But if you want your Aweber list to be single-opt-in, then you can use the Aweber webform (instead of DAP sign-up form) and follow the steps below to integrate DAP with Aweber.

1. Go to DAP admin panel -> manage products page.

2. Note down the product Id of the product to which you want to signup the users.

3. There is a file called dap-aweber.php in your /dap folder. Make a copy of that file and call it dap-aweber-<productId>.php. Replace <productId> with the product Id you noted in step 2.
If the productId = 2, then you will end up with a file called dap-aweber-2.php.

4. Open this file (dap-aweber-2.php), and change this line:
$default_product_id = 1; //Change this to any product id from DAP

So, in this example, change it to:
$default_product_id = 2; //Change this to any product id from DAP

Upload this file back to /dap folder on your site.

3. Now login to AWeber, select your single-opt-in list in AWeber -> Webform -> click on ‘Go to Step 2′ towards the bottom of the page.

http://screencast.com/t/ZTE0MDhhYTY

Click on the thankyou page dropdown and select ‘custom page’.
Set the thank you Page URL to http://<yoursite.com>/dap/dap-aweber-<productId>.php
Replace <yoursite.com> with the name of your site. Replace <productId> with the product Id you noted in step 2.

4. Use the Aweber web form for signing up customers (instead of dap direct signup form).

That’s it.

Everytime a users signs up via the aweber web form to your site, they will automatically be added to DAP.

You can configure the welcome/thankyou message in DAP to send out the dap login id and password
OR
You can leave the welcome/thankyou message in DAP empty. Configure DAP to generate a default password (DAP Admin -> Setup -> config -> Advanced) as shown in the screencast below and set up an autoresponder in Aweber so when the users signup via the Aweber form, they can receive their dap id/password details via Aweber directly.

http://screencast.com/t/MjY0NGI3

If you wish to customize the look & feel or text of the form, then rename the file…

wp-content/plugins/DAP-WP-LiveLinks/DAP-WP-LoginForm.html

To…

wp-content/plugins/DAP-WP-LiveLinks/customDAP-WP-LoginForm.html

Basically you are adding the text “custom” to the beginning of the file name, that’s it.

And this new file will also reside in the same directory.

Once you have this new file in the directory, DAP will ignore the old, default file, and will only use your new custom version.

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.

DAP is not an email service (like, say, Aweber).

DAP is just a script – a tool, like Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird – that simply sends out email using your web host’s email server.

It is your web host’s mail server that actually sends out the email to the recipient. So once DAP sends out the email, it has no control over what happens next.

It’s just like when you put your (regular mail) letter in the mailbox (post box). It is then up to the Postal Service to actually pick up your letter, and deliver to the destination address.

So if the emails that DAP sends out don’t get delivered to your recipients, there could be more than one reason for that.

Server Blacklisting

If your inexpensive (read as cheap shared web host is hosting a large number of sites on one server, and one of them knowingly sends out spam (or mistakenly gets flagged for spam), that will put the email deliverability of every web site on that server in jeopardy, because your site now shares the same IP address as that of an “alleged” spammer.

So your emails get sent to junk/spam folder by Gmail and Yahoo. Or worse, they just totally disappear into the ether.

Hourly Email-Sending Limits

Almost all shared hosts have hourly email sending limits. For example, DreamHost has an outgoing limit of 300 emails per hour. Which means, a total of only 300 emails can be sent out per hour through any web site hosted on DreamHost. All of the following count towards the 300 limit:

• Emails sent by any scripts on your site – like DAP
• Your WordPress blog notification emails
• Your WordPress admin emails,
• WP forgot password emails,
• WP comment notification emails,
• Forum notification emails,
• Forum emails sent to each other by your users,
• Forum-software Admin notification emails,
• Support software user and admin notification emails
• Tell-a-friend emails
• Viral-inviter type emails
• Emails sent through Outlook or Thunderbird where you have set the outgoing SMTP server to be your web site’s SMTP server
• Emails sent by others using the same SMTP server to send out emails-  like your business partners, employees, etc
• DAP User welcome emails, Payment notification emails, Forgot password emails, Autoresponder emails, Broadcast emails, etc

So do you see how quickly you can go over that hourly limit of 300 emails per hour?

