November 27, 2012

DAP v4.4 Beta

Share this

Share0
Tweet0
Pin0

[Update: 01/15/2013: DAP v4.4.3 is now "Final" ]

Hey Dapper!

We’re super thrilled to announce the release of DAP v4.4 and LiveLinks v1.8.3.

An incredible amount of time and effort went into this one – so we’re really excited about this new release!

There are tons of new features, improvements and bug fixes. A lot of the new features were based on your invaluable feedback – so thank you for that.

So without further ado, let’s dive right in!

New DAP Features

  • NEW: Buy-Button Links are here! You can now generate Buy Links right from within DAP. Previously, the DAP buy buttons were a form code. Now you can have them be an actual link. Very handy when you wish to use a pricing table plugin that allows you to enter only links (and not buy-button form code).
  • NEW: Negative Dripping Day for Email Autoresponders: To send an email X days before the user’s access expires to that product, set the usual drip day ("Day to Send") to a negative number on the "Email Autoresponder" tab. For example, setting the "Day to Send" field to "-3" would send out that email 3 days BEFORE the user’s access to that product ends. So you can use this to send out renewal reminder emails. And you can set up multiple of those too – one that goes out on -7 (one week before expiration), one that goes out on -3 (three days before expiration) and one that goes out on -1 (one day before expiration). Date of expiration (access end date) is actually day 0 – but DO NOT USE 0, because 0 is not allowed at this time. Reverse dripping HAS to be a negative number. So -1 would be one day prior to actual access end date.
  • NEW: Encrypted Passwords with 2-way encryption: All passwords in DAP are now encrypted and stored in the database. For current DAP users, un-encrypted passwords will initially work as usual. And every time the DAP Admin updates a user’s password, or a member updates their own password, from that point onwards, the plain-text password will become encrypted.
  • NEW: DAP Admin User can no longer see member passwords. DAP Admin can change everyone’s existing password (their own, as well that of others), but can no longer see what they are.
  • NEW: Login As Member: Not being able to view a member’s password brought a new challenge: How can the DAP Admin login as a member to see what they’re seeing – a critical feature during initial testing as well as troubleshooting a live site when a member says they’re having trouble accessing certain content. So we have introduced a new "Login As Member" feature, where the DAP Admin would go to http://YourSite.com/dap/loginAs.php. This page will present 3 form fields:
    1) Email id of member you wish to log in as.
    2) DAP Admin Email
    3) DAP Admin Password
    So once DAP verifies that it is indeed the DAP Admin trying to log in as someone else, DAP will log you into the site as that member whose email id you entered in (1) above.
    NOTE: The Login As Member (LAM) feature does NOT mean that you can use just one browser to log in as both DAP Admin and regular member. You still need to use two separate browsers – one for DAP admin (like Chrome) another for regular member (Firefox). All LAM does is give you a workaround for logging in as someone else, because starting 4.4, the DAP Admin can no longer see what the member’s password is in order to log in as them.
  • NEW: New tab on Products page – "Cancellation & Expiration".
    This tab has 3 new settings:
        1) Renewal HTML: You can enter HTML here that will show up on an expired user’s "My Content" page right under the product info (before the links are displayed).
        2) Post-Expiry Renewal Redirect URL: This is the URL to which a user is redirected to, right after they log in, if…
            a) Access to this product has expired,
                -AND-
            b) Setup > Config > Redirect Expired Users to Renewal Page Upon Login? has been set to "Y"
            However, if the user has access to multiple products, and access to more than one of those products has expired, then they will be redirected to the equivalent global field at Setup > Config > Post-Expiration Renewal Redirect URL (Global) right after they log in.
        NOTE: For any kind of renewal redirection to take effect upon log in, you must also set Setup > Config > Redirect Expired Users to Renewal Page Upon Login? to "Y"
       3) Expiration Action: Options in the drop-down are:
           a) No Action: Means status quo – nothing special or extra will be done if a user’s access expires to this product.
           b) Remove from Product: Very useful if you have a non-dripping subscription product, where if a user cancels their recurring subscription, you want to fully remove them from the product.
           c) Set End Date To Previous Day: This is a "rolling window" feature, useful if you want people to be able to pause their membership, come back and re-join, and get their access current (the entire period for which they were a member keeps rolling forward even if they left in between for 6 months, so that there is no "gap" in their access. So even if they leave in between for 6 months and come back and re-subscribe, it will be as though they never left.
  • NEW: Autologin for Aweber-to-DAP flow. Previously DAP would only auto-log in those signing up from the DAP signup form. Now even those signing up through an Aweber sign up form can be auto-logged in to DAP.
  • NEW: Super-simplified Aweber-to-DAP integration. Just point your Aweber list’s thank-you URL to http://YourSite.com/dap/signup_submit.php?productId=123. That’s it! No more fiddling with code, or renaming files, etc.
  • NEW: Better looking default free signup form for DAP
  • NEW: Custom Fields: DAP Admin can now make a user-facing custom field to be a "Required" field. So when it shows up on the user’s own profile, they must fill it out, and cannot update their profile without entering data in the field.
  • NEW: DAP logs older than 5 days, will now be automatically cleared to make sure the log table doesn’t grow too big.
  • NEW: DAP Admin Panel now displays "Logged in as: <First><Last>" at the top of every screen right below the menu. It will be a hyper-link that will take you directly to the User-Edit page for the admin where you can modify the DAP Admin user’s profile.
  • NEW: Ability to configure Post-unsubscribe URL (see new CONFIG item below)
  • NEW: Ability to delete saved Autoresponder emails (On Email > Autoresponders page) completely from system – which will also delete it from all DAP products that it has been added to.
  • NEW: Option to automatically flush the login IP records of all users in the system, every X number of days. See new config item below "Flush Login IP Records How Often?"
  • NEW: Ability to flush the login IP records of an individual user, by clicking on the new "Flush all Login IP records for this user" link on User-edit page.
  • NEW: User-edit page shows all of the user’s login history with IP’s and time of log in
  • NEW: Ability to exclude individual users from IP monitoring, like say those with a high IP reset rate because they have dialup, or because their ISP assigns them a new IP way too often than the others. New field on User-edit page "Exclude From IP Monitoring"
  • NEW: Users > Manage page shows two new colums for every user: "Last Login Date" (date when user last logged in) and "Login Count" (how many times user has logged in so far) 

