47

Creating Member Profile, My Content & Affiliate Sections within WordPress

Creating Your “Member’s Area”

DAP has 4 main Member-facing pages (the rest of your content is all standard WordPress pages and posts and categories, along with your media – like Videos, PDF reports, etc.):

• Login page: This is where your members would log in at. (You, the DAP Admin don’t have to log in from here – you can log in to DAP admin when you log in to the WordPress admin dashboard.) This member login page can be either a stand-alone log in page (if you put the tag on a separate page), or it can be a a login form on the sidebar (that turns in to a logout button once they log in).
• My Content: This section shows all the products that the member has purchased or signed up for. This is the page that shows the links newly appearing as and when they are dripped on the member.
• My Profile: This shows all of the user profile fields – like first name, last name, email, password, address, etc. They can change all of their contact information on this page.
• Affiliate Info: This shows members their own personalized affiliate link, their link-referral stats, commissions earned, commissions paid, etc. If you want to make this page even more useful, you can add banners and emails and promo copy that the affiliate can simply copy/paste and send to their list.

So basically, only 4 “member” pages as far as DAP is concerned.

And all of these can be created right within your WordPress site, within a WP Page, so that they take on the exact same look & feel as your web site.

• “Login” page: Use [DAPLoginForm] (responsive)
  (used to be %%LOGIN_FORM%%)
• “My Content” (shows the user’s own products): Use [DAPMyContent] (responsive)
  (instead of the old [DAPUserLinks] or %%USERLINKS%%)
• “My Profile” (username/password): Use [DAPUserProfile] (responsive version coming soon)
  (used to be %%USERPROFILE%%)
• “Affiliate Info” Section: Use %%AFFDETAILS%% (responsive version coming soon)
  

Login Page within WordPress

Now DAP already provides you with a built-in, out-of-the-box 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, then do this…

1) Create a WordPress Page (not “Post”) with the text [DAPLoginForm] 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 > Setup > Config . Scroll down to the field Login URL.

In the text box, enter the full link to your login page from Step 1:
http://YourSite.com/blog/login/

Or if your blog is in the root, then…
http://YourSite.com/login

That’s it! When someone clicks on the “Login” link that now shows in your “Pages” menu, they will now see a nicely formatted login form.

Related: Where is the Logout Link?

Creating The Member’s Area

• “My Content” section – use the merge tag [DAPMyContent]
• “My Profile” (username/password) – merge tag [DAPUserProfile]
• “Affiliate Info” Section – merge tag %%AFFDETAILS%%

Create a separate page for each of the tags.

Creating a “My Content” Page within WordPress

This is the page that shows all of a member’s content details – like what products the user has purchased, what are the access start and end dates for that purchase, and all of the content within each product – all separately organized.

To create such a page, simply create a WordPress “Page” (not ‘post’) with the title “My Content”  (for example) and within the body of the page, enter the text [DAPMyContent] and save the new page. Now if you visit the page, and you are logged in, it will show you something similar to the image below.

And if you gave this page the title of “My Content”, then the actual link to this page would be YourSite.com/blog/my-content/

Starting DAP 4.8, this tag generates a responsive template. See the full details at http://www.digitalaccesspass.com/blog/2015/03/responsive-login-templates/

Creating a “My Profile” Page within WordPress

This is the section that shows the user’s profile information, where they can change their name, email id, address and other details.

For this, create a WordPress Page (not ‘post’) with the text [DAPUserProfile] in the body of the page, and a title of say, User Profile (or) My Profile and save the new page.

If you used the text “User Profile” for the title, then the actual link to this page would be YourSite.com/blog/user-profile/

Creating an “My Affiliate Info” Page within WordPress

This is the page that shows your users their affiliate link (which is instantly created for them upon purchasing any product on your site), link clicks, referrer details, earnings and payments.

For this, create a WordPress Page (not ‘post’) with the text %%AFFDETAILS%% in the body of the page, and a title of say, Affiliate, and save the new page.

