Problem: You see emails sent to your DAP Admin email account that look like this:

paypalCoupon.php: missing item_name

-or-

paypalCoupon.php: No such Product found – SomeProductNameHere

This could be happening because….

a) Some robot software somewhere is auto-posting to that URL.

b) It’s possible that a search engine spider or spambot is hopping from link to link, submitting the form repeatedly from the backend, and because the form is being submitted in an illegal/invalid fashion, DAP is complaining about a missing coupon code.

So for now, if everything else is working ok, and the annoying email is the the only issue, then you can just ignore those emails. Or better yet, simply put a filter on that email subject and have it directly sent to the trash folder in your email client.

If you or your members are noticing strange characters in emails – especially where there should normally be a single or double quote, then these are due to what are known as “Smart Quotes”.

These special characters always show up when you copy text from a WordPress blog (some themes use these characters) or a Microsoft Word document.

Single quote:

'(correct)

`(incorrect)

Double quote:

" (correct)

`` (incorrect)

The single quote that works correctly is located next to the “Enter” key.

The incorrect one is located next to the “1″ number key.

So copy your email text to a text editor, like notepad. Then change all single quotes to be ‘ and all double-quotes to be “ in your emails. Then put them back into DAP, and then test.

The “strange characters” issue should then be resolved.

NOTE: In a future version, we will implement an enhancement in DAP so that DAP can handle this automatically, but for now, the above solution is your only option.

The Problem

• Your autoresponder or broadcast emails are not going out (hourly cron job dap-cron.php)
• Your Affiliates aren’t being credited with sales (hourly cron job dap-cron.php)
• Your 1SiteAutomation/1ShoppingCart Orders are not being processed. (10-minute cron job dap-emailorder.php)

The Solution

One possible solution is that your cron job(s) aren’t running correctly.

DAP has two cron jobs. One that runs once an hour (dap-cron.php), and one that runs every 10 minutes (dap-emailorder.php).

You can see how to set them up here.

But in this post, we will see how to make sure your cron is actually set up correctly, or if it’s running correctly.

How To Know If Cron Is Running

1. Go to System > Logs and click on “Empty Logs”. That will fully clear out all logs.
2. Go to Setup > Config > Basic and set “DAP Log Level” to “5″ and update row.
3. Wait for the top of the hour for the hourly cron job to run. So if the time when you’re doing this, is say 11:20 AM, then wait for 12:00 Noon. If time is 3:45 PM, then wait for 4:00 PM.
4. A few minutes past the top of the hour and go back to the System > Logs screen.
5. If you see hundreds of lines of text in the logs, then that means your cron job is running correctly. If you only see maybe 10-20 lines of text, then your cron job is NOT running correctly, and you need to make sure the cron job is actually set up correctly.

The Basics Of Sending Email Through Your Web Site

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.

Welcome Emails Not Going Out

See this post: Troubleshooting Welcome-Email Delivery

Autoresponder Emails Not Going Out

If yours is a new site setup, then this is usually because the hourly cron-job has not been setup.

However, if the emails were going out fine previously, and suddenly stopped going out, then it usually is because…

• Something changed on your host that caused the cron to stop working.
• There is an error in the job queue, because of which DAP is unable to proceed with the remaining non-error emails. This could have happened if you tried to send out a broadcast to a CSV list, and there was an error in one of the emails from the CSV list.
• You’re trying to use a third party “SMTP” server to send out the emails, and your server is unable to connect to that server because the authentication settings you’ve configured on “Email > SMTP” are incorrect.

Steps to troubleshoot

1. Make sure that the hourly cron (dap-cron.php) is still running – you need to look at your web hosting control panel for that.
2. Go to “System > Job Queue” and scroll through any items there, and see if there are any scheduled messages there with the status “Error”. If yes, then click on the “Delete Jobs In Error” link. That will delete any jobs that can’t be processed because of an error in the email id or in the import process. Also be sure to click on “Delete Successful Jobs (till yesterday)” just to clear up old, sent emails.
3. Also go to “System > Logs” and empty the logs.
4. Go to “System > Config” and set “DAP Log Level” to “5″. That will start logging all the details you/we may need for troubleshooting.
5. Wait for the top of the next hour and then re-visit the queue and see if emails are going out.
6. If they still aren’t going out, go back to “System > Logs”, copy paste all text there, and open a new ticket with that info, of course, also giving us more details about the problem, what you have tried, etc, along with your login info for: FTP, WP Admin, DAP Admin, and Web Host Control Panel.

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 (AuthSMTP.com or SMTP.com) (less expensive than Aweber, slightly less reliable too)

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

You could always use DAP and external SMTP service provider like AuthSMTP.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.

