User ID 111 has been created with email id ABC123@somewhere.com

Same user buys a different product using a completely new (Paypal) email id. and DAP creates User ID 999 with PayPal email XYZ789@anothersite.com

User now has 2 accounts and wants only ABC123@somewhere.com (user ID 111) to be active.

So here’s what you should do:

1. Place XYZ789@anothersite.com in the PayPal email field of User ID 111 and save.
2. Give User ID 111 access to all products that User ID 999 currently has active, with matching start and end dates.
3. Delete User ID 999 fully from the system.

If User ID 111 purchases additional products through Paypal, and her primary Paypal email id is still XYZ789@anothersite.com, then that Paypal email id will be recognized by DAP, and all purchased products will be activated under User ID 111 and no additional User IDs will be created.

However, if User ID 111 has changed their primary Paypal email id to be something else like XYZ123@yetanother.com, then the next time they make a purchase, DAP will not know it’s the same person, and will end up creating a completely new user id for the buyer. Which means, you will have to do the merge again, and replace the old Paypal email id in DAP with the new Paypal email id of the buyer.

Using a “cache” plugin for speeding up your site is like putting band-aid on a gaping wound. It’s only a temporary fix, and not a real long-term solution.

Plus a cache plugin has its place, but it’s certainly not for a membership site, where DAP will need to make calls to the database to figure out who’s viewing the content, are they a member, what products have they purchased, what content do they have access to, etc.

If you want to speed up your web site, you must address the core issue, which is — your web site is getting more traffic than your web server (web hosting account) can handle.

So here are a couple of ways in which you can speed up your web site:

• The easiest thing you can do is to revisit all of your plugins that you have enabled. Remember that every single plugin adds some overhead to (read “slows down”) your web site or blog. So use only as few plugins as you absolutely must. With so many cool plugins available freely for WordPress, it is very easy to get carried away, and install tens of plugins, most of them adding very little value, but sometimes causing the most overhead in terms of server resources. So keep only a bare minimum of other plugins (some social plugins are a real pain – making calls to third-party web sites to get their information from).
• If you are hosting on a shared (a.k.a “cheap”) web host paying just a few dollars a month for hosting, then your web site is basically competing for server resources (like memory and bandwidth and database access) with possibly tens (or even hundreds) of other web sites on that same server (many may not belong to you, but to others with whom you are sharing the server – and hence the name “shared hosting”).Search for the keywords “digg effect” or “slashdot effect” on Google, and you’ll see how many WordPress sites crash when a link to the site appears among the top results in popular social sites like Digg.com, Reddit.com or Slashdot.com.

  If your traffic levels have outgrown your server, then the best thing you can do is to upgrade to a bigger server, or get a Virtual Private Server, or even get a dedicated host, depending on your budget. See our recommended web hosts list.

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.

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.

Problem: When you go to http://YourSite.com/dap/ , you get redirected to a "Page Not Found – 404" error page.

Solution: This is happening because in DAP Config, you probably set up an invalid URL to be the default login page. So do this:

• First, log out of DAP by going to http://yoursite.com/dap/logout.php (manually type that in to your browser)
• Now log in to DAP via DAP's special login page – http://YourSite.com/dap/login.php
• Go to "Setup > Config > Advanced" screen
• Then where it says "Location of your login page (eg., if using WordPress). Should start with a forward slash (`/`)" – enter a valid URL there. Before entering any URL there, visit the URL separately in a separate browser tab (or window) and make sure you can actually get to it, and that it has a login form there. Then put that URL in to the above field, and click on "Update".
• Now in a separate browser (totally different browser) where you are not logged in to DAP or WP, try to go to http://YourSite.com/dap/ and see if it redirects to the right page. If not, revisit the steps above, and double check the login URL, that's all.

Starting with DAP v3.9, DAP now has support for ClickBank’s Instant Notification Services (INS).

This is very similar to Paypal’s Instant Payment Notification (IPN).

The ClickBank INS notification will be processed instantly in real time, and your members will receive their welcome email with their membership login info instantly after purchase.

For high-level ClickBank user-flow, see this post.

CB INS Setup

1. Login to your ClickBank account

2. Go to the “Account Settings” tab at the top

3. Click on “My Site” from the sub-menu at the top.

4. Under Advanced Tools, update the Instant Notification Service URL (accept the terms of service etc), and make sure the URL points to:

http://YourSite.com/dap/dap-clickbank.php

Replace YourSite.com above with your actual domain name.