If you used the text “Affiliates” for the title, then the actual link to this page would be YourSite.com/blog/affiliates/

That’s it!

Now if you want to make the affiliate page more powerful by creating a “ready-made affiliate toolbox” for your affiliates, then see this: Creating an Affiliate Toolbox

22

Protecting Files

DAP File Protection

DAP is one of the few membership plugins that can protect all kinds of web site files on your web site. But this feature comes with a few caveats. Read this page completely before you decide.

DAP can protects files “in-place” – meaning, the exact same files that will actually be accessed by your members when they’re eligible to.

Most other membership plugins resort to all sorts of “gimmicks” – like hiding the real location of the main file, cloaking it, trying to obfuscate the link, etc.

Not only is it a inefficient way of securing files, but it’s also extremely insecure.

On top of that, with other membership plugins, you cannot send protected links via email, because that would then give away the location of the true file, which they are not protecting.

DAP is among the very, very few membership plugins that protect files in place, which means even if the true location of the file is passed around by your members to their non-member friends, the file cannot be accessed without having to log in first with a valid member account that is actually eligible to access that file.

DAP provides the ultimate security for your files – and ultimate peace of mind for you – like no other plugin can, knowing that your content can never be illegally shared online with un-authorized users.

And DAP can protect any kind of file – including videos, audio, images, reports, zip files, even Javascript files – with any kind of extension: like .pdf, .doc, .zip, .jpg. .js, .mp3, .mp4, .mov., etc etc.

RECOMMENDED: Amazon S3 File Storage

Highly Recommended

The ideal and best way to store files is to store them on Amazon S3, and then use a plugin like our own S3MediaVault.com to insert secure, expiring links to those files within your WordPress pages. That way, the page itself is protected by DAP, your files on Amazon S3 are protected by the S3MediaVault plugin, and you have two layers of protection for your content.

If you decide to store your files on Amazon S3, then ignore the rest of this article, and head over to Storing files on Amazon vs your Webhost

The steps below are only useful if you are going to use all of your files on your own web hosting account – which is not ideal and is not recommended.

Section I: Protecting Files Under WordPress

This is the easiest way to protect files on your server, in DAP.

1) Upload them to your WordPress blog when you are writing a new post. All such files will be stored in a folder called “wp-content/uploads/….“.

For large files, you could simply upload them directly using FTP, directly into the “wp-content/uploads/” folder and DAP is configured right off-the-shelf to “look” for any file inside the “wp-content/uploads/” folder. But once the file is under the “wp-content/uploads/…” folder (either directly under it, or under a sub-folder, like wp-content/uploads/videos/), you will now still need to let DAP know that this file is to be protected as part of a Product.

NOTE: You DO NOT have to upload files using the WP file uploader (like some of our competitors force you to do!). You can use regular, plain ol’ FTP, using a client like FileZilla or CuteFTP, or your webhost cPanel’s FTP feature.

2) Go to the product you wish to protect the file as part of, and then scroll down to the “ContentResponder” section.

2.1) If you know (or can figure out) the full URL to your file – like http://www.YourSite.com/wp-content/uploads/coolreport.pdf – you can simply paste that directly into the field “A” (in the image below)

2.2) Or, if you can’t figure out the full URL, then you can enter “wp-content” (if your blog is directly in your root folder) – or “blog” or “members” (if your blog is not in your root, and is in a sub-folder) into field “B” below, and then click on “Load Files”, and it will show you all files under that folder. And you will be able to scroll through and look for your file. And there click on the “Add” link right next to that file name you wish to protect.

Once you do (2.1) or (2.2) above, the file will get added to the Product, and will now be protected.

Section 2: Protecting Files Outside of WordPress

This is NOT RECOMMENDED, unless you are technical and you know what you’re doing.

There is a one-time setup process involved, if you wish to protect files outside of your WordPress directory.