New Affilate Features

  • NEW: Affiliate email notification of Commissions earned as well as Leads generated. You can configure the content of the email sent to the affiliate under Setup > Templates.
  • NEW: The "Lead" notification email is sent instantly when the lead/buyer is first logging in to the member’s area. The "Sale" notification email is sent at the top of the hour when the DAP hourly cron runs.
  • NEW: The Affiliate Email Notification feature itself is configurable. It is set to "No" (don’t send notifications) by default. Just set it to "Yes" in Setup > Config to turn it on.
  • NEW: You can enter merge tags like….
    • %%PRODUCT_NAME%%
    • %%AMOUNT_EARNED%%
      And if you want the affiliate to see their referral’s name and email, you can additionally use these in the email…
    • %%BUYER_FIRST_NAME%%
    • %%BUYER_LAST_NAME%%
    • %%BUYER_EMAIL%%
  • NEW: "View Affiliate Traffic" button on "Affiliates > Reports" page that now allows you to see incoming affiliate traffic for a given affiliate and date range
  • NEW: Allow affiliate payment in credits. You can now set up Commissions in "Credits" – You can assign Per-Lead Fixed, Per-Sale Fixed and Per-Sale Percentage all in "Credits" as well (previously, it was only "Cash" commissions). NOTE: In order for your affiliates to redeem those credits and use it to purchase your content, you will need the new CreditsStore plugin (previous known as "Self-Service Store" (SSS) which will be sold separately, and released shortly.
  • NEW: Configure First-Cookie or Last-Cookie wins? Default: Last-Cookie
  • NEW: Configure Affiliate Cookie Length (in days). Default: 365

New Merge Tags & ShortCodes

  • NEW: New shortcode for customizing the user profile: [DAPUserProfile].
    You can now pick and choose which fields appear on the user profile page using this shortcode. You can also choose to display all user-facing custom fields (showCustomFields="Y"), or only select custom fields (showCustomFields="cbnick,ssn"). Default is "Y" for all fields – so even if you don’t enter showFirstName="Y"  for a field, it will show up by default.
    The full list below is the same as entering just [DAPUserProfile]:

    [DAPUserProfile showFirstName="Y" showLastName="Y" showUserName="Y" showEmail="Y" showAddress1="Y" showAddress2="Y" showCity="Y" showState="Y" showZip="Y" showCountry="Y" showPhone="N" showFax="N" showCompany="N" showTitle="N" showPaypalEmail="Y" showOptedOut="Y" showCustomFields="Y"]

