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”.

1) Download the latest version of DAP WP Livelinks from the members area.

2) Unzip the zip file to your desktop. Upload the entire DAP-WP-LiveLinks folder (including the folder too) to your WordPress plugins directory (which is wp-content/plugins/)

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.

Once you install this plugin, when someone visits your blog, they will ONLY see posts that they are “eligible” to view. This applies to your blog’s main page as well.

So, if a casual visitor arrives at your blog, they only see titles and their summaries for posts that have NOT been protected (not added to DAP at all).

For instance, if you have 100 posts, and have protected 95 of them, then on your blog’s home page, this visitor will see only 5 blog posts – titles and summaries – in TOTAL.

They won’t even see the titles or bodies of the protected posts. And if they somehow get the link to it (from someone else, by email, say) and try to visit it, then the existing DAP protection kicks in, and they’re asked to login first to determine if they have access to that post “as of now”.

But once this same visitor logs in, all blog posts that were HIDDEN earlier MAGICALLY re-appear And they see all posts that they are CURRENTLY eligible to access (this excludes posts to which access already expired, and posts to which they don’t have access YET – i.e., future availability).

If you want a certain portion of even your protected posts to always show up, even if the user is not eligible to see the post, see DAP “Sneak-Peek”.

This plugin lets you do two other things:

1) You can PERSONALIZE blog post titles and content with MERGE variables.

So, if you create a blog post with the title “Welcome %%FIRST_NAME%%“, then when your member logs in, they will see “Welcome John“.

Available merge variables;

%%FIRST_NAME%% -  Gets replaced with their first name

%%EMAIL%%  – Gets replaced with their email

%%MEMBER_HOME_PAGE%% -  Gets replaced with the ‘login’ page

2) You can also put the Login Form on any WP “Page”.

1) Personalize post Titles and Content with MERGE variables:

%%FIRST_NAME%% -  Gets replaced with their first name
%%EMAIL%%  – Gets replaced with their email
%%MEMBER_HOME_PAGE%% -  Gets replaced with the ‘login’ page

So if you create a blog post with the title “Welcome %%FIRST_NAME%%“, then when your member views that post after they’ve logged in, they will see “Welcome John“.

2) Personalize the Login Form:

You can put the Login Form on any WP “Page”.

3) Personalize Member and Affiliate Information:

Put Member & Affiliate Info on any WP Page