April 9, 2012

DAP v4.3 Beta

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Hey there Dapper!

We’re absolutely ecstatic to announce the release of DAP v4.3 and LiveLinks v1.8!

This release is jam packed with oh-so-many goodies: Tons of new features, UI and Usability improvements, enhancements to many of the little nagging items, and of course, a few bug fixes too.

And with this new release, you can now also install and use DAPTicket, our support ticket plugin fully integrated with DAP (details further below).

New WordPress Integration Features

  • NEW: When you log in as WP admin, or browse any part of WP admin, you’re automatically logged in as DAP admin (DAP admin user with the least user id, in case you have more than one DAP admin user). No more having to log in separately to DAP. This is also configurable (default is YES). In case you do not want WP admins to be auto-logged in as DAP admin, then you can set this to NO under Setup > Config.
  • NEW: When you log out of DAP by going to http://YourSite.com/dap/logout.php, you will now also be logged out of WordPress, whether you are WP Admin or regular WP user
  • NEW: When you log out of WordPress, regardless of whether you are WP Admin or regular WP user, you will now also be logged out of DAP.
  • NEW: Reverse sync from WP to DAP now available. So, if a regular user goes to the standard WP profile page, and updates first name, last name or email id, their corresponding DAP record will also be updated. This also disables regular users from even updating their password in the WP profile page. So, the only place they can update password is via the DAP profile.
  • NEW: Shortcode [DAPUserLinks]: Allows you to heavily customize how the links are displayed when you use the merge tag %%USERLINKS%%
    [DAPUserLinks showProductName="N" showAccessStartDate="Y" showAccessEndDate="Y" showDescription="Y" showLinks="Y" orderOfLinks="NEWESTFIRST" howManyLinks="10000" errMsgTemplate="SHORT" productId="ALL" dateFormat="YYYY-MM-DD"]
  • NEW: "Coming Soon" Shortcode [DAPComingSoon]: Allows you to display links that are coming soon.
    [DAPComingSoon showProductName="Y" showAccessStartDate="Y" showAccessEndDate="Y" showDescription="Y" showLinks="Y" orderOfLinks="NEWESTFIRST" howManyLinks="10000" errMsgTemplate="SHORT" productId="ALL" makelinksclickable="N" dateFormat="YYYY-MM-DD"]
  • NEW: Merge tags for WordPress: %%USER_ID%%, %%PASSWORD%%, %%SITE_NAME%%
  • NEW: Shortcode Features:
        – "publicUntil": You can set a date UNTIL which a blog post is public (no protection or rules will be applied from any other shortcode parameters.
        [DAP publicUntil="2012-12-31" hasAccessTo="1"]This message will be completely public UNTIL (and including) December 31st, 2012[/DAP]
       
        – "publicAfter": You can set a date AFTER which a blog post will become public (no protection or rules will be applied from any other shortcode parameters.
        [DAP publicAfter="2012-01-01" hasAccessTo="1"]This message will be completely public AFTER (and including) January 1st, 2012[/DAP]
       
        – "hasNoAccessTo": A much requested feature. You can now specify a list of products that a user does NOT have access to, like this:
        [DAP hasAccessTo="2" hasNoAccessTo="1,3" ]This message will appear only to active (current) users of product 2 but don’t have access to 1 or 3[/DAP]
       
        – "startday" and "endday": Now you can specify "startday" and "endday" in the shortcodes to make the contents stop being shown after a certain end "day". Previously available "day" variable has been deprecated and replaced by "startday" instead. However, if you already are using it somewhere, it will continue to work as is. However, if you wish to use the "endday" variable, you must now also use "startday" instead of "day". Very useful for, say, displaying a message on the Welcome page only on the first day.
        [DAP hasAccessTo="2" startday="1" endday="1"]This message will appear to you only to users of Product 2, on Day 1 and no further[/DAP]
       
        – Negative Days: "startday" and "endday" can also be a negative number.
        For eg., [DAP hasAccessTo="2" startDay="-6" endDay="-3"]Howdy[/DAP]
        This basically means, the message "Howdy" will be shown starting 6 days before the "Access End Date" of the user’s access to the product with Id "2" (specified in hasAccessTo). So you can use this to display a special message – or specially priced offer (buy button) – for those whose access has not yet expired. Last day (same day of access end date) is day 0. Day before that is -1.
       