But here comes the worst part

Once you go over that limit, any emails that are actually sent by you or the scripts running on your site, will not actually result in any kind of error. The mail server will respond by saying that the email(s) has been sent successfully, but in reality, on the backend, it quietly “snuffs out” the email. Which means, it doesn’t go anywhere – just gets sent to a “blackhole”. So you keep thinking that you sent out the email. DAP keeps thinking it has sent out the email. But in reality, the emails never actually get sent.

This is the same as you actually putting your letter into the mailbox at the Post Office. But then, imagine this: The postal worker who comes to pick up your mail, quietly goes to the back of the post office and dumps it all into one giant trash can, and destroys all of the mail. So you’re thinking you actually mailed out that important check to pay your utility bill. But the utility company never gets your check, and they slam you with a late fee.

Possible Solutions

1) DAP + Aweber (most expensive, most reliable)

2) DAP + 3rd party SMTP service provider (Fusemail.com or SMTP.com) (less expensive than Aweber, slightly less reliable too)

3) DAP + Good web host (cheapest, can have mixed results – all depends on your host).

You could always use DAP and external SMTP service provider like Fusemail.com or SMTP.com to send out bulk mail through DAP while totally bypassing your web host’s email system. This is probably the next best thing to using a service like Aweber.

And if you can’t afford even that, then simply use DAP on a good web host. We ourselves use just DAP and Dreamhost’s email servers to send out emails to all of our users.

And DAP also has built-in job queues to schedule outgoing emails while also making sure that you don’t exceed your web host’s hourly email sending limits (dreamhost’s limit is 300 emails/hour, I think). We use multiple SMTP servers from our own other web sites, all combined to be able to send a few thousand emails per hour.

But even with a lot of planning, it is easy to go over the hourly limit.

So the next time you see in your Job Queue that emails were sent out successfully, but the recipient never received it, here are some things to check:

1) It landed in your recipient’s junk/spam folder. Ask them to whitelist or add your email address to their contacts list.

2) You have overshot the limit, so you would have to actually send out the email again.

3) Try to send out broadcasts during a low-traffic time – say like later in the night – when you’re not actively sending out emails, and using up precious email counts from that hourly quota.

And then you want your actual blog content (where all of your posts show in reverse order), on a different page – like “Members” or “Lessons” or “Blog”.

Here’s how  you do it.

1. Create Static WordPress “Page”

Create a WordPress “page” that will become your blog’s new “static” home page. Let’s give it the title, “Home”. Publish your content within this WP page, and it could even have a sign-up form, or your “Buy” button(s). Publish it.

2. Create “Placeholder” WordPress page for your blog posts

Next, you create a new page which will not have any content, but will serve as a “placeholder” for all of your blog posts to be displayed in reverse chronological order, just like it would show up on any regular blog. In the example below, the page title is “Chapters”. You could call it “Lessons”, “Blog”, “Blog Posts”, “Member Blog”, etc.

3. Change WordPress Settings

In your WP Admin dashboard, go to “Settings > Reading”

a) Change “Front page displays” to “A static page“, as shown below.

b) In the drop down below…

For “Front Page“, pick the page you created in Step 1 above (your static “Home” page).

For “Posts Page“, pick the page you created in Step 2 above (your “Chapters” page).

That’s it.

To see a working example of a “static” home page in wordpress, which can be used as your Sales page or as a Squeeze page, see http://NBLEB.com/blog/

Oh, and none of this has anything to do with DAP, by the way. This is all WordPress.

%%FIRST_NAME%%

This will be replaced by the first-name of the user.

%%LAST_NAME%%

This will be replaced by the first-name of the user.

%%EMAIL%%

This will be replaced by the email id of the user.

%%PASSWORD%%

This will be replaced by the password of the user.

