Any time someone gets access to PRODUCT A (either through direct signup, manual admin add, or purchase), then you can automatically give them access to PRODUCT B. And you can select whether they get PAID access to PRODUCT B or not.

Similarly, when someone is removed from PRODUCT A, you can also tell DAP to automatically remove their access to PRODUCT B.

Very useful for bundling products.

Product Access Automation

User signs up as free user to PRODUCT A.

Later on, user buys PRODUCT B (which is, say, paid version of PRODUCT A).

If you set up Product Chaining, then you can automatically remove them from PRODUCT A when they purchase PRODUCT B. So when you send an email to all PRODUCT A users asking them to purchase access to PRODUCT B, then you won’t be sending emails to those who have already purchased PRODUCT B.

Click on image below to open full size in a new window.

This feature basically allows you to put all of the Product-specific details (including links available to the member as part of that Product) on a specific WordPress page.

Here’s how it works:

1. Go to DAP Dashboard > Products > Manage

2. Select the Product for which you wish to generate the Product-specific details page. Note down the Product Id (it’s a number as shown below)

3. Create a new WordPress Page – give it any title you want. Put in the text…

%%PRODUCT_DETAILS_<insert-product-id>%%

So in the above example, since the Product Id is “1″, the merge code becomes:

%%PRODUCT_DETAILS_1%%

Publish the page.

4. When you view the page, it will show the product’s details.

That’s pretty much it as far as creating the Product details page is concerned.

Where to use this

Starting DAP v3.8, you can now take the permalink for this above page and enter it into the “Logged-in URL” field of the Product. This field is basically for specifying a Product-specific URL for showing users right after they login. So that way, when someone purchases this product, and logs in to your membership site, instead of showing the default member details page, you could show them just a product-specific page.

Case 1: The video file is stored on your web site

By default, DAP can only protect files that are stored on the same web site where DAP is installed.

So if you install DAP on YourSite.com , then your files must also be located on YourSite.com. DAP installed on YourSite.com cannot protect files (.mp4, .mp3, .html, .pdf, .doc) that are stored on AnotherSite.com.

So assuming the files are stored on the same site as DAP, you can (and should) protect both the actual video file, as well as the blog post or page in which the embed-code for your video is published, by adding both to a Product.

This gives you 2 levels of protection for your videos:

Level 1: The blog post or page containing the video player code, itself is accessible only by authorized members.
Level 2: When an authorized user gets legitimate access to the page where the video is published (because they’re a paying member, say), even if they try to do a view source and figure out the location of the video (eg., http://yoursite.com/videos/howtovideo1.mp4) , and pass it around by email to their friends (or post the link in an online forum), their friends still can’t view the video, because the video link itself is protected by DAP.

If you have some text that you want the casual visitor (and Google) to read, but wish to protect only the video, then you could turn Sneak-Peek on (in Setup > Config > Advanced), insert a WordPress more tag (<!–more–>) into your post just where you want the content to start being protected, and put the video player’s embed code after the more tag.

Case 2: Video file is stored on Amazon S3

The only 3rd-party-stored video files that DAP can protect at this time are videos (and other files) that are stored on Amazon S3. DAP cannot do this by itself, but uses a special WordPress plugin called S3MediaVault.com , which is a plugin we developed specifically to make Amazon S3 videos play in your WordPress blog posts/pages. So again you get 2 levels of protection for your videos…

Level 1: DAP protects the post/page where the special S3MV video player code is embedded
Level 2: The S3MediaVault plugin makes sure that even if someone tried to do a view source and figure out the actual link to your Amazon S3 video, they still won’t be able to view the video.

WARNING: Video stored on other 3rd party video sites

DAP cannot protect, say, videos that are embedded from other 3rd party web sites like YouTube or Hulu. Of course, DAP can always protect the blog post or page itself that contains the video, but once an authorized user gets valid access to that blog page, they can see that it is a YouTube video (say), and then pass that YouTube video link to their friends, in which case DAP cannot protect that external YouTube video link.

As you probably already know, WordPress has its own user database.

DAP has its own User database, and doesn’t use the WordPress database – for many reasons, not limited to the following…

1) Ability to store more user information than what WordPress allows

2) More powerful user search, profile updates, affiliate information, etc.

So, if you want to use any WordPress based plugins – like WordPress Forums or Subscribe2Blog – these forums are looking at WordPress’ native user database.

Now comes the necessity of “syncing” the DAP user data and your WordPress user data.

