DAP currently integrates only with WordPress-based Forums – like bbPress, Simple:Press, etc.

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”.

DAP has a feature where if a user logs in from more IP addresses than you’ve configured (default: “5″), then his account automatically gets “Locked”, and both he and you (the admin) will get an email stating that the user’s account has been locked.

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 and refunds.

Now DAP already provides you with a built-in login form, at YourSite.com/dap/login.php

But if you want to put this form “within” your WordPress blog, so as to give your login form the same Look & Feel as the rest of your blog, all you need to do, is…

1) Create a WordPress “Page” (not ‘post’) with the text %%LOGIN_FORM%% in the body of the page, and a title of say, Login, and save the new page. If you used the text “Login” for the title, then the actual link to this page would be YourSite.com/blog/login

2) This page now shows up as “Login” along with the rest of your “pages” on your blog.

3) Go to DAP Admin > Config > Advanced (drop down). Scroll down to the field that says:

Location of your login page (eg., if using WordPress). Should start with a forward slash (`/`)

In the text box, enter the link to the login page from Step 1, minus the domain name. So, it would look like:

/blog/login

That’s it!

When someone clicks on the “Login” link, or tries to access a post that they are not authorized to, the user is redirected to the login page.

Related: Where is the Logout Link?

For Advanced Users Only

That means, if you read this post and don’t understand a word, then this is NOT for you.

For this to work, you must have already installed DAP WP LiveLinks.

Now, when someone comes to your wordpress blog, assuming you have already activated DAP LiveLinks, then none of the posts you have protected will even show up on the home page, or will show up if someone tries to visit them directly (say, from a bookmark or link in an email). Which means, as far as your visitor is concerned, those posts don’t even exist in your blog.

Now as powerful as this plugin is, from an SEO perspective, if your visitor (who is not a member, and one who is not logged in) can’t even see the post, then neither can Google. This means, if you do a blog-and-ping, when Google arrives at the permalink of your new post, because the post is protected, DAP will redirect Google to your login page. This means, you don’ get the benefit of SEO for your new post.

Also, from a “Curiosity” standpoint, if you protect all of the posts, then your visitor will only see a handful of non-protected blog posts.

So, giving them a “sneak-peek” of the post your home page as well as on the permalink, is a great way to get them excited about your content.

How to turn on Sneak-Peek

Go to DAP Admin > Config > WordPress Sneak-Peek

It is set to “N” (no) by default. Change this to “Y” and click on the “Update” button to save the change.

And then when they click on the “more” button to read the rest of the post, the full post is protected anyway, and they are presented with a login screen.

WARNING: VERY IMPORTANT IF YOU TURN ON SNEAK-PEEK

As soon as you turn on Sneak-Peek, DAP will show all content from your blog posts, but only up to the “More” tag. This means, if you don’t have a “More” tag in any of your content, then all of your blog posts will show to all users, regardless of whether they have access or not.

So, the most important thing here is this:

SNEAK-PEEK and MORE are INSEPARABLE.

If you do sneak-peek, you MUST include a “More” tag.

So when you create a WordPress blog post, split the post into two parts using the “More” tag. This creates a “public preview” portion of the actual post, that shows up on your blog’s home page and in the permalink when that post is displayed. To read the rest of the post, your visitor has to click on the “More” link, and that’s when depending on whether the user has access, the rest of the post will be displayed.

DAP Currently works with Paypal, ClickBank and 1Shoppingcart (and all private labels).

[For Paypal, DAP has a Paypal IPN Plugin]

Keep reading if you are processing payments through 1ShoppingCart or ClickBank.

For 1ShoppingCart and ClickBank, DAP does “Email Parsing” of orders.

So here’s how it works:

1. Go to DAP Admin control panel, go to “Config” screen and click on the the “Payment Integration” drop down. Basically all you are actually doing, is to tell DAP where your payment notification emails from ClickBank/1SC come in.

2. On this screen, put in your smtp server name (eg., mail.yoursite.com), billing email address (eg., billing@yoursite.com) and password.

3. Set up your sales page as you would normally do when accepting payment through ClickBank or 1ShoppingCart. The only thing you need to make sure is to use the exact same “Product Name’ in your cart as well as within DAP.

So, if you set up a product called “My Membership Site” within DAP, then use the same name “My Membership Site” in your 1SC cart  or CB product name.

4. During installation, a Cron job was already set up to run the “Payment Processing Job” to run every 10 minutes. So, every 10 minutes, DAP will automatically check the “billing email address” that you specified in your “Config” (step 2) and if there is a payment for a product name that matches the product name in DAP, then it will automatically add that customer to DAP as a member.

Try out some test purchases first. For instance, take an existing CB notification email, change name and email (to your own name and email id), and then send it out by email to your own billing email address (as if you are ClickBank, notifying the billing email of the purchase).

That’s it!

NOTE: If you ever change the name of your product in your shopping cart or on your web site, make sure to change the product name to the new one within DAP also.

