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%%

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 servver, 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.

Your customers never get your email. Your campaign suffers. Your conversion plunges.

This won’t happen with Aweber.

Aweber (and other premier email service providers) have staff on hand, 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 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. 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 spam reputation

Of course, you can 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 Aweber only.

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.

So given a choice, here are your email options in the exact order listed.

1) DAP + Aweber: Match made in heaven

2) DAP + 3rd Party List Services: 2nd best option

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

Feel free to comment below if you have any questions.

There are two DAP cron jobs :

1. dap-emailorder.php
Only needed if you use 1SC or CB for payment processing. Not required if you use Paypal. It should be setup to run once every 10 minutes to process 1SC / CB sales notification email. Running it once every minute or even once every 5 minutes is resource intensive. It’s not recommended and your webhost may not allow it.

2. dap-cron.php
Needs to be setup to run once every hour to process any email broadcasts, autoresponders, bulk imports, affiliate commissions etc. Most webhosts have common settings that allows you to pick ‘hourly’ option from the drop down.

(0 for the minute, * for the hour, * for the day of the month, * for the month, * for the day of the week)

Note:

1. Yes, you can set up the dap-emailorder.php cron  even if you plan on using paypal now and will use CB / 1SC later but it’s unnecessary use of system resources.  DAP will try to connect to the mail server to find CB sales notification emails and will not find any. Our recommendation is to set it up only if you need it.

2. Email report :
Your webhost control panel allows you to set an email address where it can send the cron output. So login to your webhost control panel -> cron settings and add your email address where you want the cron report sent.  If you do not want to receive the cron report, you can just remove the email address and hit update.

3. To check cron status, you can also set DAP Admin -> Setup -> Config -> Log Level = 5 and then go to DAP admin -> System -> Logs and check the log content after 10 minutes or at the top of hour.

4. To force run a cron (manually), click on this link:

http://<yoursite.com>/dap/dap-cron.php

http://<yoursite.com>/dap/dap-emailorder.php

Replace <yoursite.com> with the name of your site.

Veena Prashanth

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

• PHP version 5+
• MySQL 4+
• PDO support (for PHP, enabled for MySQL)
• JSON support (for Ajax)

These are commonly available on most web hosts.

And we’ve seen that most web hosts enable these for your web site, at no additional cost, if you just asked them.

Check with your web host. If they can’t help, then here are a couple of recommended, DAP-Certified web hosts.

NOTE: This content is for advanced users only, who understand the concept of user tables, database, etc. If you don’t understand any of this, then just ignore this – you don’t really need to know this in order to use DAP. This is only an explanation for those who wish to go under the hood of DAP and its integration with WordPress.

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

DAP allows you to create an opt-in form to directly sign-up users to your Product (which also acts as a “list” if you only want to drip or broadcast emails).

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“>

Some Important Basics

Use two different browsers for testing. Not two different browser tabs, but 2 completely different browsers – like Chrome and FireFox, or FireFox and Internet Explorer. Log in as DAP admin using one browser, and then as a regular user in another browser. That way, you keep the access separate, and your testing will be clean and easy.

If you are using, say, Firefox, you are logged in to DAP admin, and are browsing your blog or trying to access content on your blog, then you will only have access to the content that the admin user has access to. You, as the DAP Admin, DO NOT have automatic access to every product by default. You will have to manually give yourself access to every product you create. And if you want yourself to have “PAID” access, then you have to mark yourself as “PAID”.

That is because, if DAP gave you automatic access to all products, then you will go ahead and protect a blog post, try to access that blog post, and DAP will give you access to that content because you as admin have automatic access to the product. And then you will wonder “Hey, I protected a blog post, but I’m still seeing it.

I have protected a blog post as part of a Product. But I can still access it.

Short Answer: If you have protected a post/page/file, try to access it, and are able to do it, then it means you DO have access to it. Now let’s troubleshoot so that you understand the “how” and the “why”.