        – Error Message From File: You can now specify a file name whose contents are to be used as error message. Use the existing errMsgTemplate field, but add a "file:…" to the beginning, and make sure the file name is a fully qualified URL starting with http:// and your domain name. So you can say…
        [DAP hasAccessTo="2" startday="1" endday="1" errMsgTemplate="file:http://YourSite.com/customMessage.html"]This message will appear to you only today[/DAP]

New Affilate Features

  • You can now show your affiliates more information about their referrals in their affiliate report. In Setup > Config, you can now configure the following info to be shown to the affiliate (only for their own referrals, of course):
    First Name, Last Initial (Default) (or)
    First Name, Last Name (or)
    First Name, Last Name, Email (or)
    First Name, Last Name, Email, Phone
  • Ability to remove associated affiliates (including making user "UN-Affiliated" – meaning, no affiliates attached to the user any more)
  • Ability Re-assign a new affiliate to a user
  • Instant Affiliate Credit enabled even for Free signups. So new free members no longer have to log in for affiliate to get credit – it happens instantly upon signup.
  • Both you and your affiliates can now view referral data for free sign-ups too. Just add a commission row for each free product with 0.00 commissions (if you don’t wish to pay a PER LEAD commission, but still want your affiliates to see the details of the referral). And then, when an affiliate refers someone to your web site and the visitor signs up for a free product, your affiliate can see the new sign up as a "Lead" in their affiliate report.

New DAP Admin/Usability Features

  • NEW: All real-time emails to be sent using SMTP (if configured)
  • NEW: Drag & Drop rearranging and re-ordering of links within same drip day, is now possible (on "ContentResponder" tab)
  • NEW: Newly signed up "Free Signup" subscribers will now be instantly logged into the member’s area. But NO auto-login for double-optin enabled products – they must confirm first. And NO auto-login for those who are already a member, and are only signing up for a new free product.
  • NEW: You can now have a limited-duration one-time product. Previously, all one-time signups were assigned "9999-12-31" as access end date. No longer necessary. You can set a limited duration – like 30 days, or 90 or 365 days as the duration of your one-time product. And if you set the "Membership Duration" to 9999, then as before, it will set access end date for user to "9999-12-31".
  • NEW: New Config item: To allow "display" of protected links in the menu even if the user does NOT have access to it (regardless of Sneak-Peek)
  • NEW: New Config item: Is Free Product?
  • NEW: New Config item: Allow Free Sign-up?
  • NEW: New Config Item: Global Sales Page URL (for when a user has access to more than one Product)
  • NEW: New Config Item: Global Error Page URL (for when a user has access to more than one Product)
  • NEW: New Config item: Allow Auto-login of WP admin as DAP admin?
  • NEW: LiveLinks to use new global sales page url and global error page url
  • NEW: No more having to worry about free users not having access to paid content. It is all controlled by whether or not someone has access to a product. If they have access to a product, free or paid, as long as access dates are OK, they will get access to the content assigned to the product.
  • NEW: Ability to sort Products ordered by Product Name or Product Id – ascending or descending
  • NEW: Affiliate referer links shortened in referral report for both Admin home page as well as Affiliate report page
  • NEW: To improve performance, number of rows in affiliate referral report now restricted to just 2000 on Admin home page
  • NEW: Login count field is now updated for each successful login attempt by user. Not yet exposed in DAP Admin area. Will be available in the next release.
  • NEW: Logs were showing last 1000 rows. Instead, will now show all logs for the day
  • NEW: On the "Content responder" tab, next to the heading "Protected Content", it now shows how many links are protected as part of the product. Eg. (# of protected links: 8)
  • NEW: Product list now shows up as a drop-down at the top of the Product screen tabs, so that it’s always visible even when moving across tabs.
  • NEW: On Products page, moving from one product to another will keep admin on same tab even across different products. So switching products (only when using drop-down) will NO LONGER make you jump back to the new product’s "General Settings" tab. You will remain on whatever tab you were on previously.
  • NEW: ContentResponder tab’s contents can now be "popped out" and shown in large window, so you can even see long links without any part getting cut off from the display. And then you can pop the window back in once done.
  • NEW: Now you can mass-delete all Autoresponder Emails from Product in one click
  • NEW: New lines in /dap/inc/language/english.php
    //———- Added in v4.3 ———//
    define("USER_LINKS_COMINGSOON_TEXT","Coming Soon…");
    define("USER_LINKS_COMINGSOON_PREFIX_TEXT","[In XXX day(s)]");
    define("MSG_UNSUBSCRIBE","[In XXX day(s)]");
    define("MSG_MANDATORY","Sorry, all fields are mandatory. Please go ‘back’ and fill up the missing information.");
    define("MSG_INVALID_EMAIL","Sorry, the email address you entered is invalid. Please go ‘back’ and enter a valid email address.");
    define("MSG_INVALID_COUPON","Sorry, the coupon code you entered is invalid. Please go ‘back’ and enter a valid coupon code.");
    define("MSG_MISSING_COUPON","Sorry, coupon code is a required field. Please go ‘back’ and enter a valid coupon code.");
    define("MSG_PAYMENT_FAILED","Payment failed. Please contact the site admin. ");
    define("MSG_THANKYOU_SIGNUP","SUCCESS! Thank you for signing up. Please check your email for further details.");
    define("BUTTON_UPDATE","Update");
    define("SUCCESS_CREATION","SUCCESS! Your account has been successfully created! Please check your inbox for login information…");
    define("NO_AUTH","Sorry, you are either not logged in, or not authorized to perform this operation.");

