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“ProductLinks” Widget: Product-Specific Content

You already know that you can create a “My Content” kind of page within WordPress, that will list all products that a user has access to, and then each product will list the content that they currently have access to (content that has already dripped on them).

But this page is a full-summary of all products, all listed on one page.

Instead, if you wished to create product-specific download pages, where you create a separate page for each product, that lists all the content within just that product alone, then that’s where DAP’s “ProductLinks” Widget comes in handy.

Here’s how you set it up.

  1. In WordPress admin, go to “Appearance > Widgets” and enable the “DAP ProductLinks” widget by dragging it onto a widgetized section of your theme’s sidebar.
  2. As soon as you do that, the DAP ProductLinks widget will show up in your blog’s side bar.
  3. By default, each of the product names – like “Gold Membership” in the above example – will link to whatever URL you put into the “Post-Login URL” for that particular product (DAP Dashboard > Products > Manage). So the next step is to create a separate page for each product, and then enter the permalink for this new page, into the Post-Login URL of that Product within DAP.
  4. Create a new page in WordPress – call it, “Gold Membership Content” (for example). In the body of the page, enter the following DAP merge tag:%%PRODUCT_DETAILS_<id>%%

    Replace the entire text <id> with the actual Product id from DAP (Products > Manage)

    So, if the product’s id is 6 in DAP, then the merge code becomes:

    %%PRODUCT_DETAILS_6%%

    Save the page. And if you gave the page the title “Gold Membership Content”, then the permalink for this page will be:
    http://YourSite.com/gold-membership-content/

  5. Take the above permalink and enter it into the product “Gold Membership” in the “Post-Login URL” field. That’s it!
  6. Do the above for all products and you’re done.

 

End Result

  • For each product that your member buys, the “Your Products” widget will show in the side-bar.
  • It will list all of the products that the member has purchased.
  • Each of the product names will link to it’s own specific content page
  • When member goes to that page, the DAP merge tag you entered for that product will expand into product details and product-specific content links just for that product.
Click Here to Leave a Comment Below 25 comments
Molly Ogren - July 9, 2010

This is a really awesome feature, Ravi and Veena! It is one that I didn’t know I needed for my business until you made it available! Thank you for the explanation of its use…now that it is available, I have one further question. Can we customize how the product-specific details appear? For example, could I remove the “Access date” line? I guess I’m wondering which file we’d need to alter in the DAP folder to make changes to this feature. Thanks in advance for pointing us in the right direction!

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Ravi Jayagopal - July 9, 2010

Molly,

Sorry, cannot customize that further at this time. It follows the same pattern as the “Member Links” merge code – except, it displays the details for just 1 product rather than all the Products that a user has access to.

Also wouldn’t recommend doing any custom changes to the code, as it may lock you out of upgrading in the future, as any new versions will overwrite your changes (and trying to keep the changes in sync with every new release is going to result in unnecessary overhead for you).

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Molly Ogren - July 9, 2010

Thanks for the speedy response, Ravi. And, you make a very good point regarding customizations that lock out further upgrading…I sure wouldn’t want to do that as your upgrades bring so many more helpful features! Perhaps the ability to customize this product details feature could be added to a version 3.9 wish list. For now, I am thrilled to be able to separate it from the member links merge code functionality at all. Thank you so much!

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Craig - July 19, 2010

Hi Ravi,

I’m following this script closely because my clients use it and I am configuring one right now for a client.

Where is the documentation for 3.8 changes? On this blog? I used your search box and the above is what I received. Is there more?

thanks,

Craig

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Craig - July 28, 2010

Thanks Molly.

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Adela Rubio - January 1, 2011

Ravi,

How can I customize the link order on the My Accounts page.

For example, I am doing a 21-day event and I have links to each day’s content. I have some bonuses and an unsubscribe page. I’d like the bonus & unsubscribe links to be at the bottom of the links list.

How are you determining the link order? I tried changing dates on the actual post and that wasn’t it.

Thanks!
Adela

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Greg - February 25, 2011

On the User Links page, it would be really helpful if we could customize it. For example, my client doesn’t have any need for the “access start, access end dates” or even the “description” field. If this page used divs and spans with classes/ID’s rather than tables with no classes we could at the very least use css to hide those elements that are not needed (ie. set the visibility to ‘hidden’, font-size & line-height to 0px, etc.).

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Veena Prashanth - February 26, 2011

Greg,
Yes, I agree. Hopefully we will be able to allow better customization of userlinks in DAP 4.2. The DAP 4.1 release is just a few days away.

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Karen Tax - March 27, 2011

I’m wondering how the Logged in URL field works when a user has access to multiple products. What page do they see when they log in?

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Karen Tax - March 27, 2011

Perfect. Thanks!

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Jonny - April 3, 2011

Hi, looks like a cool feature but don’t quite understand the reason for using it. Please can someone explain why i would use this, didn’t quite understand the explanation above (im a bit slow today…)

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Justin Popovic - April 13, 2011

This feature is AMAZING. WOW. So glad I found it. I’ve only been using this software for 12 hours and I’m blown away

Justin

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Just me - September 5, 2011

I don’t understant one thing. I make 20 pages (for members only).

