Starting DAP v4.2, each of your members can now get their own unique RSS feed link that they can use with a feed reader (like Google Reader, FeedBlitz, iTunes, etc) to get a custom RSS feed with content that they’re eligible to view.

To give each of your members their own unique RSS Feed URL, just insert the following line of code into the top of the “Member Links” or “My Content” type page, or wherever you want your users to see their personalized RSS feed link…

If your blog is in the root…

http://YourSite.com/feed/?key=%%ACTIVATION_KEY%%

If your blog is in a sub-folder (say “/blog”)…

http://YourSite.com/blog/feed/?key=%%ACTIVATION_KEY%%

The text %%ACTIVATION_KEY%% in the above URL will be replaced with their own custom key, like…

http://YourSite.comcom/feed/?key=123456789

They can then copy that link, enter that into any feed reader, and it will show content specific to their account.

Custom Feed Link Security

Another useful feature we’ve added, is that the custom feed link also does IP count validation. So if they share  the feed link with others, then after “X” unique IP login attempts (where “X” is configurable by you, the DAP Admin, in Setup > Config), their account will automatically get locked out.

This plugin replaces ALL files from both the “Paypal Payments Pro” Upsell-Tree plugin as well as the “Authorize.net” Upsell-Tree Plugin

Starting DAP v4.2, we have consolidated both the Authorize.net & Paypal Payments Pro Upsell-Tree Plugins into one simple set of files, and it has been named the DAP Shopping Cart, which will allow you to both accept one time and recurring payments, as well as do 1-Click Upsells.

This consolidated set of files is named DAPShoppingCart.zip , and is available for download from the members’ area at http://DigitalAccessPass.com/dap/ .

Upgrading from DAP v4.2

If you are upgrading to DAP v4.2 from a previous DAP version, and you’ve been using Authorize.net or Paypal Payments Pro to accept payments, then you must also upgrade to the new DAP Shopping Cart.

So all you need to is…

1) Download the DAPShoppingCart.zip file from the members area

2) Unzip it to your desktop

3) Upload all files inside directly to your main “dap” folder on your site. (do not upload the folder named DAPShoppingCart – upload only the files inside this folder)

Here’s how you test emails in the system before making them live.

Testing Autoresponder Emails

1. Create a test DAP Product called “Test Product”
2. Set up the email drip for this product
3. Give yourself (or a new test user, but with a real email id that belongs to you) access to this DAP Product on the Users > Manage page (for existing users) or Users > Add page for new users
4. Run the hourly-cron manually, by going to http://YourSite.com/dap/dap-cron.php . That should send out the day 1 drip for that test user.
5. Go to Users > Manage page, and back-date the Access Start Date for this test user for the test product, back by one day. So DAP now thinks he bought the product “Yesterday”.
6. Now run the cron manually again. This time, DAP will send out the day #2 drip for this user.
7. So every time, move the user’s access start date back by as many days as you want, to trigger that day’s autoresponder email. And each time run the cron manually.

Testing Broadcast Emails

1. Create a test DAP Product called “Test Product” (or if you have previously created one above, then use the same one)
2. Add 3-4 test users to this product
3. On the Emails > Broadcast page, schedule a broadcast email to be sent to “All Users of Product <<Test Product>>”
4. Run the hourly-cron manually, by going to http://YourSite.com/dap/dap-cron.php . That should send out the broadcast to that test product.
5. Log in to the email id’s of all the test users that you added to this product, and make sure the email arrived in the inbox.

As of 4.1, DAP does not yet have a unique member-level RSS feed link (coming in v4.2).

So once you protect a page or post in DAP, you can make it either completely disappear from your feed (for all users, members and non-members alike), or you can show partial text (by turning on sneak-peek), but in that case you must make sure you have a “more” tag entered into each of your posts.

So if your blog post is showing in its entirety, then….

1) You may not have protected the post in DAP at all, so it’s an unprotected post, which will (and should) show up in your feed

2) Or, you have turned on Sneak-Peek and haven’t inserted the WordPress “more” tag (<!–more–>) into each of your posts. If you turn on Sneak-peek, then you must insert more tags into all posts.

Also, if you have turned on Sneak-Peek, then you must also do this…

Go to “Settings > Reading” in WP admin, then set “For each article in a feed, show” to “Summary”.

If it is set to “Full text”, then it will show the full text in the feed, which is not what you want.

When you have hundreds of posts or pages protected as part of a DAP Product, the list of links on the DAP Member Home Page (that is the result of using the merge tag %%USERLINKS%%) can get quite long and unwieldy.

So you can choose to hide some of those links from being displayed on the member’s home page.

Here’s how you hide a link from being shown on the member’s home page…

1) Go to the DAP Product in question, scroll down to the ContentResponder section

2) Click on the edit link next to the content in question on the right. The “Edit Files” popup will then show up on the left.

3) Set “Display On User’s Home Page” to “N”.

That’s it.

The content is still part of that product, it is still being protected, but the link simply won’t be displayed on the member home page.

How It Works

Joe Member joins your site on 01/01/2011.

He stays a member for about 3 months. Let’s say it’s now mid March. He wants to take a couple of months break. So he goes on a 2 month break. Comes back end of May and wants to resume his membership.

