A) Protecting Files Within WordPress

The fastest way to protect files is to upload them to your wordpress blog when you are writing a new post. All such files will be stored in a folder called “wp-content/uploads/….”.

Alternatively, you could also upload files directly using FTP, to the “wp-content/uploads/” folder and DAP is configured right off-the-shelf to protect any file inside the “wp-content/uploads/” folder.

B) Protecting Regular Web Site Files Outside of WordPress

1. Go to the following directory within the “dap” folder on your desktop:

dap > client > website

2. Open the .htaccess file in this folder.

3. In your web site’s root folder (where you have your home page – index.php or index.html)…

i) if you already have an existing .htaccess file., then open it and COPY the text from Step 2 above and PASTE it at the very end of this file.

ii) If there is no .htaccess in your root folder, then simply copy the file from Step 2 to your web site’s root folder.

That’s it.

TESTING:
Now add the link to your non-wordpress file to DAP from the DAP Admin Control Panel.

Then, open a different browser (not different window – a totally different browser – like, if you’re logged in as DAP admin in FireFox, open IE)  and try to access your file directly and see if DAP redirects you to the login screen.

If not, take a deep breath – it’s NOT DAP

It’s just that you missed something (or screwed something up .

Revisit the steps above, and if you still can’t figure it out, you might want to think about uploading the file to wordpress (see Section A above) .

But if you’d rather get this working, then just open a support ticket, and we’re standing by to help you

That’s it!

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.

Q: I just made a test purchase. But DAP did not process the payment (or) did not add me as a member (or) is not creating a new member.

Make sure that the product name within DAP and the product name in your “buy” button (i.e., your shopping cart) are EXACTLY the same. Don’t just look at the two and say, “oh yeah, they’re the same”.We recommend “copying” the product name that you set up in DAP, and then “pasting” it when creating your “buy” button. If you are using Paypal, then this is the “Item Name” when you are creating your Paypal “buy” button. If you are using 1ShoppingCart, then this is the “Product Name” when creating a new product.

(Paypal users, skip ahead)

1ShoppingCart/ClickBank:

1) Make sure you have set up the “Email Order Processing” correctly.

2) Is your Cron Job dap-emailorder.php set up and running correctly?

3) Make sure you have not “removed” the 1Shoppingcart or ClickBank payment notification email from your server. Log in to your email server, and make sure that the email is still there, and also it needs to be “Unread”. If your email client (like Outlook or Thunderbird, or Gmail) already accessed it and marked it as read, then simply mark it unread, and the next time DAP runs (which should be in 10 minutes) it will pick up the email and process it.

Paypal Users:

1. If you are using Paypal IPN, then make sure you have enabled IPN within your Paypal account.

2. Make sure you put the correct IPN “notify_url” text in your button.

3. Make sure the Paypal button you set up is a “Buy Now” or “Subscribe” button. It SHOULD NOT be a “Add to Cart” button.

- Ravi Jayagopal

How do I protect a blog post?

1. Log in to DAP Dashboard and go to the “Products/Lists” page.
2. Select the product to which you want this blog post to be a part of
3. Scroll down to the “ContentResponder” section
4. On the left, you will see a list of blog posts & pages that have been published
5. Select one or more (hold Ctrl + Click to select multiple)
6. Click on “Add Selected Posts/Pages” to protect the posts/pages.
7. It will now show up on the right-hand side of the box.
8. Click on “Edit” next to the link to configure dripping.

How do I protect a file?

Use the “File Browser” on the “Products/Lists” page to browse through a folder on your web site, and next to each file, you will see an “Add” link. Clicking on that link will add that file to the product.

I have protected a blog post. But I can still view it without logging in.

1. 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).

2. After you set up DAP, did you visit the “Permalinks” section and click on the “Save” button at least once (even if you didn’t make any changes to your permalinks structure)?

3. Have you added the blog post to a Product? If you don’t add it to a DAP Product, the post or file won’t be protected.

Can I protect an entire category of posts at one go?

Yes, absolutely!

See Protecting An Entire WordPress Category.

Why do I see all of the protected posts on my blog’s home page? (OR) I don’t want the links to all my blog posts showing up on my blog

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.

What are the minimum web-hosting requirements to run DAP?

See “Minimum web-hosting requirements”

What web hosts to you recommend?

See “DAP-Certified Web Hosts”

I’m getting an error during installation

See this post for more details about errors .

How can I avail of Free Installation?

See “Free Installation”

How do I setup Cron?

Click here for details