In the DAP Dashboard, in “Setup > Config > Advanced“, you will see two settings for syncing DAP & WP user data.

(1) Sync DAP User data and WP User data

If you turn this to “Y” (for “Yes”), then every time someone logs into DAP, their DAP user data (just name and email) is automatically “synced” with WordPress user data. If you set this to “N”, then no data will be transferred from DAP to WordPress.

(2) Sync WP data only for PAID users

This one matters only if you have set (1) above to “Y”.

If you want only your “PAID” members to be synced with WordPress, then set this to “Y“.

If you want both “FREE” and “PAID” members synced with WordPress, then set this to “N“.

Here’s how it actually works:

1. For the sync to work, you must first setup and save the above 2 config settings
2. After you save the above two config settings, make sure you log out of DAP and re-log in (if you are/were logged in and testing as a regular user), because only then, the Config settings above will take effect.
3. Your user must log in through a DAP login form (not the WP login form).
4. Make sure the user is redirected to any part of your WordPress blog after log in. This can be done via “Logged In URL” setting in DAP Config.
5. The user can be redirected to any WP page, WP post or even your blog home page – that’s the only time the ’syncing’ kicks in.
6. When user lands on any page/post of your WP blog, then the DAP LiveLinks plugin (which you have already installed & enabled) kicks of the “sync”, copies the logged in member’s name and email over to the WordPress user table, and also automatically logs him into your WordPress blog.

That’s all there is to it.

Also see: Forum Integration

Use two different browsers for testing. Not two different browser tabs, but 2 completely different browsers – like Chrome and FireFox, or FireFox and Internet Explorer. Log in as DAP admin using one browser, and then as a regular user in another browser. That way, you keep the access separate, and your testing will be clean and easy.

If you are using, say, Firefox, you are logged in to DAP admin, and are browsing your blog or trying to access content on your blog, then you will only have access to the content that the admin user has access to. You, as the DAP Admin, DO NOT have automatic access to every product by default. You will have to manually give yourself access to every product you create. And if you want yourself to have “PAID” access, then you have to mark yourself as “PAID”.

That is because, if DAP gave you automatic access to all products, then you will go ahead and protect a blog post, try to access that blog post, and DAP will give you access to that content because you as admin have automatic access to the product. And then you will wonder “Hey, I protected a blog post, but I’m still seeing it.

I have protected a blog post as part of a Product. But I can still access it.

Short Answer: If you have protected a post/page/file, try to access it, and are able to do it, then it means you DO have access to it. Now let’s troubleshoot so that you understand the “how” and the “why”.

• Have you added the blog post to a Product? If you don’t add it to a DAP Product, the post/page/file won’t be protected.
• Who are you logged in as? As DAP Admin? Or as a regular member?
• Now if you search for this user by email id or last name on the “Users > Manage” page, you will see that the user does have access to the product to which the post belongs

Are you already logged in a a user who has access to that link? Maybe logged in as DAP Admin, and that is why you are able to access the link? If so, either log out of DAP, or visit your blog in a completely new browser (if you’re logged in as DAP Admin in FireFox, then visit your blog using Internet Explorer).

I have protected a blog post as part of a Product. User has access to it, but still can’t access it.

Short Answer: If you have protected a post/page/file, try to access it, and are able to do it, then it means you DO NOT have access to it. Now let’s troubleshoot so that you understand the “how” and the “why”.

• Who are you logged in as? As DAP Admin? Or as a regular member?
• Whoever you are logged in as, make sure that user (admin user or regular user) has access to the product to which the post belongs
• Have you added the post as a “PAID” or as “FREE”?
• If you have marked the post as “PAID”, make sure the user also is a “PAID” user (either there must have been a real transaction, or you must have manually marked him as “PAID”). Because free users cannot access content that has been marked as “PAID”.
• Maybe the user’s access to the product has expired. Check the user’s “Access Start Date” and “Access End Date” for that product. The start date should be current (not be in the future) and the end date should be current (shouldn’t be in the past, which means his access to the product has expired)

I don’t want the links to all my protected blog posts showing up on my blog’s home page

Make sure you have “Sneak-Peek” turned off in the DAP Admin Config section. Once you do that, posts that are protected will not be displayed on the home page as well as if someone tried to visit the link directly.

Why do I see the “Lock” symbol on my blog’s home page?

It’s possible that you have no published posts (it’s a new blog), or you have probably protected all of the posts by adding them all to a DAP Product.