List of Improved Features

  • IMPROVED: Category protection error message.
    • If a category is protected as part of just 1 product, and someone doesn’t have access to it, then DAP will redirect to Product-Level Error Page URL. If that is blank, it will use Global Error Page URL.
    • If part of multiple products, goes directly to Global Error Page URL.
    • If DAP tries to use Global Error Page URL (however it got there), then if that field is also blank (or defaults to /dap/product-error.php), then it will use "In-Page Error Message with Padlock".
  • IMPROVED: Logging in thru Login/Logout widget on any page is now considered a primary login.
  • IMPROVED: When DAP Admin removes welcome/thankyou mesg, now shows a WARNING
  • IMPROVED: When Product is saved, if there is no welcome mesg, now shows a WARNING
  • IMPROVED: If Product is recurring, you can no longer set "recurring count" to null or 0 (in Products page)
  • IMPROVED: Clicking on the link to a post that’s part of a product’s available content output from %%USERLINKS%% no longer opens that post in a new window
  • IMPROVED: Product description may not be more than 127 characters. Cannot save product settings if it’s more.
  • IMPROVED: Changed default templates for new installations: Forgot password subject and body, Locked email body
  • IMPROVED: One-time products with access end date of "9999-12-31" will no longer be highlighted with a warning color.
  • IMPROVED: Enter key works during login now
  • IMPROVED: If recurring is Y and recurring cycle 1 is not set, then show ERROR

List of bug fixes

  • FIXED: Password changing: Admin can no longer include special characters when changing password for user via DAP Admin
  • FIXED: Link Titles can now have apostrophes and it won’t show backslashes.
  • FIXED: New-line chars in Description breaking shoppingcart pages is fixed.
  • FIXED: "Save as New" was sometimes incorrectly setting product status as "Inactive". It now correctly sets them as "Active".
  • FIXED: Export of user data for individual products was not working on some servers. Fixed.
  • FIXED: Space getting stripped in forgot password (issue on some servers only)
  • FIXED: Space getting stripped on user signup form (issue on some servers only)
  • FIXED: Space getting stripped in error message on access to DAP Admin (issue on some servers only)

WARNING: READ THIS BEFORE YOU UPGRADE

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

BEFORE UPGRADING

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 a week or so 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.

Make sure you are not mixing FREE and PAID users in the same DAP Product.

Starting with DAP v4.3, if a user has access to a product, they will get access to content within the product (as per drip dates and access expiry, of course). The only thing that changes is…. you no longer have to make sure that content is marked as FREE in order for FREE users to be able to access it, or worry about mistakenly adding a user as FREE to a paid product, and forgetting to mark them as PAID, and then they have an issue accessing the content. This is the biggest issue for most people starting with DAP, so we’ve finally decided to fix it the right way.

So the thumb rule here is…

If User has access to Product, it doesn’t matter if they’re a free or paid user, it doesn’t matter if your content is marked as free or marked as paid – they WILL get access to the content in the product (depending on their access start and end dates, drip days/dates, etc – no change to those things).

AFTER UPGRADING

Revisit ALL of your FREE products and set "Allow Free Signup?" = "Yes"

DAP 4.3 has a new field on the "General Settings" tab of the Products > Manage page, called "Allow Free Signup?". If you are using a free DAP signup form (also known as "Direct Signup Form" or "Free Signup Form" in DAP) to sign up people for free to a DAP Product, OR if you are doing Aweber-to-DAP integration (where you sign them up for free to Aweber first, and then have Aweber add them to DAP), then be sure to set this new field to "Yes" for all such FREE products.

You need to do this only for your free products. If you don’t do it, your free DAP signup forms will no longer work.

By default, after upgrading to v4.3, all of your DAP Products will be set to "Allow Free Signup?" = "No" – so there will be no impact to your existing paid products.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do ask them via the comments section below.

Cheers!

Veena Prashanth & Ravi Jayagopal
DAP Queen & DAP Daddy

PS: As always, please leave your comments & thoughts below 🙂

PPS: Have you checked out WickedCoolPlugins.com (WCP) yet? With this new release of DAP, you can now install and use DAPTicket, our support ticket plugin fully integrated with DAP. If you already have access to DAPTicket, then you can download it from the member’s area at WCP. If you don’t, then you can purchase DAPTicket separately.

Resources:

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 v4.3 and LiveLinks v1.8, then please open a ticket and we’ll take care of it. Thanks!