  • NEW: New Shortcode [DAPUpline]
    Basically, this shortcode shows a user their referring Affiliate’s (a.k.a Sponsor’s) information. So when a user visits the page that has this shortcode, it will display information of that user’s referring Affiliate – either from cookie (if exists), or if they’re already a member, then their current Affiliate’s information. And if neither the cookie is set, nor the user has an Affiliate attached to their account already, then it will show the info of the DAP Admin). So you can use it to show the user information of the person (affiliate) who referred them to the page. Think of it as a "Your Sponsor" tag.
        [DAPUpline showField="first_name"] – To show affiliate’s first name, use this
        [DAPUpline showField="last_name"]
        [DAPUpline showField="user_name"]
        [DAPUpline showField="email"]
        [DAPUpline showField="address1"]
        [DAPUpline showField="address2"]
        [DAPUpline showField="city"]
        [DAPUpline showField="state"]
        [DAPUpline showField="zip"]
        [DAPUpline showField="country"]
        [DAPUpline showField="phone"]
        [DAPUpline showField="fax"]
        [DAPUpline showField="company"]
        [DAPUpline showField="title"]
        [DAPUpline showField="paypal_email"]

        For Custom fields…
        [DAPUpline showField="custom_<customfieldname>"]

  • NEW: New parameters for existing shortcode, [DAPUserLinks]
        a) showProductCount => ‘Y’: If set to "Y", then the message "You have access to (X) products" will be displayed. If set to "N", it won’t be.
        b) showRenewalHTML => ‘Y’: If set to "Y", new product level field "Renewal HTML" will be displayed giving clear indication that the user’s access to that product has expired.
        c) productId parameter can now accept multiple product id’s separated by a comma if you wish to show "My Content" only for a select number of products.
  • NEW: 3 new merge tags for email, all available in a product-related context
    1. %%NUM_DAYS_TO_EXPIRY%%
    2. %%ACCESS_START_DATE%%
    3. %%ACCESS_END_DATE%%

New Configs & Internationalization

  • NEW CONFIG: Flush Login IP Records How Often? Every….. ? Login IP records in the system will be flushed/reset as often as you configure here.
  • NEW CONFIG: Last Flush Date of Login History: Shows date when all users’ login history was last flushed (reset)
  • NEW CONFIG: Post-Unsubscribe URL: New config item. URL to which User is redirected to, right after clicking on the "Unsubscribe" link at the bottom of DAP emails.
        Defaults to /dap/unsubscribed.php
  • NEW CONFIG: First-Cookie or Last-Cookie wins? New config that allows you to set the affiliate module to be "First Cookie" or "Last Cookie". Default: Last Cookie wins.
  • NEW CONFIG: Affiliate Cookie Length (in days): New config that allows you to set affiliate cookie expiration days.
  • NEW: New customizable variables in /dap/inc/language/english.php
    //———- Added in v4.4 ———//
    define("AFFILIATE_INFO_PERFSUMM_SUBHEADING","Affiliate Performance Summary"); //used only in dap/index.php
    define("AFFILIATE_INFO_HEADING","Affiliate Details"); //used only in dap/index.php
    define("MSG_NO_COMM","Sorry, no commissions earned yet.");
    define("USER_PROFILE_SUCCESS_MESSAGE_USER","SUCCESS! Your profile has been updated.");
    define("MSG_ERROR_EMAILEXISTSVB", "Sorry, this email id is already in use in our vBulletin Forum. Please try using a different email id.");
    define("MSG_SUCCESS_USERUPDATE_NOVB", "SUCCESS! Your profile has been updated, but could not register this username in our vBulletin Forum. Please contact the site admin for help.");
    define("AUTOMATED_AUTORESPONDER_EMAIL_SUBJECT", "New Content Available:\n%%CONTENT_NAME%%");
    define("MSG_INVALID_PASS","Sorry, the password you have chosen contains special characters. Only Alphabets and Numbers allowed. Please go ‘back’ and choose a different password.");
    define("COLNAME_EARNINGTYPE_TEXT","Cash/Credit");
    define("USER_PROFILE_NEW_PASSWORD_LABEL_DAPUSERPROFILE","Password<br/>(only if changing)");

List of Improved Features

  • IMPROVED: Products > Manage screen will remain on same tab after saving the product – will not switch back to "General Settings" tab.
  • IMPROVED: "Earnings Report By Product" report on DAP Admin home page now includes refunds (previously, reported only net – now separately reports Sales and Refunds).
  • IMPROVED: Better support for Internationalization (non-English characters). Previously, on some DAP screens, junk characters were showing when name had certain non-English characters. That’s fixed now.
  • IMPROVED: Affiliate > Reports page now shows today’s date as default for Start and End date (was previously blank and was confusing).