1. You need to add the following code to the .htaccess in the root of your web site. So, in your web site’s root folder (where you have your home page – like index.php or index.html for example)…

i) if you already have an existing .htaccess file there, then just open it, COPY the text from below and PASTE it at the very end of this file.

ii) If there is no .htaccess in your root folder, then create one, and then open it, COPY the text from below and PASTE it at the very end of this file.

NOTE: BE SURE TO MAKE A BACK-UP OF YOUR EXISTING .htaccess FILE FIRST


#Paste this at the very end of your .htaccess file
#in your web site's root folder

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
#dap
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !dapclient.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/dap/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !(.*)(\.php|\.css|\.js|\.jpg|\.gif|\.png|\.txt)$
RewriteRule (.*) /dap/client/website/dapclient.php?dapref=/$1&plug=wp&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] </IfModule>

 

Doing the above enables file protection for files outside your WordPress installation folders.

2) Now go to the DAP Product you wish to protect the file as part of, and then scroll down to the “ContentResponder” section. Then…

• If you know the full URL to your file – like http://www.YourSite.com/reports/coolreport.pdf – you could simply paste that directly into the field “A” from the image above (make sure you “visit” this URL first and verify that there is actually such a file at this link)
• OR… if you can’t figure out the full URL, then you can enter the text “reports” (the name of your top-level folder where your file is) into field “B” from the image above, and then click on “Load Files”, and it will show you all files under that folder. And you will be able to scroll through and look for your file. And there click on the “Add” link right next to that file name you wish to protect.

The file is then added to the Product, and will now be protected as part of that Product.

That’s it.

Testing File Protection

Open a different browser (not different window – a totally different browser – like, if you’re logged in as DAP admin in FireFox, then open IE)  and try to access your file directly and see if DAP redirects you to the login screen.

If not, take a deep breath – it’s NOT DAP 🙂

It’s just that you probably missed something during the setup.

Revisit the steps above, and if you still can’t figure it out, you might want to think about uploading the file to Amazon S3.

This feature can be hit-or-miss depending on server software, PHP version, security software on your server, etc. So if it works, then great.

If it doesn’t work, then it is specific to your server. So if you want us to log in to your site and troubleshoot this, if you are a Platinum member, we can do this for free.

And if you’re not a Platinum member, you will have to purchase a premium support slot in order for us to log in to your site and troubleshoot this.

So while you can try it and see if it works, especially if you’re protecting just a couple of ebooks and reports, if it doesn’t work, then it’s in your best interest for the long-term, to switch to Amazon S3 for hosting your premium files.

Recommended Reading

If you have a number of large files to deliver to your members, then you should consider hosting your files on Amazon S3. And here’s why…

6

Upgrading to the latest version of LiveLinks

1. DO NOT DELETE your DAP-WP-LiveLinks folder.
2. DO NOT DISABLE or DE-ACTIVATE the DAP-WP-LiveLinks plugin.
3. If you wish to make a back up of your existing DAP-WP-LiveLinks folder, DO NOT DO IT in the same folder, as WP will treat it as a duplicate copy of the plugin, and you can have unexpected results. If you wish to take a backup, then download it to your computer, or move it away from the wp-content/plugins/ folder. DO NOT KEEP more than one copy of the LiveLinks plugin files in the wp-content/plugins/ folder
4. Download the latest version of DAP-WP-LiveLinks.zip from the members area.
   
5. Unzip the zip file to your desktop.This will create a folder by name DAP-WP-LiveLinks on your desktop.
6. Simply Upload the entire DAP-WP-LiveLinks folder (including the folder too) to your WordPress plugins directory (which is wp-content/plugins/). You are essentially over-writing your existing plugin files, that's all.

That's it!

Note: The above ALL-CAPS, that too in RED does not mean we're yelling at you :-). We just want to OVER-EMPHASIZE the importance of the text, that's all.

31

Upgrading to the latest version of DAP

UPDATE: Use the new DAP Easy Installer plugin to upgrade DAP, and skip the old method below.
__________________________________

The following is relevant to you only if you are “Upgrading” DAP from an earlier version. (What’s new?)

