special message – or specially priced offer (buy button) – for those whose access has not yet expired. Last day (same day of access end date) is day 0. Day before that is -1.
     
      – Error Message From File: You can now specify a file name whose contents are to be used as error message. Use the existing errMsgTemplate field, but add a "file:…" to the beginning, and make sure the file name is a fully qualified URL starting with http:// and your domain name. So you can say…
      [DAP hasAccessTo="2" startday="1" endday="1" errMsgTemplate="file:http://YourSite.com/customMessage.html"]This message will appear to you only today[/DAP]

New Affilate Features

• You can now show your affiliates more information about their referrals in their affiliate report. In Setup > Config, you can now configure the following info to be shown to the affiliate (only for their own referrals, of course):
  First Name, Last Initial (Default) (or)
  First Name, Last Name (or)
  First Name, Last Name, Email (or)
  First Name, Last Name, Email, Phone
• Ability to remove associated affiliates (including making user "UN-Affiliated" – meaning, no affiliates attached to the user any more)
• Ability Re-assign a new affiliate to a user
• Instant Affiliate Credit enabled even for Free signups. So new free members no longer have to log in for affiliate to get credit – it happens instantly upon signup.
• Both you and your affiliates can now view referral data for free sign-ups too. Just add a commission row for each free product with 0.00 commissions (if you don’t wish to pay a PER LEAD commission, but still want your affiliates to see the details of the referral). And then, when an affiliate refers someone to your web site and the visitor signs up for a free product, your affiliate can see the new sign up as a "Lead" in their affiliate report.

New DAP Admin/Usability Features

• NEW: All real-time emails to be sent using SMTP (if configured)
• NEW: Drag & Drop rearranging and re-ordering of links within same drip day, is now possible (on "ContentResponder" tab)
• NEW: Newly signed up "Free Signup" subscribers will now be instantly logged into the member’s area. But NO auto-login for double-optin enabled products – they must confirm first. And NO auto-login for those who are already a member, and are only signing up for a new free product.
• NEW: You can now have a limited-duration one-time product. Previously, all one-time signups were assigned "9999-12-31" as access end date. No longer necessary. You can set a limited duration – like 30 days, or 90 or 365 days as the duration of your one-time product. And if you set the "Membership Duration" to 9999, then as before, it will set access end date for user to "9999-12-31".
• NEW: New Config item: To allow "display" of protected links in the menu even if the user does NOT have access to it (regardless of Sneak-Peek)
• NEW: New Config item: Is Free Product?
• NEW: New Config item: Allow Free Sign-up?
• NEW: New Config Item: Global Sales Page URL (for when a user has access to more than one Product)
• NEW: New Config Item: Global Error Page URL (for when a user has access to more than one Product)
• NEW: New Config item: Allow Auto-login of WP admin as DAP admin?
• NEW: LiveLinks to use new global sales page url and global error page url
• NEW: No more having to worry about free users not having access to paid content. It is all controlled by whether or not someone has access to a product. If they have access to a product, free or paid, as long as access dates are OK, they will get access to the content assigned to the product.
• NEW: Ability to sort Products ordered by Product Name or Product Id – ascending or descending
• NEW: Affiliate referer links shortened in referral report for both Admin home page as well as Affiliate report page
• NEW: To improve performance, number of rows in affiliate referral report now restricted to just 2000 on Admin home page
• NEW: Login count field is now updated for each successful login attempt by user. Not yet exposed in DAP Admin area. Will be available in the next release.
• NEW: Logs were showing last 1000 rows. Instead, will now show all logs for the day
• NEW: On the "Content responder" tab, next to the heading "Protected Content", it now shows how many links are protected as part of the product. Eg. (# of protected links: 8)
• NEW: Product list now shows up as a drop-down at the top of the Product screen tabs, so that it’s always visible even when moving across tabs.
• NEW: On Products page, moving from one product to another will keep admin on same tab even across different products. So switching products (only when using drop-down) will NO LONGER make you jump back to the new product’s "General Settings" tab. You will remain on whatever tab you were on previously.
• NEW: ContentResponder tab’s contents can now be "popped out" and shown in large window, so you can even see long links without any part getting cut off from the display. And then you can pop the window back in once done.
• NEW: Now you can mass-delete all Autoresponder Emails from Product in one click
• NEW: New lines in /dap/inc/language/english.php
  //———- Added in v4.3 ———//
  define("USER_LINKS_COMINGSOON_TEXT","Coming Soon…");
  define("USER_LINKS_COMINGSOON_PREFIX_TEXT","[In XXX day(s)]");
  define("MSG_UNSUBSCRIBE","[In XXX day(s)]");
  define("MSG_MANDATORY","Sorry, all fields are mandatory. Please go ‘back’ and fill up the missing information.");
  define("MSG_INVALID_EMAIL","Sorry, the email address you entered is invalid. Please go ‘back’ and enter a valid email address.");
  define("MSG_INVALID_COUPON","Sorry, the coupon code you entered is invalid. Please go ‘back’ and enter a valid coupon code.");
  define("MSG_MISSING_COUPON","Sorry, coupon code is a required field. Please go ‘back’ and enter a valid coupon code.");
  define("MSG_PAYMENT_FAILED","Payment failed. Please contact the site admin. ");
  define("MSG_THANKYOU_SIGNUP","SUCCESS! Thank you for signing up. Please check your email for further details.");
  define("BUTTON_UPDATE","Update");
  define("SUCCESS_CREATION","SUCCESS! Your account has been successfully created! Please check your inbox for login information…");
  define("NO_AUTH","Sorry, you are either not logged in, or not authorized to perform this operation.");

