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.

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

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

You could 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 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.

There are a few different reasons why this may not be working.

1. Cron Not Running

The DAP email-processing cron that processes the 1SC emails is not running. Check your webhost control panel -> Cron job settings. Make sure dap-emailorder.php is setup to run once every 10 minutes.

2. No Notification Emails from 1SC

The DAP cron is running but 1SC payment notification emails are not reaching your mail server. Check the email account where you expect to receive your 1SC payment notification emails and see if the order notification email from 1SC is in that mail box.

3. Incorrect Mail Server Settings

The cron is running and the 1SC order notification email is reaching your mail server – but you did not configure the mail server settings correctly in DAP Dashboard -> Setup -> Config -> Payment Processing.

Email Server Where Order Emails Come In
Email Server User Name
Email Server Password

4.”Read” Or Deleted Emails

DAP only processes order notification emails that are in the “Unread” status, to prevent previously processed emails and other non-DAP emails from being repeatedly processed.

Also, if you “pop” off the emails from that mail box (means, your email client like Outlook or Thunderbird or Gmail is “removing” your emails from the server when it retrieves them), it means that when DAP logs in to that billing email address, there are no emails there to be processed – the mailbox is empty, or the 1SC payment notification emails have somehow gotten deleted from that mailbox.

So it is possible that DAP is able to connect to your email server, but DAP is not finding any “unread” emails. Please login to your email server and mark all the payment emails that you want DAP to process… as “unread”. And also make sure that your email client does not remove the emails from that mail box.

5.Product Name Mismatch

There might be a “Product Name” mismatch. The product name has to be EXACTLY the same (including case, spaces, etc) in both DAP as well as in 1ShoppingCart. So if you have created a product by name “Widget A”, make sure your 1shoppingcart product also has the exact same name “Widget A”.

If everything is setup correctly, DAP cron will run every 10 minutes and try to process all 1SC emails.

The next time the DAP cron will run (every 10 minutes), it will pick up all the unread payment emails from 1SC.

6. Empty “Thankyou-Email Body/Subject”

Welcome email is not getting sent.

Select the product, and make sure there is some text in the “Thankyou-Email Subject” and “Thankyou-Email Body”. Whatever is in these fields is what gets sent immediately after someone purchases that product (or right after you give them access from the backend).

Now go to DAP Dashboard -> Users -> Add .

Select the product and manually add user. Now see if the thankyou email gets sent to that email id. If it got sent, then your product setup is correct.

Also check the DAP Dashboard -> Orders . Search for all orders, look up the order for the particular user in question by email.

Check the payment status and make sure there is no error there.

If you did all this and things are still not working, please do this:

1. Set DAP Dashboard > Setup Config -> Basic > Log Level = 5
2. Re-run the 1SC test purchase
3. Check the DAP Logs (DAP Dashboard > System > Logs) and send us the log text in there for troubleshooting by pasting it into a new support ticket.

7. Sending Email & Password To Buyer

Make sure you have set the thank-you message with the right merge tags for Email and Password.

8. Manually Running Cron

First set DAP Dashboard > Settings > Config > Log Level = 5

If you feel that the orders were not processed in dap, then just login to the 1SC email account where the sales/payment notification emails are sitting, and mark those orders/emails as UNREAD that you want dap to process.

Then manually run the cron script dap-emailorder.php cron by visiting the following link in the browser.

http://www.yoursite.com/dap/dap-emailorder.php

Replace yoursite.com with the name of your site.

It will just display an empty screen when complete.

Then check “Users > Manage” to see if user has been created.

- Veena Prashanth

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.

If you are seeing an error that looks like this when you try to activate LiveLinks…

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare dap_filter_posts() (previously declared in /home/birdtric/public_html/wp-content/plugins/DAP-WP-LiveLinks/DAP-WP-LiveLinks.php:11) in /home/birdtric/public_html/wp-content/plugins/DAP-WP-LiveLinks/DAP-WP-LiveLinks.php on line 11

Solution A) This could be because you have incorrectly named the DAP or Livelinks folders.