You wish to do what we call a “silent” import. Basically, you don’t want DAP to send out the instant “thanky-you” email to the users being imported.

You may want to do this, say, if you wanted to import a bunch of users into DAP first, without DAP sending them any kind of emails at all, do some preliminary testing, make sure their settings, product access, etc, are all correct, before notifying them of any changes.

Here’s how to do a “Silent Import” with DAP

1. Remove the “ThankYou-Email Subject” and “ThankYou-Email Body” from the Product into which you wish to import users. Save it in a text file for later, and save the Product.

2. Go ahead and do the bulk-add of users from “Users > Add > Bulk-Add Multiple Users To A Product”.

3. Wait for the DAP Hourly Cron to run and finish importing all users. Since the “ThankYou-Email Subject” and “ThankYou-Email Body” of the Product is empty at the time of import, DAP won’t send out those emails.

4. Once all the users have been imported, put back the “ThankYou-Email Subject” and “ThankYou-Email Body” text content, and save the Product.

OPTIONAL

5. At a later point, if you want, you can send out an Autoresponder email – or even better, a Broadcast email – with the merge codes for the email and password, if you want the newly imported users to get their passwords, or if you wish to notify them of anything at all (like the new system you’re using, their new account info, a general “what has changed recently” type of email, etc).

Here are the merge-tags that you can use in outgoing autoresponder and broadcast emails sent through DAP. (Click here for merge tags you can use in your WordPress blog posts/pages)

%%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_ID%%

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.

(Or… “DAP vs MailChimp”, “DAP vs. GetResponse”, …. “DAP vs 3rd-Party-List-Service”)

We often get asked why use Aweber (or other third-party list service) when DAP itself is an autoresponder. So here’s a brief overview of when and why it makes sense to use DAP or Aweber.

Why Aweber

DAP is not an email service like Aweber.

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

If your inexpensive shared web host is hosting a large number of sites on one server, and one of them 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 could get sent to junk/spam folder by Gmail and Yahoo. Or worse, they just totally disappear into the ether. Some customers won’t get your emails. This won’t happen with Aweber (for the most part).

Aweber (and other premier email service providers) have staff on hand just for this purpose. Their core business is about email deliverability. They spend a lot of time, money and resources dealing with regular ISP’s (like AOL and SBC) to make sure their lists – and their reputation – remain clean. Which is also probably why they shut down large lists without much of a warning to you, and do other similar crazy stuff.

I guess it works for them – and the other Aweber users, because when you send out an email through your Aweber list, it almost always gets there in your recipient’s inbox. Which is very cool. And which is why they also charge so much for their service.

But if you can’t afford their high fees, then you can of course use DAP’s built-in email autoresponder, whose deliverability is only as good as your host’s deliverability.

Of course, you could use DAP and external SMTP service provider like Fusemail.com or AuthSMTP.com (which we use ourselves) to send out bulk mail through DAP while totally bypassing your web host’s email system.

And if you can’t afford even that, then simply use DAP on a decent web host. We ourselves use just DAP and AuthSMTP.com to send out emails to all of our users. 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 (most web hosts limit you to 300 outgoing emails/hour). We also use multiple SMTP servers from our own other lesser-used web sites, all combined to be able to send thousands of emails an hour.

When it comes to features, here’s what DAP does *not* have that more expensive services like Aweber and GetResponse provide.

Advantage: DAP

• It’s FREE! You don’t pay anything to send out thousands of emails and have a list with tens of thousands of members. The Autoresponder & Broadcast features are built right into the core DAP software.
• Unlimited Autoresponders
• Unlimited emails for free (no limit on how large your list can grow – so practically free, since you’ve already paid for DAP)
• Add same email to multiple Autoresponders (DAP special)
• Email throttling included, so as to not exceed your web host’s hourly email sending limits
• Ability to merge member data – like password – into emails (DAP only – you can’t do this if you use a 3rd party list service)

Advantage: Aweber and the others

• Costs several hundred dollars a year (see Aweber.com – it could cost you about $794 a year – based on an annual fee of $194/year + another $600/year for maintaining a list size of just 5,000 subscribers)
• Ability to track open rates and click-through rates (coming in a future version in DAP)
• Ability to automatically send out your newly published blog posts as a broadcast (coming in a future version in DAP)
• DAP has no “Pretty Form” generators like Aweber & Getresponse (coming in a future version)

So given a choice, here’s what we recommend, in the order listed below:

1) DAP + 3rd Party List Service like AuthSMTP.com: Best option that we use ourselves

2) DAP + Aweber: If you already have an Aweber account, then this is a great option, especially if you want advanced email analytics that DAP itself doesn’t offer (yet).

3) DAP + Your Web Host: Very usable and workable option as long as you are hosting with a decent web host.

Feel free to comment below if you have any questions.