List of Improved Features

• IMPROVED: Category protection error message.
  • If a category is protected as part of just 1 product, and someone doesn’t have access to it, then DAP will redirect to Product-Level Error Page URL. If that is blank, it will use Global Error Page URL.
  • If part of multiple products, goes directly to Global Error Page URL.
  • If DAP tries to use Global Error Page URL (however it got there), then if that field is also blank (or defaults to /dap/product-error.php), then it will use "In-Page Error Message with Padlock".
• IMPROVED: Logging in thru Login/Logout widget on any page is now considered a primary login.
• IMPROVED: When DAP Admin removes welcome/thankyou mesg, now shows a WARNING
• IMPROVED: When Product is saved, if there is no welcome mesg, now shows a WARNING
• IMPROVED: If Product is recurring, you can no longer set "recurring count" to null or 0 (in Products page)
• IMPROVED: Clicking on the link to a post that’s part of a product’s available content output from %%USERLINKS%% no longer opens that post in a new window
• IMPROVED: Product description may not be more than 127 characters. Cannot save product settings if it’s more.
• IMPROVED: Changed default templates for new installations: Forgot password subject and body, Locked email body
• IMPROVED: One-time products with access end date of "9999-12-31" will no longer be highlighted with a warning color.
• IMPROVED: Enter key works during login now
• IMPROVED: If recurring is Y and recurring cycle 1 is not set, then show ERROR

List of bug fixes

• FIXED: Password changing: Admin can no longer include special characters when changing password for user via DAP Admin
• FIXED: Link Titles can now have apostrophes and it won’t show backslashes.
• FIXED: New-line chars in Description breaking shoppingcart pages is fixed.
• FIXED: "Save as New" was sometimes incorrectly setting product status as "Inactive". It now correctly sets them as "Active".
• FIXED: Export of user data for individual products was not working on some servers. Fixed.
• FIXED: Space getting stripped in forgot password (issue on some servers only)
• FIXED: Space getting stripped on user signup form (issue on some servers only)
• FIXED: Space getting stripped in error message on access to DAP Admin (issue on some servers only)

WARNING: READ THIS BEFORE YOU UPGRADE

There a few critical things you need to remember to do BEFORE and IMMEDIATELY AFTER you upgrade.

BEFORE UPGRADING

This release is BETA – not for use on already LIVE web sites with ongoing sales

If you’re already running a live web site that’s generating sales, then you should probably skip this beta release, and wait for the final release.

However, if you’re just getting started with DAP, or if you are at least a week or so from launching, then we highly recommend that you upgrade to this version, as it has so many usability features and fixes to nagging issues from the past, that it will make things a LOT easier for you during setup and maintenance.

Make sure you are not mixing FREE and PAID users in the same DAP Product.

Starting with DAP v4.3, if a user has access to a product, they will get access to content within the product (as per drip dates and access expiry, of course). The only thing that changes is…. you no longer have to make sure that content is marked as FREE in order for FREE users to be able to access it, or worry about mistakenly adding a user as FREE to a paid product, and forgetting to mark them as PAID, and then they have an issue accessing the content. This is the biggest issue for most people starting with DAP, so we’ve finally decided to fix it the right way.

So the thumb rule here is…

If User has access to Product, it doesn’t matter if they’re a free or paid user, it doesn’t matter if your content is marked as free or marked as paid – they WILL get access to the content in the product (depending on their access start and end dates, drip days/dates, etc – no change to those things).