Remember, the dap folder must always be named dap (all lower case – and not, say, dap_v3.0). And the livelinks folder must be named DAP-WP-LiveLinks .

Solution B) It is possible that your web site does not meet the minimum requirements to run DAP .

If you open a ticket and give us your FTP info and your WordPress Admin login info, we can confirm this to you right away.

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If you are seeing an error that looks like this when you try to activate LiveLinks…

Oops! Could not create the config file (dap-config.php). Please make the ‘dap’ folder writable by doing CHMOD 755 (and if that doesn’t work, then try CHMOD 777.)
Installation failed. Please de-activate LiveLinks and re-activate it when you’ve fixed the issue. (106)

* CHMOD just the dap directory to 777.
* Then de-activate and activate the LiveLinks plugin.
* This time around, it should be able create the dap-config.php file within the dap directory. You should see the successful installation message.
* CHMOD just the dap directory back to 755.

If that doesn’t work, then open a ticket with the FTP info and WP admin info.

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(2) Session Error

If you see an error that looks like this…

Fatal error: Dap_Session::isLoggedIn() [dap-session.isloggedin]: The script tried to execute a method or access a property of an incomplete object. Please ensure that the class definition “Dap_Session” of the object you are trying to operate on was loaded _before_ unserialize() gets called or provide a __autoload() function to load the class definition in /home/site/public_html/dap/inc/classes/Dap_Session.class.php on line 41

This is basically caused by someone else’s 3rd-party WordPress plugin that is wiping out the “session” data (or user data stored in memory) which DAP relies on to store the user information. So there are two things you can try…

1. See if you have a plugin by name “WordPress Automattic Upgrade” in your wordpress plugins page.This has created many issues for so many other plugins too, including LiveLinks. Just de-activate this plugin, and your error should go away. Also, if you are using WordPress version 2.7.1, you don’t really need this plugin any more – the automatic upgrade feature has been built right into this version.
2. See if you have a plugin for doing “Captcha” – this is where to prevent bots from spamming your comments, your visitor is presented with some kind of an image to verify that they are human. Try with that de-activated.
3. If none of the above worked, or if you don’t have any of the above plugins active and you’re still seeing the error, then just try de-activating all other plugins temporarily (except LiveLinks, of course), and turn them back on one-by-one.

Refresh your blog page every time you activate a plugin. That way, you will know which is the plugin that is causing the error.

If that still doesn’t help, just open a support ticket and we’ll take care of it.

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(3) PDO Error

You see an error like this:

Fatal error: Class ‘PDO’ not found in /home1/knowlee3/public_html/buildamagneticnetwork/dap/inc/classes/Dap_Connection.class.php on line 19

If DAP had been working fine on your web site, and you all of a sudden see this error, then your host quietly pulled the rug from under your feet . This appears because they either deliberately or mistakenly disabled the “PDO” library, which is a must-have requirement for DAP to run.

So check with your host and ask them “if they disabled PHP/PDO for MySQL on your server recently”.

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(4) Memory Allocation

You see an error like this:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 16 bytes) in /home/yoursite.com/public_html/dap/inc/classes/Dap_Connection.class.php on line 19

If this happens just once, then just ignore it.

But if it occurs more than once, then it could be because:

a) You recently made some changes to your DAP files or web site files, and overwrote/updated your dap-config.php file with the wrong database information. Even though it shows up like a memory issue, in reality it could be because DAP is unable to connect to the database because of incorrect information in the dap config file.

b) Your server legitimately has a low memory limit set by your host, and your host needs to increase the memory allocated to PHP/PDO. Open a ticket with your web host to do this.

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(5) Simple-Pie & Memory Allocation

You see an error like this:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 37423432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 371520 bytes) in /…/public_html/~username/wp-includes/class-simplepie.php

Open the file wp-config.php (which is in your blog’s main folder)

Add this line at the top…

define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '64M');

That should take care of the error.