Here’s how to upgrade to the new version:

1. DO NOT DELETE your existing dap folder on your web site.
2. DO NOT DELETE your DAP-WP-LiveLinks folder.
3. DO NOT DISABLE or DE-ACTIVATE the DAP-WP-LiveLinks plugin.
4. YOU MUST LOG IN TO WORDPRESS ADMIN and click on on the “DigitalAccessPass” link and load up the DAP Admin home page before proceeding.
5. Upgrading DAP:
   Download the zip file dap_vXX.zip (where XX stands for whatever version you are upgrading to) from the member’s area and unzip to desktop. You should now see a folder by the name “dap” on your desktop.
6. OVERWRITE the entire contents of the “dap” folder on your web site, with the contents of the new “dap” folder on your desktop.
7. Upgrading the DAP-WP-LiveLinks Plugin:
   If you wish to make a back up of your existing DAP-WP-LiveLinks folder, DO NOT DO IT in the same folder, as WP will treat it as a duplicate copy of the plugin, and you could have unexpected results. If you wish to take a backup, then download it to your computer, or move it away from the wp-content/plugins/ folder. DO NOT KEEP more than one copy of the DAP-WP-LiveLinks plugin files (even if you rename them) in the wp-content/plugins/ folder
8. Download the latest version of DAP-WP-LiveLinks_vYY.zip from the members area.
   
9. Unzip the zip file to your desktop.This will create a folder by name DAP-WP-LiveLinks on your desktop.
10. Simply Upload the entire DAP-WP-LiveLinks folder (including the folder too) to your WordPress plugins directory (which is wp-content/plugins/). You are essentially over-writing your existing plugin files, that’s all.
11. Now go back to your WordPress admin page where you have the DAP admin panel already loaded and visible.
12. If you’re not already viewing the DAP admin home page, then click on the DigitalAccessPass link in the WP admin menu towards the bottom left of your screen.
13. You will now see a mostly-white-background page that shows you your current version of DAP and the version being upgraded to. And you will see a link that you need to click on, in order to upgrade your installation to the newest version you just uploaded. Just click on that link, and it should say “Successfully installed…”.
14. CRITICAL: Once you are logged in as DAP Admin, click on the “Welcome, <admin name>” link towards the top left of your DAP admin panel (shown on all DAP admin pages). That will take you to the user edit page for your own DAP admin account. You MUST change your password now – even if it is to the same password as what you had before.

Note: The above ALL-CAPS, that too in RED does not mean we’re yelling at you :-). We just want to OVER-EMPHASIZE the importance of the text, that’s all.

19

Protecting WordPress Posts & Pages

• Log in to DAP Dashboard and go to the “Products/Lists” page.
• Select the product to which you want this blog post/page to be a part of
• Scroll down to the “ContentResponder” section
• On the left, you will see a list of blog posts & pages that have been published (if you scroll down in the window where the list of “posts” show, you will also see list of “pages”)

• Select one or more (hold Ctrl + Click to select multiple)
• Click on “Add Selected Posts/Pages” to protect the posts/pages.
• The post(s)/page(s) will now show up on the right-hand side of the box.
• Click on “edit” next to each link to configure dripping for individual posts/pages.

0

Creating a Product (Quick Start)

1. Log in as DAP Admin
2. Click on “Products” link (menu at the top)
3. Enter “Test Product 123” in “Product Name”
4. Enter the same text “Test Product 123” in “Product Description”
5. Click “Save”. All other fields are optional.
6. You are now in “Edit” mode of product “Test Product 123”.

27

DAP Installation

UPDATE: Use the new DAP Easy Installer plugin to install DAP, and skip the old method below.
__________________________________

Old Way of Installing DAP

1. Download & Unzip Files

Log in to your member’s area at http://DigitalAccessPass.com/dap/ .