AFTER UPGRADING

Revisit ALL of your FREE products and set "Allow Free Signup?" = "Yes"

DAP 4.3 has a new field on the "General Settings" tab of the Products > Manage page, called "Allow Free Signup?". If you are using a free DAP signup form (also known as "Direct Signup Form" or "Free Signup Form" in DAP) to sign up people for free to a DAP Product, OR if you are doing Aweber-to-DAP integration (where you sign them up for free to Aweber first, and then have Aweber add them to DAP), then be sure to set this new field to "Yes" for all such FREE products.

You need to do this only for your free products. If you don’t do it, your free DAP signup forms will no longer work.

By default, after upgrading to v4.3, all of your DAP Products will be set to "Allow Free Signup?" = "No" – so there will be no impact to your existing paid products.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do ask them via the comments section below.

Cheers!

- Veena Prashanth & Ravi Jayagopal
DAP Queen & DAP Daddy

PS: As always, please leave your comments & thoughts below

PPS: Have you checked out WickedCoolPlugins.com (WCP) yet? With this new release of DAP, you can now install and use DAPTicket, our support ticket plugin fully integrated with DAP. If you already have access to DAPTicket, then you can download it from the member’s area at WCP. If you don’t, then you can purchase DAPTicket separately.

Resources:

Click here for instructions about Upgrading DAP

Click here for instructions about Upgrading LiveLinks

NOTE: If you don’t see the latest files in the member’s area, that’s probably because your 1 year of free access to DAP Support & Upgrades have expired, and you can renew here. If you think you should have access to DAP v4.3 and LiveLinks v1.8, then please open a ticket and we’ll take care of it. Thanks!

We’re super-thrilled to announce the public launch of our newest site, WickedCoolPlugins.com (WCP).

But don’t go there yet – because you certainly don’t want to miss out on this wicked-cool offer we’re about to make you.

Now, WickedCoolPlugins.com comes with 7 Wicked Cool Plugins.

We first did an internal beta, then a closed-beta with a few DAP users, then we did a soft launch, and finally, we’re now opening it up for a full-on public launch!

And for the next few days only, you will be able to get an insane deal on these 7 plugins.

We’ve priced these 7 plugins so low during this launch, that you can literally get 7 plugins for the price of 1. And you’re never going to be able to buy them for less than what we’re currently offering.

But Wait… There’s More!

You knew we would say that

The incredible bargain that you’re getting right now, is not even the coolest part!

We really wanted to make you an offer you couldn’t refuse!

So here’s our very exclusive, "You Gotta Be Kidding Me!" super-special launch bonus (available for the next few days only)…

The 8th Wond… er, Plugin!

Even though you will find 7 spanking new plugins at WickedCoolPlugins.com, we are actually about to add an 8th one!

And you can get this 8th Plugin as a FREE LAUNCH BONUS (a $97 value) if you act fast.

[If you already purchased a copy during pre-launch, then no worries - just open a ticket and we'll send you a copy too!]

DAPTicket

That’s what we’re calling this 8th plugin!

DAPTicket (DT) is basically a support ticket system for your web site, that you can install on your own DAP-powered membership site, and have your members open tickets to get help with questions about Billing, Product Support, Pre-Sales, Technical Support, etc.

Here are some highlights of DAPTicket:

• A "Members-Only Ticketing System" – so you can keep non-members and expired members out.
• Fully integrated with DAP
• Supports Single Sign-on. If they log in to DAP on your site, they are also automatically recognized by the ticketing system, and can open tickets without having to enter their name or email address.
• You can set up "Rules" that decide which DAP products are eligible for support (and hence, which ones are not)
• You can force members to log in to DAP on your site first, before they can open a support ticket. This eliminates the problem of members using a completely different email id (than used in their membership account) for the ticketing system, then you not being able to recognize who they are, and then having to ask them what their member email id is after they’ve opened the ticket. As you can imagine, we too face this problem with our current support system here at DigitalAccessPass.com, which was a big part of our motivation to create this new system.
• If a member’s access to a product has expired, or if they’ve gotten a refund, they will not be able to open a support ticket
• You can also configure a "Renewal Link" in the rules, so if a member’s access has expired, they will automatically be taken to the renewal page where you can sell them on the benefits of renewing.
• A fully automated, "Do It Yourself" support system for your members: They can open new tickets, update existing tickets, upload files along with the tickets, and view the status of all of their current and past support tickets via an easy-to-use support dashboard.
• As the site admin, you will get notified on all new tickets, updates to existing tickets, alerts about overdue tickets, etc.
• You can also create any number of "Departments" – like Billing, Product Support, Technical Support, Pre-Sales, etc

NOTE 1: DAPTicket is our custom fork of an open-source ticketing system, which we have customized and fully integrated it with DAP. Plus we’re offering 1 year of free support for our modified version – something that you can’t get for an open-source solution – not for free any way. And we have changed it quite a bit to work with DAP, so we will have to continue maintaining the fork going forward.