1) Display Error Message: They can be presented with an error message that shows a “lock” image. You can show the standard DAP version, or you can customize this message and add your own text.

-OR-

2) Redirect to Error Page: They can be redirected to any other page of your choice (WordPress page or post, or a completely non-WP page)

1. Display Error Message

Displaying Default Error Message

The default error messages shown by DAP are as follows.

A) If a visitor is NOT logged in, then they will see…

(Image A)

B) If a visitor IS logged in, then they will see…

(Image B)

If you see Image A above, there is a line of text that says: “Click here to get access”.

And in Image B above, there is a line of text that says: “If you are a free member, then click here to purchase access”.

In both cases, the text “click here” is actually a link. And by default, that link will point to whatever you put in the “Sales Page URL” in your DAP Product (to which the above post/page is part of). See Image C below.

(Image C)

Displaying Custom Error Message

If you wish to customize the above standard error messages, then here’s what you need to do:

1. Go to /dap/inc/ folder. There are two files there:error-loggedin.php , and
   error-notloggedin.php
2. Make a copy of both files on your computer, and add the text ‘custom‘ to the front of each of the file names of the newly copied files. So the new files are now called: customerror-loggedin.php , and
   customerror-notloggedin.php
   
3. Open customerror-loggedin.php and customerror-notloggedin.php and modify them as you please, change the text, formatting, font size, color, etc.
4. Upload the new files to the same folder – /dap/inc/ – as the original error files.That’s it. DAP will then ignore the old error files, and start displaying your new “custom” error messages.

2. Redirect to Error Page

Instead of showing an error page (default or custom, from (1) above) you can also redirect the un-authorized user to a completely new page/post of your choice.

If you see Image D below, you will see that on the DAP Products page, there is a field called “Error Page URL“.

By default, this is pointing to /dap/product-error.php

(Image D)

Change this to any link you want. Examples…

http://YourSite.com/myerrorpage.html , or

http://YourSite.com/myerrorpage/

Whatever you put in the above field (Error Page URL) is what page the user will be redirected to, when they access a page that they don’t have access to (either because they have not logged in, or because they are logged in, but don’t have access to it yet).

What this essentially achieves, is that once your forum plugin has been integrated with DAP (explained below), anyone who is a member in your DAP-powered membership site, will also be automatically be logged in to your forum when they log in to your membership site.

So they won’t have to log in twice [like, once into DAP and once into your forum].

Here’s how you set up the DAP/forum integration.

1. Download the 3rd party wordpress forum plugin
2. Install it as per their instructions. We don’t support the installation or setup of the forum plugin itself.
3. Log in to your DAP Admin Dashboard and click on “Config > Advanced”.
4. You have two settings on the page that applies to forum integration:
   “Sync DAP User data and WP User data”
   “Sync WP data only for PAID users“.(Both are explained further below.)
5. Pick “Y” or “N” for each of them, and you’re all set.

First, a quick explanation of both settings.

1) Sync DAP User data and WP User data

If you turn this to “Y” (for “Yes”), then every time someone logs into DAP, they’re automatically logged into WordPress too (with a “User” role). And because they’re logged into WordPress, that means they’re also logged into your forum (because you are using a WordPress-based Forum Plugin which already integrates with your WordPress blog.)

2) Sync WP data only for PAID users

This one matters only if you have set (1) above to “Y”.

So once you have decided to turn on the DAP/Forum plugin integration, then if you want only your “PAID” members to have access to the forum, then set this to “Y”.

If you don’t care about both FREE and PAID users accessing your forum, then set this to “N”.

1) Open the file error.php that is stored in the /dap/inc/ folder.

2) RENAME it as (or COPY it as) customerror.php.

3) You can put ANY kind of HTML content within this. Images, javascript, css,, buttons, text, whatever. Any HTML can be used in this file.

4) Upload this new file customerror.php back to same folder /dap/inc/

5) error.php doesn’t matter any more. Whether you delete it, or just leave it alone, the fact that there is a customerror.php file in the same directory means that DAP won’t even bother about error.php any more.

6) Future updates of DAP will not touch your customerror.php file. So updates or upgrades will not mess with your custom error page copy.

And you could then unlock them yourself, or wait for the user to send you an email and ask to be unlocked.

Either way, here’s how to “Unlock” Users:

1. Search for the User by email on the “Users > Manage” screen
2. Click on the name. You are now in “Edit User” screen where you can see the user’s full details
3. Next to user’s name, you will now see a button called “Unlock User” (You will see this only if the status of the user is “Locked”, and won’t see it for other regular users).
4. Click on the “Unlock User” button. That’s it.