Ok, the new member SignUp. He login. Where are the pages he have to see?

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Kirk Ward - December 13, 2011

@Justin,

You would use it if you wanted one page where the items in one particular product are dripped out.

Say you have a product that is a course. The page would be titled for the course, and the items that drip out could be the chapters in a course.

Another page could have another course.

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Kirk Ward - December 13, 2011

Oops. that last message was for @Jonny, not @Justin.

Sorry, and big apologies for having such a short memory association.

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Kirk Ward - December 13, 2011

@Just Me,

You have to create links to get the users to the pages.

Logged in members will be able access them. Stragers like me won’t. I’d get an error message (unless you disabled it).

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Colette Mason - February 18, 2012

Hi There.

Is this possible, I can’t seem to find an answer 🙂

I have 4 products in my package, people can buy any of the 4 parts they want to.

In the membership area, when the customer has paid for a product, and they click on the menu item for that product, they see the content them have paid for.

If they clicked on one of the other parts they have not paid for, it would be great to show them some sales information saying “are you ready to take part 1 to the next level, this part helps you step up”.

It’s not really a sneak peak, as the sales message would look weird for paid customers….

Is this doable?

Cheers.

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Russell Hall - July 13, 2012

This is a nice feature but it would be a lot better if the shortcode for the products could also be listed on one single page instead of having to have separate pages for each product.
I have created a “My Products” page and in attempting to list the 4 product types that relate to the site, I notice that only one short code will work and that the others show raw code such as “%%PRODUCT_DETAILS_2%%” “%%PRODUCT_DETAILS_3%%” etcetera. Those extra product shortcodes do not expand to either show the product details or the default message “You do not have access to this product” as is the case when they are placed on separate pages.
To overcome this I have had to create links to separate product pages on the “My Products” page and then have inserted the shortcode “%%PRODUCT_DETAILS_%%” on those pages which of course works but it is clunky and somewhat of a hassle to both the member and the site webmaster.

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Veena Prashanth - July 13, 2012

Russell,
See if you ou can use [DAPUserLinks] shortcode.

Details here:
http://DigitalAccessPass.com/documentation/?page=/doc/dap-shortcodes/

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Russell Hall - July 14, 2012

Hi Veena,
I fiddled around for ages with the shortcodes which kept showing only 1 product (first listed by code tags) and the others were raw tags e.g %%PRODUCT_DETAILS_2%%

The most I was able to do was to get the main product to display and then the others showed as “Sorry you do not have any access to this product” even though the DAP user panel did provide access.

All of this was instantly solved when I discovered a new tag %%USERLINKS%% which automatically displays all the products that the user has access to.
It was a simple as placing the %%USERLINKS%% tag in the page and everything was very nicely auto populated!

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Gary D. Collier - December 30, 2012

I’m glad Russell only needed the universal laundry basket %%USERLINKS%% solution.

But his original post (#21) is still unanswered. This deficiency is THE biggest problem I have with DAP: a way to arrange the final products page other than by how they have been originally typed into the “Create New Product” in Manage Products/Levels.

I was hoping that the “ProductLinks” would solve this, but they do not allow the grouping of related products on a single page. I’ve got 30 or so products and I dont’ want them all jumbled up in the laundry basket, nor do I want a separate page for each product. These are both unhelpful. I want to group them around 5 or 6 main product types (ie. 5-6 separate pages would be fine . . . OR be able to group them on a single page. Whatever, just so I can arrange the page(s)!! If the ShortCodes work for this, I have not figured out how.

This ability to arrange the final products is what is missing from DAP and what is sorely needed.

I will love to find out how wrong I am and that there is a simple solution to this. And this must not be taken as griping at Ravi & Vena–not even a little. I use DAP all the time for every internet thing I do and love it.

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Veena Prashanth - December 30, 2012

Gary,

See if you can use the dap shortcode for userlinks (DAPUserLinks).

It allows you to specify productId and you can have multiple tags on a single page.

[DAPUserLinks]

[DAPUserLinks showProductName=”Y” showAccessStartDate=”Y” showAccessEndDate=”Y” showDescription=”Y” showLinks=”Y” orderOfLinks=”NEWESTFIRST” howManyLinks=”10000″ errMsgTemplate=”SHORT” productId=”ALL” dateFormat=”YYYY-MM-DD”]

orderOfLinks

orderOfLinks can have one of two values…

NEWESTFIRST will drip newly dripped links at the top. So day 7 link will be above day 1 link.

OLDESTFIRST will drip newly dripped links towards the bottom. So day 1 link will be above day 7 link.

So, here’s another version of the DAPUserLinks shortcode:

[DAPUserLinks showProductName=”Y” showAccessStartDate=”Y” showAccessEndDate=”Y” showDescription=”Y” showLinks=”Y” orderOfLinks=”OLDESTFIRST” howManyLinks=”10000″ errMsgTemplate=”SHORT” productId=”ALL” dateFormat=”YYYY-MM-DD”]

Thanks,
Veena

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