The Configuration data of your DAP installation can be customized online.

1. Log in to DAP as admin at:
   http://YourSite.com/dap/
2. Click on the “Config” link in the nav bar at the top.
3. You will see a drop-down (showing “Basic” by default). You can modify option by option (“Basic”, “Payment Processing”, etc) or view them all together at one time (“All”).
4. WARNING: Save each modified config field individually. This means, every time you modify one row of config data, hit the “Save” button at the end of that row. You will not be able to change multiple rows and have all of them saved all at once. It has to be saved row by row*.
5. Modify fields like “Site Name”, “Admin Name”, “Admin Email” etc.

NOTE: The reason why we allow only one row to be “Saved” at a time, is to prevent you from messing up (by accident) config stuff that was already working. So, this way, you can mess up only one row at a time

See more details about the config screen below.

Config Screen Details

Config > Basic

1. Site Name:

This is where you put in the descriptive name for your web site. When sending emails, you may sometimes wish to use a “name” for your site rather than just a domain name. “Welcome to Digital Access Pass”, you can say.

2. Admin Name:

This is the “from name” used in outgoing emails.

3. Admin Email:

This is the “from email” used in outgoing emails.

4. DAP Log Level:

“1” is the highest, “5” is the lowest.

When set to “5”, it logs all kinds of verbose details to the logs, to help during installation and troubleshooting. When set to “1”, it logs only major errors and issues.

So during installation and setup, set this field to “5”. Once everything is up and running and you are ready to launch your site, turn this up to “1”.

Config > Payment Processing

The first 7 fields on this page are required ONLY if you are going to be using a) 1ShoppingCart.com (incl. private labels) or b) ClickBank.

The 7 fields are:

1. “Should DAP process Customer Emails even when the Product names don`t match?”

2. “Email Server Where Order Emails Come In”

3. “Email Server Protocol (ssl/nossl)”

4. “Email Server Protocol (pop3/imap)”

5. “Email Server Port”

6. “Email Server User Name”

7. “Email Server Password”

If you are going to be using 1ShoppingCart.com or ClickBank, then read the explanation for the fields below. But Iif you are going to be using Paypal, then you can skip reading the explanation for these 7 fields.

So here is the documentation for the Payment Processing tab, which includes the 7 fields.

The way DAP integrates with 1ShoppingCart (1SC) and ClickBank (CB) is via Email. Whenever someone makes a purchase through 1SC or CB, they send you – the site owner – what is called a “Payment Notification Email”. This email lets you know that someone just purchased one of your products, and contains the buyer information like name, email address, mailing address, etc.

We call this – the email id at which you receive these payment notification emails – as the “Billing Email”. So all you need to do to set up integration between DAP and 1SC/CB, is to tell DAP what this billing email id is, and how to access it, so that DAP can log in to this email, look at all the payment notification emails, pick out the ones you want it to process, automatically create an account for your member on your membership site, and send them an email notifying them how to log in to their account on your membership site and access the product that they just purchased from you.

1. “Should DAP process Customer Emails even when the Product names don`t match?”

Now, you may have multiple web sites with multiple products, and you may be receiving payment notifications for many web sites at one single “Billing Email”. But you don’t want to add them all to your membership site, right? You just want to add those who purchase a specific product, to your membership site. So this field is where you tell DAP whether it should add ALL buyers to your membership site, or just those who purchased a specific product. By default, this is set to “N”, which means, DAP will ONLY process emails where the Product name you created in DAP exactly matches the Product name in the billing email. If you still don’t understand this, watch the videos, and just leave this at the default “N” for now until you understand more.

2. “Email Server Where Order Emails Come In”

This usually looks like “mail.yoursite.com”. You can find this info in your web host control panel, on the “Emails” tab, where you would normally create new email id’s for your web site.

3. “Email Server Protocol (ssl/nossl)”: Leave this at the default, which is “nossl”.

4. “Email Server Protocol (pop3/imap)”: Leave this at the default, “imap”.

5. “Email Server Port”: Leave this at the default, “143”.

6. “Email Server User Name”:

This is the actual billing email id. Ex: billing@yoursite.com or whatever email id it is where you get the Payment Notification Emails from 1SC/CB.

7. “Email Server Password”:

This is the password to check that email id.

The following fields apply to everyone, not just to users of 1SC/CB.

8. “How long does user have from date of purchase to get a refund? (in days)”

“60” is recommended and is the default. But you can change this to any number you want.

9. “Enter the symbol of the currency in which you are accepting payments”

Default is “$”. If you are going to be using any other currency, then enter the symbol here.

10. “This is for Paypal Mass Pay – if you picked “$” as your currency symbol, enter “USD” here”

If you are going to be paying your affiliates in US dollars, and picked the “$” in field #9 above, then enter USD here.