• Have you added the blog post to a Product? If you don’t add it to a DAP Product, the post/page/file won’t be protected.
• Who are you logged in as? As DAP Admin? Or as a regular member?
• Now if you search for this user by email id or last name on the “Users > Manage” page, you will see that the user does have access to the product to which the post belongs

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).

I have protected a blog post as part of a Product. User has access to it, but still can’t access it.

Short Answer: If you have protected a post/page/file, try to access it, and are able to do it, then it means you DO NOT have access to it. Now let’s troubleshoot so that you understand the “how” and the “why”.

• Who are you logged in as? As DAP Admin? Or as a regular member?
• Whoever you are logged in as, make sure that user (admin user or regular user) has access to the product to which the post belongs
• Have you added the post as a “PAID” or as “FREE”?
• If you have marked the post as “PAID”, make sure the user also is a “PAID” user (either there must have been a real transaction, or you must have manually marked him as “PAID”). Because free users cannot access content that has been marked as “PAID”.
• Maybe the user’s access to the product has expired. Check the user’s “Access Start Date” and “Access End Date” for that product. The start date should be current (not be in the future) and the end date should be current (shouldn’t be in the past, which means his access to the product has expired)

I don’t want the links to all my protected blog posts showing up on my blog’s home page

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.

Why do I see the “Lock” symbol on my blog’s home page?

It’s possible that you have no published posts (it’s a new blog), or you have probably protected all of the posts by adding them all to a DAP Product.

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”.

The Basics

There is no such thing as a “Free Product” or a “Paid Product”. A DAP “Product” by itself has no classification (like “Free” or “Paid”).

But the “Content” that is part of this Product, can be either “Free” or “Paid”.

So while you can’t really set up a “Free Product”, but you can create a Product, add content to it, and then say that the content is available for “Free” (meaning, available only to “Registered” members who have registered for “Free”).

Now, let’s see the different ways in which you can use DAP.

Case 1: How to use DAP as an Email List

1. Create and save a Product (a DAP “Product” is same as “Membership Level” same as “Email List”)
2. Just add the Autoresponder email sequence to this product.
3. No need to add any content, because you’re not dripping content, but dripping just emails.
4. Click on the “Direct Signup HTML” link and copy the HTML
5. Publish the HTML on any page of your site, just like you would publish a signup form from Aweber or GetResponse.
6. The form collects “First Name” and “Email” from your visitor
7. Anyone who signs up through this form is given access to that Product, and added as a “Free” user
8. You can continue to drip autoresponder emails on them, and also send them email broadcasts.

Case 2: Free Signup. Then Promote Paid One-off Products

1. There are no time limits or trials here. User signs up for free. You continue to promote your products to them.
2. You will need to create 2 products here – 1 Free and 1 Paid
3. Create your paid Product – “Paid Product 1″ as a Non-Subscription product (Is Recurring = No)
4. Set up the content protection, dripping (if any) and emails.
5. Create a new free Product  – “Free Product” – (which contains just free content and autoresponder emails)
6. Use Direct-Signup to signup users for “Free Product”.
7. “Joe Customer” signs up for free through this form, and becomes a free member.
8. Keep dripping free content and emails on them. In the emails, you can promote the sales page(s) for your Paid Product(s).
9. When Joe Customer eventually buys “Paid Product 1″, then now Joe automatically get access to “Paid Product 1″.
10. When you search for Joe Customer’s email on the Users > Manage screen, you will see that Joe now has access to 2 products: “Free Product” and “Paid Product 1″