Download the following 2 files…

a) dap_vXX.zip

b) DAP-WP-Livelinks_vYY.zip

XX and YY are version numbers. Unzip the two zip files (separately) to your desktop. You should see 2 folders named dap and DAP-WP-LiveLinks.

WARNING: After you unzip the folders, you should NOT see a “dap” folder within the “dap” folder, or a “DAP-WP-LiveLinks” folder within the “DAP-WP-LiveLinks” folder. If you do, then in both cases, it is the inside “dap” folder or the inside “DAP-WP-LiveLinks” folder that’s important. Get rid of the outer one, and upload only the inner “dap” folder and the innert “DAP-WP-LiveLinks” folder, as explained below.

2. Upload Files

a) Upload the entire dap folder on your computer, to the root of your domain. The root directory is where your domain’s home page is usually located. This directory also goes by the name “public_html” or “www” or “htdocs”.

WARNING – Add-On Domains: If you have a hosting account with multiple domains, and you are trying to install DAP on the “main domain”, then upload the “dap” folder directly to the root of the main domain (like public_html). But if you wish to install DAP on an “add-on domain”, then the “dap” folder has to go into the root of the add-on domain (like public_html/addOnDomain.com)

WARNING: You may not rename the dap folder to anything else. The name of the folder MUST be dap, and regardless of where your blog is (in the main folder, or in a sub-folder), the dap folder must be in your root directory. Once this is done, the dap folder should be accessible by at http://www.Example.com/dap/ – but wait – don’t visit that link yet.

b) Upload the entire DAP-WP-LiveLinks folder (including the folder too) to your WordPress plugins directory, which is wp-content/plugins/

3. Activate Plugin

Log in as WordPress admin, go to the “Plugins” page, and activate the DAP-WP-LiveLinks plugin. Just activating the plugin installs the DAP tables in the same database as your WordPress blog. If there are any errors, you will see them on your screen. If not, you will see a message that says that installation is complete, with just one final step remaining (see below). You will also see the email and password for the DAP Admin account that has just been created for you. There is no need to log in separately to the DAP Admin Control Panel, as you have already been logged in as DAP admin during the installation. But save this DAP admin login info for future reference.

4. Permalinks Update (final step)

Within the WordPress admin control panel, go to “Settings > Permalinks”. Under the section “Customize Permalink Structure”, pick any option other than “Default“. IMPORTANT: Regardless of whether you made any changes on this Permalinks page or not, you MUST click on “Save Changes”. REPEAT: Don’t forget to click on “Save Changes” whether you changed the permalink structure or not.

5. Access DAP

You will now see a new link on your WordPress Admin Menu  (bottom left, below “Settings”) called “DigitalAccessPass”. Click on that link to access your DigitalAccessPass Admin Control Panel.

6. Setting Up Cron

This step is not required to just get started with using and learning DAP. But it is required when you are ready to start sending out autoresponder and broadcast emails, or processing affiliate commissions. Also required if you’re doing email-order processing of recurring payments through 1shoppingcart or 1SiteAutomation. It is critical that the cron job(s) is setup before you go live. So click here for the instructions.

25

Creating A Login Page Within WordPress

Now DAP already provides you with a built-in, out-of-the-box 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, then do this…

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 > Setup > Config . Scroll down to the field Login URL

In the text box, enter the full link to your login page from Step 1:
http://YourSite.com/blog/login

Or if your blog is in the root, then…
http://YourSite.com/login

That’s it! When someone clicks on the “Login” link that now shows in your “Pages” menu, they will now see a nicely formatted login form.

Related: Where is the Logout Link?

13

Editing a User’s Details

Go to “DAP Admin > Users > Manage” screen.

Search for the user whose details you wish to edit by email, first name, last name or user id.

(NOTE: If you simply hit “Search” on this screen without changing any of the search parameters, then all users in the system will be displayed below)

In the search results, the User Id and Name of every user is a link, and clicking on this link will take you to the “DAP Admin > Users > Add” screen, where you edit the user’s profile information.

You can change modify any of the user’s information here, including the password.

13

Creating New Users Manually