%%SITE_NAME%%

This will be replaced by whatever text you have entered in “Setup > Config > Basic > Site Name” in your DAP Dashboard.

%%ADMIN_NAME%%

This will be replaced by whatever text you have entered in “Setup > Config > Basic > Admin Name” in your DAP Dashboard.

%%ADMIN_EMAIL%%

This will be replaced by whatever text you have entered in “Setup > Config > Basic > Admin Email” in your DAP Dashboard.

%%AFF_LINK%%

This will be replaced by the actual affiliate link of the member (Eg., http://yoursite.com/dap/a/?a=1234)

%%SITE_URL_DAP%%

Replaced by your actual web site url (Eg., http://yoursite.com)

%%UNSUB_LINK%%

This is replaced by a 1-click Unsubscribe link that you can add to the bottom of your outgoing broadcast and autoresponder emails.

There is a file in the following folder…

/wp-content/plugins/DAP-WP-LiveLinks/

by name…

DAP-WP-LoginForm-LoginLogout.html

Make a copy of that file on your desktop, rename it to…

customDAP-WP-LoginForm-LoginLogout.html

(just added the text “custom” at the front of the original file’s name).

You can then modify this new file however you want, including altering spacing, and that’s what will be displayed.

Just be careful what you change – do not modify the field names or the submit URL. Feel free to change other visual elements.

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

This is very similar to creating a sign-up form at Aweber or 1ShoppingCart, and allowing people to directly sign up by entering just their First Name & Email Id.

How To Generate Direct Signup Form HTML

1) Create a Product or select an existing Product

2) Click on the link below the product list that says “Direct Signup Form HTML”

3) That will bring up a little pop-up that will have the HTML for the signup form.

4) The form looks something like this:

<form name=”dap_direct_signup” method=”post” action=”http://www.YourSite.com/dap/signup_submit.php”>
<table>
<tr><td>First Name: </td>   <td><input type=”text” name=”first_name” size=”10″></td></tr>
<tr><td>Email:</td>    <td><input type=”text” name=”email” size=”10″></td></tr>
<tr>    <td colspan=”2″><input type=”submit” name=”Submit” value=”Sign Up”></td></tr>
</table>
<input type=”hidden” name=”productId” value=”1″>
<input type=”hidden” name=”redirect” value=”/dap/login.php?msg=Success!%20Your%20membership%20account%20has%20been%20created.%20%20Check%20your%20email%20address%20in%20a%20few%20minutes%20for%20your%20password“>
</form>

Paste the above form into any HTML page, or WordPress Page or Post where you want the direct sign-up form to appear.

The form already has all the code required to add the user to your member database, with “Free” access to the Product (for which you generated the HTML code)

That’s it!

Frequently Asked Questions

Can this form be published on any site? Or can it be published only on the site where DAP is installed?

This form can be published on any web site – can be completely different from the site where DAP is installed. Please note that the above form submits to the url “http://www.YourSite.com/dap/signup_submit.php” – so doesn’t matter which site this form is published on, the user is always added to the site where DAP is installed, which is http://www.YourSite.com.

What happens after user signup?

If you note the text in bold in the above form (reproduced below)…

<input type=”hidden” name=”redirect” value=”/dap/login.php?msg=Success!%20Your%20membership%20account%20has%20been%20created.%20%20Check%20your%20email%20address%20in%20a%20few%20minutes%20for%20your%20password“>

… you’ll see that the default form redirects to the page /dap/login.php (which is the default dap login page) and on that page, displays on the message “Success! Your membership account has been created. Check your email addresss in a few minutes for your password”.

After Sign up is complete, how to redirect to a link of my choice?

In the form, you can modify the hidden field named “redirect” to any URL of your choice. Here are some examples:

<input type=”hidden” name=”redirect” value=”http://www.SomeOtherNonDAPSite.com/thankyou.html“>

OR

<input type=”hidden” name=”redirect” value=”http://www.YourSite.com/2010/12/31/thank-you“>

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).