Case 3: Free Trial with Forced Continuity Forever

1. You offer a 30-day free trial. After trial, subscription payments every 30 days, forever, until they cancel their subscription.
2. Set up a Product in DAP as…
   Is Recurring: Yes
   Recurring Cycle 1: 30
   Recurring Cycle 2: 30
   Recurring Cycle 3: 30
3. You can’t really do a “free” trial. You must charge at least 1 penny ($0.01) [because otherwise, Paypal (for instance) doesn't send the right information in the IPN. And credit card processors won't even validate the credit card if you try to charge $0.00, so when it's time for the subscription to be charged after a month, you will see a lot of declines and rejected cards].
4. Set up your buy button (in Paypal, ClickBank, 1ShoppingCart, etc) to match the above subscription set up in DAP (from Step #2 above): A $0.01 trial for 30 days, then recurring payments of $X every 30 days, forever (never ends).
5. Make sure you use the same Product Name in both DAP and in your buy button.
6. Publish the button on your sales page. When someone clicks on the button and signs up (you’ve already set up the payment processor integration during setup), DAP will automatically give them access to this product for 30 days (Recurring cycle 1).
7. After 30 days, if subscription payment comes in as scheduled, then the user’s “Access End Date” is extended by another 30 days. So they will get access to all the dripped content from Day #31 to Day #60.
8. If user cancels before the trial is over (or their subscription payment fails for some reason), then their “Access End Date” stays the same, which means it automatically expires.

Case 4: Paid Monthly Recurring Product with No Free Trial

1. Create a Product in DAP as…
   Is Recurring: Yes
   Recurring Cycle 1: 30
   Recurring Cycle 2: 30
   Recurring Cycle 3: 30
2. Set up your buy button (in Paypal, ClickBank, 1ShoppingCart, etc) to match the above subscription set up in DAP (from Step #1 above): Instant payment of $X + Recurring payments of $Y every 30 days, with an forever (never ends).
3. Make sure you use the same Product Name in both DAP and in your buy button.
4. Publish the button on your sales page. When someone clicks on the button and signs up (you’ve already set up the payment processor integration during setup), DAP will automatically give them access to this product for 30 days (Recurring cycle 1).
5. After 30 days, if subscription payment comes in as scheduled, then the user’s “Access End Date” is extended by another 30 days. So they will get access to all the dripped content from Day #31 to Day #60.
6. If user cancels before the trial is over (or their subscription payment fails for some reason), then their “Access End Date” stays the same, which means it automatically expires.

Case 5: All Free Content, Available only to “Registered” Members, Dripped Content

1. You wish to make all of your content available for free, but users must “Register” first (i.e., sign-up using their email id) so that you can continue to send them emails and drip content so that they don’t get it all on day #1 and then un-subscribe from your list.
2. Create a Product, say, called “Marketing Tips”.
3. Set “Is Recurring” to “N”.
4. Add content to this product (blog posts, files, etc). Set up the drip for this content (day #1, day #7, etc)
5. Set up email autoresponders, if any, and add to this product.
6. Click on “Direct-Signup HTML” on the Product page, copy signup-form HTML, publish on any page of your web site.
7. “Joe Member” signs up for free through this form, and becomes a free member.
8. DAP will keep dripping free content and emails on members.

Case 6: All Free Content, Available only to “Registered” Members,All available Day 1

1. Almost everything is the same as Case 5 above.
2. Except when you set up the dripping, set all of your content to be available on Day #1.
3. So when user signs up through your squeeze page, they have access to all of the content right away.

When your visitor encounters a “Sorry, you’re unable to access this content” page that has the DAP Padlock image on it, you can customize the text that shows up below the padlock by doing this:

1) Open the file error.php that is stored in the /dap/inc/ folder.

2) RENAME it as (or COPY it as) customerror.php.

3) You can put ANY kind of HTML content within this. Images, javascript, css,, buttons, text, whatever. Any HTML can be used in this file.

4) Upload this new file customerror.php back to same folder /dap/inc/

5) error.php doesn’t matter any more. Whether you delete it, or just leave it alone, the fact that there is a customerror.php file in the same directory means that DAP won’t even bother about error.php any more.

6) Future updates of DAP will not touch your customerror.php file. So updates or upgrades will not mess with your custom error page copy.