DAP allows him to pick up right where he left off – which is continuing to receive content as of April (04/01/2011), even though today’s date is May 25th, 2011.

So while he took a break, other members who did not take a break in membership, continued to pay for those 2 months, and continued to receive content dripped through those months. So it is only fair that when he does come back end of May and resumes his subscription, he does not resume from June’s content, but from April’s content (when he last put his membership on “Pause”).

It’s ok if you’re not dripping content on a monthly-basis, but rather on a “day” basis. So to put it in terms of “days”, when Joe resumes his subscription, since he was already 90 days old in the system when he put his subscription “On Hold”, and comes back another 60 days later (roughly about 2 months), then DAP will start dripping Day #91 content onwards for him, and NOT Day #151 onwards (he didn’t pay for 2 months in between).

This is how DAP works right out of the box. Nothing special to configure. And DAP automatically takes care of pausing the dripping when he is not paying.

WARNING: Just remember that in order for you to put his actual payments on hold, you will need to have a payment gateway like Authorize.net or Paypal Website Payments Pro. Or you must be using a shopping cart like http://1SiteAutomation.com . Using something like Paypal Standard or ClickBank will not allow you to put the actual charging of his credit card on hold.

NOTE: If you actually did want him to start receiving current content even though he left for 2 months, then all you have to do is, once he comes back and starts paying again, just extend his access end date on his account (which will initially be showing 03/31/2011 – end of March, when he left) and modify it and make it 05/31/2011. So when his next payment comes in after he resumes, DAP will extend his access end date to 06/30/2011 – which means, he can now access all of the current content.

DAP currently does not work with any “Cache” related plugins, and the reason is quite simple, actually.

Cache plugins are built on the premise that they will “cache” (save and store the contents of) WordPress pages and posts – which usually don’t change for “non-membership” type regular blogs – in a easy to retrieve, static file, so that WordPress doesn’t have to go to the database to load the contents of the page or post each and every time, which will improve the performance and loading time of your WordPress blog in general.

But the fact that such plugins are actually designed to “skip” interactions with the database as much as possible, and will make a “static copy” of your page or post and serve the same static copy to all visitors regardless of who they are, completely goes against the concept of a membership site.

The idea behind using a membership plugin like DAP, it to make sure that different visitors see different content: For ex.,

1) Casual visitors (Non-Members) who have NOT yet signed up for your products, should see content differently than …

2) Members who may have purchased one of your products, but not the product that gives them access to a specific page or post, who should see content differently than…

3) Members who actually have purchased the right product and DO have access to the content, who should see content differently than…

4) Ex-Members who signed up for your subscription-based content in the past, but have since canceled or allowed their access to expire

So, DAP tries to figure out who the visitor is first, and then packages the very same content differently to each category of visitors.

And installing a “cache” plugin kind of makes the whole point of a membership plugin meaningless. Both plugins basically contradict each other in what they’re trying to do.

One (your cache plugin) is trying to speed things up by not going to the database every time, while the other wants to make sure all of the right settings are loaded from the database to make sure your content stays secure from un-authorized access.

So, while cache plugins may work for the average, non-membership, static blog where a single post or page is not really meant to be shown differently to different people, it’s not a good idea to use it on a membership-site.

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.

What Is “Login Xpress”?

“Login Xpress” is a DAP feature that enables your members to be logged right into your membership site immediately upon completion of their purchase.

This is roughly how it works:

• Visitor arrives at your web site
• On your sales page, they click on any “Buy” button to purchase a Product (or Membership Level)
• They’re taken to the checkout page (depending on Payment processor being used) and they enter their payment information and hit “Submit”
• When they hit “Submit” to complete their payment, their payment is processed right away, and the buyer is immediately transferred back to your web site, in real time, and automatically logged in to your membership site, and they are taken to the “Welcome” page or “Members” page (you may choose what this page is going to be at a per-Product level)

Payment Processors That Work With Login Xpress

DAP supports this feature with the following payment processors:

• Paypal Standard (DAP-generated buttons only – will not work with Paypal-hosted buy buttons that you generate from within your Paypal account)
• 1Shoppingcart / 1SiteAutomation.com
• Authorize.net

If you use any of the payment options above, then you can set up your sales funnel in such a way that buyers are logged in right away immediately after purchase.

Payment Processors That DO NOT Work With Login Xpress (Yet)

• Paypal Website Payments Pro
• ClickBank
• e-Junkie
• WorldPay

DAP integrates with the above processors via some kind of “back-end payment notification” – similar to Paypal’s “IPN” (Instant Payment Notification). Which means the notification between the payment processor and DAP on your site only happens on the “back-end”. Which is why DAP can only deliver the login details to the buyer via an email, and cannot log them in right away (like it can do with “Login Xpress”), because the buyer’s information is available to DAP only when the payment processor sends out the IPN notification behind-the-scenes, so to speak.

So if you’re using the above processors to accept online payments, then what you need to do, is to redirect your buyers to a static “Thank You” page that has a message similar to the one below…

“Thank you for your purchase. In a few minutes, please check your email address used during purchase for your log in details to log in to the members’ area and access the product you just purchased.”

And behind the scenes, DAP would’ve already received the payment notification from the payment processor, and it would’ve created an account for your buyer, given them access to the purchased product, and sent them the “Thank-you Email” for the product(s).