5.  Screenshot below shows Version 1.0, but starting DAP v4.2, we have added support for CB INS 2.1.

So if you’re using DAP v4.2 or later, then select INS Version 2.0 and set the CB INS URL TO :

http://YourSite.com/dap/dap-clickbank-2.1.php

But if you’re using DAP v4.1 or earlier, then select Version 1.0

and set INS URL TO:

http://YourSite.com/dap/dap-clickbank.php

6. Whatever value you put in the Secret Key field in ClickBank (see image above), put the same value (must be ALL UPPERCASE) in to your DAP Admin Dashboard on your web site, at:

Setup > Config > Payment Processing > Secret Authorization Key used when interfacing with external systems

7. The Product Title in CB must match the Product Name in DAP.

8. The Thank You Page url in CB product settings page, should be set to point a static thank-you page you create in your WordPress blog – something like http://YourSite.com/thank-you/ .

And the page should state something to the effect of…

Thank you for your purchase. The download information for the product you just purchased has been sent to the email id you just use during the purchase.

Please check that email id in a few minutes, and you will see an email from us with your login information.

That’s it!

Testing

Make a test purchase.

If the integration was setup correctly, the user will be registered in DAP.  You will find the user account in the DAP Users > Manage screen and you will find the completed transaction / order details on the DAP Orders page.

If the test order is listed in DAP Orders page, then CB is correctly integrated with DAP.  Check the payment status in DAP Orders page. If it says Success, but no welcome/thank-you email got sent, then make sure you set the thank-you email for that product in DAP products page.

Troubleshooting

If no order is listed in DAP orders page for the test purchase, then CB is not integrated with DAP.

To troubleshoot, do the following:

1. Set DAP Setup > Config > Log Level to 5.
2. Empty log content under System -> Logs.
3. Run another test purchase.
4. Send us the log snippet from System -> Logs.

Progress Bar Never Stops

You’re seeing the green “Loading… Please Wait” progress bar continuosly running – it never stops and comes back with any data.

If this is a new setup, then it’s possible that your web host does not have a library called “JSON” enabled. Just ask them to enable it for your server. It’s rather simple to do, and we’ve never seen a host that won’t do this for their customers.

If it’s an old setup, and it was working previously, then your host made some changes that caused the library to stop working. So you still need their help in resolving the issue.

Error Message: “There was an error returning data’”.

One possibility is that your database or web site is temporarily down, slow, or plain not responding for some reason. So DAP cannot connect to your database, and comes back with this error.

Or it could also be the “Progress Bar Never Stops” issue from above.

1) “Logged-in URL” on Product page is not taking user to right page after log in.

The Logged-In URL field will work only if user has access to just that one product. If user has access to more than 1-product, DAP cannot decide which Product’s “Logged-In URL” to redirect the user to. So it simply uses the “Global” logged-in URL in “Setup > Config > URL to which User is redirected to, right after log in.

So if you’re testing the “Logged-In URL” field, make sure you create a test user with access to just that one product, and then log in as her and test.

2A) The Lock message says “Sorry, this content is for members only. Click here to get access” but the “Click here” just points to my home page.

OR

2B) “Sales Page URL” on error page not pointing to right URL

The Sales Page URL field of a Product will work only if a piece of content has been added to just that product. If the content has been added to more than one product, then DAP cannot decide which Product’s “Sales Page URL” to show on the “In-Page Error Message” shown to the viewer. So it simply points to the root of the domain. In a future version, this will be configurable, but for now, if you wish to have a custom Sales Page URL shown in the error message, then you can customize the error message HTML and then you’ll be able to enter whatever you want there. Or, instead of using an “In-Page” error page, you could simply redirect the viewer to a custom error page URL.

If you see the original dap/inc/error-notloggedin.php file, you’ll see a line in there that looks like this….

<a href=”%%SALES_PAGE_URL%%“>Click here to get access.</a>

So basically, if the page or post that the person is trying to visit, belongs to just one DAP Product, then the %%SALES_PAGE_URL%% in the above line will actually be replaced with the value of the “Sales Page URL” field from that DAP Product page. But if the same page/post is part of multiple DAP products, then DAP won’t know which Product’s “Sales Page URL” to use – so it will simply point the “Click here” link to the home page.

3) Clicking on a protected Category is not taking user to the correct “Error Page URL”

When you click on a category (instead of a single post), then because the category could contain many posts, each of which could be part of multiple Products. So DAP is unable to choose just 1 single Product from which to pick the “Error Page URL” and redirect the visitor to. So it just shows the error message with the padlock image, which can be customized. Click here for details.

3. The Lock, being generic, says “Sorry, this content is for members only.” but does not specify, as I (will) have several different types of members. It should say something like “Sorry, this content is for %%PRODUCT%% subscribers only.” Can this actually work? I am just guessing.