When you click the button, the user’s login records are deleted, and the previously recorded IP addresses are deleted.

So he basically starts with a new count.

If you want to configure how many different IP addresses a user is allowed to login from, do it on the “Config > Advanced” tab.

DAP employes a very unique “Pay As You Go” model.

It’s very similar to the “Pay As You Go” model used by cell phone companies.

You pay first, then new content (or “cell phone minutes” in the mobile world) gets released to you. You stop paying, you don’t get new content (minutes).

So let’s say a member (Joe Customer) joined your membership site this month, and this is January. So he’s on Month #1 in January.

When he first signs up (free or paid trial, or actual 1st month’s subscription), then his start and end dates in DAP on your site look like this:

Start date: Jan 1, 2009
End date: Jan 31, 2009

(Of course, DAP uses actual dates like “01/01/2009″, but “Jan 1, 2009″ is easier to read for most people, especially an international audience – so using the above date format just for the purposes of this post).

Then, let’s say, his February subscription payment comes in. Now DAP “extends” his access to your content by a month. So now the dates look like this:

Start date: Jan 1, 2009
End date: Feb 28, 2009

Now your member Joe has access to all content from Jan 1 to Feb 28 (meaning, about 60 days worth of “dripped content”).

Then end of February, he decides to cancel his membership for whatever reason (or his credit card gets declined or rejected while processing payment for Feb). So no payment comes in for March.

Now because no payment came in, DAP doesn’t really do anything about his access dates. So they continue to stay at:

Start date: Jan 1, 2009
End date: Feb 28, 2009

So any content that you have configured to be dripped on, say, Day #61 (which is Month #3), won’t be available to Joe, even though he continues to remain an “Active” member within DAP, and continues to get your autoresponder and br0adcast emails, and even continues to have access to your affiliate program and continues to earn commissions.

Actually, it gets even better – just because Joe’s end date expired, he basically now has NO access to ANY content on your web site (even Month #1’s content).

[Note: Just so you know, DAP does have a feature to enable "Access to Previously Paid-for Content". Keep reading for details.]

Now all Joe has lost is just the “access to the content”.

So let’s say you exchange emails with him, ask him why he wanted to cancel, and try to convince him to come back (or get him to use a new, valid credit card).

Now remember that Joe is still at the end of February’s content (Month #2). So whenever the next payment comes in (be it in March, April, or 1 year later), Joe now gets access only to the 3rd month’s content, and not, say, the 10th month content.

So even though it is now say, May, because Joe’s next payment came in just now, his access dates now look like this:

Start date: Jan 1, 2009
End date: March 31, 2009

So that’s how DAP takes care of your content and makes sure that when members cancel or their payment doesn’t come in for whatever reason, your content cannot be accessed by unauthorized users.

But let’s say you want to be really fair and look like a “generous, honest” guy to your members. In that case, you want to make sure that if someone cancels their subscription 6 months after being with you, you don’t want to ’screw’ them just because they stopped paying you. Who knows, they’ll probably come back if you keep showing to them what kind of content you’re building. Or they may buy your other products.

So now you want to make sure that they get access to the last 6 months worth of content, for which they have actually paid for.

There is a Configuration element in DAP where you can just turn this feature on, and members can instantly start access all “Previously Paid-for Content”.

So that’s how DAP puts a unique twist on cancellations.

Refunds

“Refunds” are a slightly different animal than “Cancellations”. While a subscription “Cancellation” means you only have to stop access going forward, a “Refund” means you have to actually roll-back existing access by a month (or whatever your recurring cycle 3 is).

So, doing a refund takes a few steps.

1. Go into your payment processor (like Paypal.com, Authorize.net, etc) and refund the money
2. Now log into the DAP Dashboard on your site
3. Go to the “Orders” page, search for all of the user’s transactions by her email id
4. Click on the “Id” link for the transaction that you wish to refund
5. On the next page, you will see a “Refund” button. Click on that.
6. That will mark that transaction as a refund, and also create a new transaction with a negative value (same as value of original transaction, except negative in value)
7. DAP then rolls-back access for the user by a month (or “Recurring Cycle #3″ from the Product page). So if member is still in month 1, then user will lose access to the product. If member is on month 3, then their access will be rolled back to month 2.
8. Go back to “Manage > Users” screen, search for user by email, and make sure access is either rolled back, or access has been completely removed for that member.