NOTE 2: We’re currently beta-testing DAPTicket on this very web site, so the plugin is not yet available for download. It will be available along with our upcoming DAP v4.3 release that comes out in just a few weeks.

NOTE 3: Plus, we’re only just getting started . Since we are already using the system ourselves, we’re going to know exactly what features to add, and which ones to improve. And, as user feedback comes in, it’s only going to get better and better with each new release.

And for a limited time, you can get this entire system for free!

What You Get With DAPTicket

Here’s what you get with the DAPTicket Plugin:

• The entire Support Ticket app (it is a stand-alone system – not a WordPress plugin)
• Includes scripts that contain the DAP integration
• The "DAPTicket Rules" scripts that go into your "dap" folder
• Free 1-year of support and upgrades
• You can easily install it yourself. However, if you would rather have us do it, then installation may be purchased for a nominal fee of $49.99.
• And for those who can afford it, we will soon be offering a  "Done For You" package for DAPTicket (more details on that when we release it)

Here are some screen-shots of DAPTicket…

DAPTicket: Support Home Page (click to enlarge)

Of course, you can use your own logo and footer links – you don’t have to use ours. That’s just to show you how we’ve customized it for ourselves.

DAPTicket: Open New Ticket (click to enlarge)

DAPTicket: View Ticket Status (click to enlarge)

NOTE: We’re currently beta-testing the DAPTicket plugin on our own web sites, and the plugin is not yet available for download. It will be available along with our upcoming DAP v4.3 release that comes out in just a few weeks.

And you will get it for FREE (when released) as long as you buy a copy of the WickedCoolPlugins.com Unlimited-site license before the end of the day on Monday, February 20th, 2012 (by midnight)

So head over to WickedCoolPlugins, purchase it at the lowest price you’ll ever get it for, and when you purchase the Unlimited-site license, then you will also get the DAPTicket plugin (a $97 value) for free in a few weeks when it is launched.

AND, once you sign up, you will get your own affiliate link that you can use right away to start promoting WCP to your list.

NOTE: To get the free "DAPTicket" Bonus plugin, you MUST purchase the Unlimited-site license of WickedCoolPlugins.com

And starting Tuesday, February 21st, the price will go up $10 every single day until it hits the regular list price of $167 for the 1-site license and $247 for Unlimited-site license. And when the DAPTicket software is launched, price for both 1-site license and Unlimited-site license will go up even more!

But you can get it all for one low price today, PLUS the DAPTicket Bonus.

Click here for WickedCoolPlugins.com

Cheers!

- Veena & Ravi
WickedCoolPlugins.com

PS: As always, we eagerly look forward to your comments. So please do leave behind a comment below.

PPS: DAPTicket is now $67 $97. Click here to buy just DAPTicket

Our wicked cool new web site is now live (only for some, though!)

We're proud and excited to announce the pre-launch of WickedCoolPlugins.com (WCP).

We're launching 7 wicked cool plugins (just like the name suggests) , and there's no way we could've done a big launch and still supported everyone the way we always like to.

And that's why we're doing a soft launch today.

Which means, we're not yet letting any of our own DAP users – or subscribers on any of our lists – know (not yet, at least).

And that's also why we're launching on a Friday, so that we will have time over the weekend to slow down and take care of all support requests and sort out any launch-related issues.

The only announcements about the WickedCoolPlugins.com launch are being made via this blog, and also to our 189 awesome DAP users who volunteered to beta test these very same plugins earlier last week (see the previous post on this blog).

If you were one of those who left a comment on the "Beta Testers Wanted" post, then you have just been sent an email with a coupon code that will give you an instant $20 discount towards your purchase of any of the plugins (including the entire plugin pack). So check your email inbox for this coupon. And please note that only a limited number of these coupons have been made available. So time is of the essence if you want to get the absolute lowest price you will ever pay for these plugins.

Plus, once you sign up, you will get your own affiliate link that you can use to promote WCP, even before we tell our own lists.

As always, we eagerly look forward to your comments. So please do leave behind a comment further below.

Cheers!

- Veena & Ravi
WickedCoolPlugins.com