Response Time: 28 Minutes Wed 23 Mar 2011, 10:13am

» Reply by: Ravi Jayagopal

>>1. Creating a new user account, for someone who is already logged in under a different email address.<< Yeah, that is on our list. Not something that will happen any time soon. Hopefully, we can schedule it for the next release.>>2. Several Emails say various things similar to “New User Signup (3rd Party Notification)” instead of actually telling me what product they signed up for, or even the amount that was made.<< Every one of them should have the product name in the body of the email. If it doesn’t, then something’s not right. So if you find one without a product, then let paste the email here, and we’ll take a look.Other than that, it’s not meant to be a full payment notification email. It’s just meant to be an alert, that’s all. The full payment notification will come from your payment processor. It already does that to a certain extent. If you see the original error-notloggedin.php, you’ll see a line in there that says.. <a href=”%%SALES_PAGE_URL%%”>Click here to get access.</a> If the page or post belongs to just one Product, then the %%SALES_PAGE_URL%% in the above line will actually be replaced with the “Sales Page URL” field from that product. But if the same page/post is part of multiple products, then DAP won’t know which Product’s “Sales Page URL” to use – so it will just point to the home page.

Direct Integration with Shopping Carts and Payment Processors

DAP directly integrates with the following Payment Processors without the need for any additional third-party shopping carts:

• Authorize.net
• 2Checkout.com
• ClickBank
• Digiresults
• Google Checkout
• e-Junkie (e-J does not allow recurring payments)
• JVZoo
• Paypal Standard
• Paypal Website Payments Pro
• Plimus
• WorldPay
• WSO Pro (Warrior Plus)

DAP also integrates with the following Shopping Carts

• 1SiteAutomation.com (a 1shoppingcart private label)
• Premium Web Cart
• InfusionSoft
• WP eStore

Indirect Integration through 3rd Party Shopping Carts

Since DAP integrates with Shopping carts like 1SiteAutomation.com (our white label of 1Shoppingcart), e-Junkie, Premium Web Cart and Infusionsoft, that means that it also integrates (albeit indirectly) with all of the Payment processors and gateways that these carts support. So, or example, since DAP works with 1SiteAutomation, it essentially integrates with all payment providers supported by 1SiteAutomation, like:

2CheckOut.com (direct integration too)
Authorize.net (direct integration too)
Bank of America
BluePay
Concord EFSNet
Cybercash
DPI Merchant Services
e-Commerce Exchange
Echo Inc.
ECX QuickCommerce 3.0
Epoch Systems
eProcessing Network
EPS SecureNet
EWAY (Australia)
FastTransact
Firepay
Google Checkout (direct integration too)
GoRealTime/EPP
GoRealTime
iBill
IntelliPay ExpertLink
IONGate (Costco)
iTransact RediCharge
LinkPoint Secure
MCPS WebLink
MerchantPartners
Moneris
NETbilling
Network Merchants
Paradata
PayCom Processing
Paymentech (direct integration via Authorize.net)
PayPal (direct integration too)
PayPal Payflow Pro (via e-Junkie)
PayReady
Planet Payment
PRIGate
PSiGate
RightConnect
RTWare WebLink
Shift4
SkipJack
StrataPay
Surepay
TrialPay (via e-Junkie)
TrustCommerce
USAEpay
uSight
VeriPayment
VeriSign PayFlow Pro
ViaKlix (Nova Systems)
WorldPay (direct integration too)
YourPay

For the full list and more details, click here

1-Click Upsells

If you use DAP as a shopping cart, then you can do 1-Click Upsells/Downsells like the pros, without the need for any external shopping cart or upsell service provider.

DAP directly allows you to do 1-Click Upsells using Authorize.net, Paypal Website Payments Pro and Paypal Standard. Upsell-Tree plugin for Authorize.net and Paypal Website Payments Pro is included for free along with your purchase of DAP. However, the Upsell-Tree plugin for Paypal Standard is sold separately.

Of course, if you need advanced shopping cart features – like ability to calculate shipping, tax, and coupons, then you’re better off using 1SiteAutomation.com.

1ShoppingCart & GoDaddy

If you want automated recurring order processing using 1ShoppingCart (1SC) or 1SiteAutomation.com, then DAP needs to be able to process the recurring email notifications sent by 1ShoppingCart, which it does on the back-end when the DAP Cron Job runs every 10 minutes.

However, if you’re using Godaddy as your web host, then because GoDaddy disables a mandatory PHP library (“imap”) on all their servers for some reason, DAP is unable to process the recurring order email notifications from 1ShoppingCart.

This is not an issue if you are using GoDaddy as just your domain name registrar, and using some other service like Dreamhost or Hostmonster as your web host.

But if you’re using 1SC & GoDaddy hosting, you will have to end up doing manual cancellations if any member cancels their subscription, or if their credit card fails and their recurring payments don’t get processed.

Please note that 1ShoppingCart order processing works great with all other (non-GoDaddy) hosts.