List of Bug Fixes

  • FIXED: Currency symbol issue in aff details page. Instead of a currency sign (for the Euro) "€" was showing up. That’s fixed now.
  • FIXED: Use paypal email in mass pay if exists – if not use main email id
  • FIXED: There was a fatal error when WP admin tried to update a regular user’s password via WP Admin User profile page. Fixed now.
  • FIXED: Syncing was not working when using two blogs protected by one installation of DAP. It was syncing to the first blog visited by user, but not to the other one(s). Fixed now.
  • FIXED: "States" in the User Profile page is now a free-form text field. Both User (on user profile page) and DAP Admin (on user-edit page) can edit this and type in free-form text in this field.
  • FIXED: "Payer Email" field in the transaction table is updated when user changes their own email in their profile AND also when DAP Admin changes email of user from the DAP Dashboard
  • FIXED: When a user updates their profile info, confirmation message will now show below button too (and not just at the top of the form, where they would miss seeing it if they didn’t scroll up). Not even applicable any more with the new [DAPUserProfile] shortcode.

WARNING: READ THIS BEFORE YOU UPGRADE

There a few critical things you need to remember to do BEFORE you upgrade.

BEFORE UPGRADING

Self-Service Store Users: DO NOT UPGRADE

Due to the new version of "Credits Store Plugin" (SSS) coming out shortly, the current version of SSS will no longer work with DAP v4.4. We will work with you offline to make sure you’re able to upgrade. Please open a ticket for that. For now, if you are currently using SSS actively on a live web site, then do not upgrade to 4.4. But if you just own a copy of SSS, and are not currently using it, then you may go ahead and upgrade.

This release is BETA – not for use on already LIVE web sites with ongoing sales

If you’re already running a live web site that’s generating sales, then you should probably skip this beta release, and wait for the final release.

However, if you’re just getting started with DAP, or if you are at least 2 weeks from launching, then we highly recommend that you upgrade to this version, as it has so many usability features and fixes to nagging issues from the past, that it will make things a LOT easier for you during setup and maintenance.

You MUST log out WP Admin & DAP Admin Before Upgrading

Before you upload the files, simply log out of WP Admin. If you’re on 4.3.1, then you will also be automatically logged out of DAP Admin. But if you’re on an earlier version of DAP, then be sure to visit http://YourSite.com/dap/logout.php to log out of DAP Admin. Only then upload "dap" as well as "DAP-WP-LiveLinks" files (see instructions below).

ALSO COMING SOON

The features listed above are just the part of core DAP that has changed.

We still have 2 major releases coming up very soon!

1) The spanking new "Credits Store" plugin

This plugin was formerly known as "Self-Service Store" (SSS). We’ve completely built this new one from the ground up.

If this is something you’ve been wanting to do, then you’re absolutely going to go nuts when you see the kind of features we have included in this new plugin. It even has a couple of related child plugins for WordPress that will allow you to some really cool stuff!

It will all be part of the new Credits Store plugin that will be released in 1 week.

2) The fully updated "Paypal Upsell-Tree" plugin

An all new, exciting look & feel for the cart, and many more enhancements. You’re going to absolutely love this if you wish to do Upsells with a Paypal Standard account.

And this one comes out in 2 weeks.

So, we hope 4.4 was worth the wait for you :-). We would love to hear your thoughts, so don’t forget to leave a comment (or two) below.

Cheers and happy holidays!

– Veena Prashanth & Ravi Jayagopal
DAP Queen & DAP Daddy

PS: Don’t forget to leave your comments & thoughts below 🙂

 

Resources:

Click here to download DAP v4.4 and LiveLinks v1.8.3

Click here for instructions about Upgrading DAP

Click here for instructions about Upgrading LiveLinks

NOTE: If you don’t see the latest files in the member’s area, that’s probably because your 1 year of free access to DAP Support & Upgrades have expired, and you can renew here. If you think you should have access to DAP v4.4 and LiveLinks v1.8.3, then please open a ticket and we’ll take care of it. Thanks!

 Previous Article
Next Article