Config > Advanced

1. “Should Affiliate Section be displayed on User `Home` Page? (If using ClickBank, set this to `N`)”

If you are in a mom-and-pop, or non Internet Marketing Niche, where you don’t want to confuse users by displaying the affiliate section on the default user home page, then set this to “N”. All users will be signed up as affiliates by default – they just won’t see their affiliate link and affiliate stats on their user home page.

2. “Max. # of User Logins From Different IP`s”

This is a security feature. This is where you restrict the number of different IP’s that a user can log in to their account on your membership site. This is to prevent password sharing, so if you see the email id being used to log in from more IP’s than the above limit, then DAP will automatically lock their account, and send them and you an email notifying you both that the account has been locked. You can then either wait for them to contact you by email to get their account unlocked, or if you trust/know the user, you can unlock the account yourself on the “Edit User” screen. Once you unlock the user, both you and the user will get an email notifying you both that the account has been unlocked.

You can customize the content of the lock and unlock notification emails on the Templates page.

3. “Allow access to previously-paid-for content even after subscriber cancels?”

Set to “N” by default. If you want people who have cancelled their account, or unsubscribed from your membership site to have access to content that they had access previously, then set this to “Y”.

NOTE: If you set this to “Y”, then remember this: Say you are offering a free 1 month trial. And you are giving them access to a few videos or blog posts, then even if they cancel their free trial, then they will continue to have access to the 1^st month’s content. If you had set this to “N”, then at the end of the 1^st month, if they cancel their trial, then they won’t be able to access 1^st month’s content. That’s the difference.

4. “Force 3rd-Party Form (eg., Aweber integration) fill-up during Account Activation”

This is for advanced users only, if you are planning to use Aweber, and want every new member who signs up for a membership in DAP, to also be automatically added to your Aweber account. This requires some advanced set up, which is explained at http://www.digitalaccesspass.com/doc/aweber-integration/ . This is not something you should be looking to set up when you’re first trying to set up DAP. This is a power-user feature, and you should get back to this towards the end of your membership setup, rather than at the beginning.

5. “Self-Service: Allow members to use credits and choose products a-la-carte.”

This is for those who have purchased the “Self-Service Store” (SSS) plugin only. If you don’t have this, then skip ahead to the next one.

If you have purchased SSS, then set this to “Y” to enable your Self-Service Store where users can cash in their credits and buy the products they want for this month, rather than you (as the site owner) deciding what content they get this month.

6. “Self-Service: How to order the products displayed in your Self-Service Store?”

Again, this is for those who have purchased the “Self-Service Store” (SSS) plugin only. If you don’t have this, then skip ahead to the next one.

This setting allows you to control how the products in your SSS are displayed – Most popular first, Ascending order by name, etc.

7. “Location of your login page (eg., if using WordPress). Should start with a forward slash (`/`)”

By default, your membership site login page is: http://YourSite.com/dap/login.php

Instead of sending them to this page, you can put the login form on a “WordPress Page” within your own blog, so that the look and feel is always the same, and your member never has to leave the familiar look and feel of your blog just to login.

So if you put the login form on a WP page (not post) called “Login”, then your full link to your login page would be: http://YourSite.com/blog/login/

So to change the login page from the default page, and point it to your custom login page, just remove the domain name section from the above WP login page link, and paste the remaining text in this field. So you would enter…

/blog/login

…in this field.

8. “URL to which User is redirected to, right after log in. Default: /dap/index.php”

After your member logs in, by default, they’re redirected to http://YourSite.com/dap/index.php

You can change this to whatever URL you want (just leave out the domain name from the link).

9. “WordPress Sneak Peek: Show snippets of post (upto the `More` break) even for protected posts?”

With this turned off (set to “N” by default), when someone visits your blog, they will ONLY see posts that they are “eligible” to view. This applies to your blog’s main page as well as individual posts. For instance, if you have 100 posts, and have protected 95 of them, then on your blog’s home page, your casual visitor will see only 5 blog posts in TOTAL. They won’t even see the titles or bodies of the protected posts until they become a member.

If set to “Y” (Show snippets even of protected blog posts), then your users will see content from each blog post of even protected posts, but only up to the “More” button. Clicking on the “More” link would then ask them to login first before they can access the remainder of the content.

So when Google’s spider (or your visitor) arrives at your blog after you publish a new post, it/they will see a summary of the post, instead of being redirected to a login page. This is extremely powerful from an SEO perspective.

10. “Use Double Opt-in? If “Y”, then user has to click link to activate a/c. “N” means single-optin.”

By default, “Double Optin” is set to “Y”. It means, when your member first joins your membership site (she doesn’t have an account so far), then only the very first time when an account is being created using her email address, then an “Activation Email” (customize on Templates page) with an activation link is sent to your member. They have to click on the activation link to set their account status to “Active”. This process also records their IP address, in case you need them for as “Anti Spam” proof.

But if you set this to “N”, then whenever their account is first created, their account is directly activated by DAP, and no activation link is required to be clicked, and no activation email is sent to your member.

- Ravi Jayagopal