Conflict With “Cache” Related Plugins

DAP Now Works With WP Super Cache

If you’re having weird issues – like members logging in and seeing other people’s profile information, or logging in as a valid user and being told “Sorry, you don’t have access to this content” – then it’s probably because of a “cache” plugin.

Do not use cache plugins on your membership site

DAP now fully works with WP Super Cache (and possibly other cache plugins too).

You just need to make sure that you exclude your member content (including the login page) from being cached.

Cleaning Up After Your Cache Plugin

Follow the steps below to clean up some the junk left behind by cache plugins (regardless of whether you see them in your plugins section, and regardless of whether they are currently active).

1) You wish to disable your cache plugin that is currently enabled

2) You previously had one enabled at some point in the past

3) You don’t believe you ever had a cache plugin enabled in the past

4) You were redirected to this page by the DAP support team because of potential caching-related issues

1. De-activate the plugin if it is still active
2. Open your wp-config.php file.
3. If there are lines in there that look like this…
   define(‘WP_CACHE’, true); //Added by WP-Cache Manager
   define( ‘WPCACHEHOME’, ‘/home/wp-content/plugins/wp-super-cache/’ ); //Added by WP-Cache Manager
4. Then comment out both lines, by adding a “//” at the beginning of each line, like this.
5. //define(‘WP_CACHE’, true); //Added by WP-Cache Manager
   //define( ‘WPCACHEHOME’, ‘/home/wp-content/plugins/wp-super-cache/’ ); //Added by WP-Cache Manager
6. Go to your /wp-content/plugins/ folder. See if there’s a folder in there called “cache”. If yes, then rename it to “_cache”.

Now re-test whatever the issue was before, and it would have probably been resolved now.

That should do it.

If the issue still persists, let us know via a support ticket.

Your Host Does Not Support Cron Jobs

Question: You ask what to do if your host does not support cron jobs?

Short answer: You may want to switch your hosting company.

The basic idea of a cron jobs is that it allows you to run scheduled tasks, that run automatically, frequently, silently, in the background, without requiring manual intervention.

DAP uses cron jobs to do things like…

• Send out autoresponder emails
• Send out broadcast emails
• Manage your outgoing queue of emails so that you can stay within your cheap web host’s strict hourly email sending limits
• Process and manage affiliate data & commissions , and
• Do some clean up jobs

Any membership plugin that offers email broadcasts, autoresponders and other bulk tasks, will likely ask you to set up cron jobs for sending out emails. You couldn’t possibly send out an email blast to even 500 members in real time as your browser will timeout.

DAP requires you to set up a cron job to do all of the tasks above.

If yours doesn’t, seriously you have only 2 choices…

1. Stick to your host but lose the ability to use powerful scripts like DAP.
2. Or do the smart thing and move to a better host. There are plenty of good ones out there, and there are a few we recommend highly, and they’re very inexpensive.

Instant Affiliate Payments

There are some scripts out there that will allow you to “pay affiliates instantly”.

What this essentially means, is that the “seller email” in your Paypal button, is actually replaced with your affiliate’s Paypal email id. Which means the payment from your buyer is going straight into your affiliate’s Paypal account, not yours.

This means that when your buyer looks at her Paypal account, it does not say payment made to you “John Seller” (you), but to “Joe Affiliate” (your affiliate).

This is a poor business practice on so many levels.

1) Customer bought a product from you. Why is her Paypal account showing that she just made a payment of $97 to “Joe Affiliate”? Your customer is thinking, “Wait a minute… Who the heck is Joe Affiliate? I did not buy anything from any Joe Affiliate. Why is my Paypal account showing that I paid him money? HELP!… Fraud… Paypal Dispute… Scammer… I want a REFUND!”. Well, that’s what we would think too if we bought something from one merchant, and saw the payment going to someone else.

2) What happens when your customer wants a refund? Now you’re going to have to ask Joe Affiliate to return the payment, because you never got it – he did. What if Joe Affiliate doesn’t respond on time? What if he doesn’t return the money on time? What if he doesn’t want to return it at all? Will you hold up your customer’s refund, or are you going to keep paying out of your pocket and “hope” that Joe Affiliate returns your payment to you this time, and not to the buyer, because you have already send the buyer their money back?

So yes, this is just bad for business. Not to forget, looks extremely unprofessional on your part too.

The only way to properly handle instant payments, is by using Paypal’s Adaptive Payments technology, which allows you to do something called “Chained Payments”. And using Chained Payments, your customer always pays YOU first. And you can set up a chain, so that as soon as their payment hits your Paypal account, Paypal in turn will instantly send a money from YOUR account to your AFFILIATE’s account. So Customer pays you, you pay the affiliate. And that’s how it should be.

Anything else will only get you in trouble with Paypal, maybe even get your account banned, piss your customers off, dilute your brand, your reputation may get trashed, and just about everything that is not good for your business could happen.

Now DAP does allow you to instantly ‘credit’ your affiliate’s account with the payment due, but you still have to push a couple of buttons before the affiliate can actually get paid.

And that’s how it’s going to be until we develop support for Paypal Adaptive Payments (which has its own complications, by the way).

What is your take on this? Feel free to leave your comments below.