DPD Blog

Its no secret- here at DPD we love being able to breathe. That's why we've partnered with CO2Stats to to offset our emissions with EPA-Certified, audited renewable energy. Digital delivery is already the most ecologically conscious delivery option on the planet- no trees get chopped down, no gasoline is burned in delivery trucks, and no fuel is consumed keeping inventory climate controlled. We've taken it one step further by offsetting our CO2 emissions with clean renewable power. CO2Stats calculates the combined electricity used by computers visiting this site, the servers providing it, and the networks that connect them. CO2Stats then helps to make this site more energy efficient (and load faster), and purchases renewable energy to neutralize the carbon emissions due to generation of that electricity. CO2 Stats calculates the CO2 footprint of the DPD servers, vendors using the service- even the buyers who purchase products! We then offset these...

Several months ago we added the DPD Storefront system- our own twist on multi-item checkout. DPD Storefronts allow any DPD account to have an unlimited number of customized shopping carts, allowing you to use one DPD subscription to sell on many sites all with their own customizations. However, this new Storefront system was not compatible with the legacy Standalone "Buy Now!" single product purchase buttons. This lead to being two separate product creation flows, two seperate product lists (Storefront and Standalone), and a lot of duplication. We always kinda hated that- it's pretty confusing to new users. To correct it we've released a minor update to DPD that unifies the product lists and product creation process. When DPD vendors log in to the Dashboard they'll see a new set of options down the side- one "Create New Product" link and one "View Products" link: the new, simpler dashboard sidebar The...

We've just released a minor update to the DPD-Cart Wordpress plugin that corrects a JSON error when the site hosting the Wordpress blog was using an older PHP version. DPD users can upgrade to DPD-Cart v1.2 automatically in their wp-admin or downloading the updated plugin from the Wordpress.org DPD-Cart Plugin Page.

In order to provide expanded product storage space to DPD as well as provide for faster, more reliable downloads for vendors we're in the process of moving product storage to Amazon S3, a distributed content delivery network. Amazon "Simple Storage Service" (S3) is a highly scalable, reliable, fast data storage and content delivery network that uses the same infrastructure Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. What does this mean for DPD Vendors? More reliability. Using a unqiue caching strategy DPD will maintain and sync local and S3 copies of files to prevent any network or hardware related issues. This will also reduce load on the DPD server, providing better service to DPD users. More download speed. Instead of customers competing for bandwidth on the DPD servers when there is high demand, now every customer will download at the full speed of their internet connection from...

Some vendors prefer have a single product website with a simple "Buy Now!" instant checkout button. DPD allows for the creation of Standalone Products to suit this need. Standalone products are commonly found on "Pinch Pages" and for products that use affiliate systems such as ClickBank. DPD Standalone Products: Function exactly like PayPal "Buy Now!" buttons for the customer- instant checkout without a cart Automatically deliver the customers product after purchase Allow for integration with PayPal and 2CheckOut processors Allow for integration with ClickBank and PayDotCom affiliate systems Do not have coupon codes or multi-item checkout For multi-item websites we strongly recommend you create Storefront Products for use with the DPD Storefront multi-item cart checkout system. Important Note: DPD Standalone Product buttons completely replace all other checkout buttons on the page. You must not have standard PayPal or ClickBank generated buy buttons on the page. If a customer begins checkout...

We've updated the DPD-Cart plugin with a couple fixes and tweaks: Full IE6 compatibility Corrected a double-slash "//" in some generated URLs. Corrected an API SSL issue some users were having when their host's server was missing some root certificates. This is a recommended update for all DPD-Cart plugin users. To update simply overwrite the dpd-wpcart plugin folder with the new version in the ZIP file. No configuration or template changes are needed. Get the updated DPD-Cart v1.1 from the DPD-Cart Plugin Page

Smashing Magazine has a great post on common mistakes made in ecommerce design. Some key mistakes that people who sell downloads in particular might suffer from: Hiding contact information Long and confusing checkout process Requiring an account to order A poor shopping cart design Confusing navigation Not including store and shipping policies Luckily DPD addresses many of these points- checkout using the DPD storefront system is quick and easy with only 3 pages- cart, payment, and delivery. No account is required to order using the DPD system, and the DPD shopping cart follows Smashing's recommendation to load an item in the cart right on the product page without taking the customer to another site or page. In the course of supporting vendors we look at a lot of sales sites. The most common problems we see amongst DPD vendors are lack of contact information and store / shipping policies. Lack...

We've just released the DPD-Cart plugin for Wordpress. The DPD-Cart plugin allows you to easily integrate a DPD Storefront with your Wordpress blog. It features a View Cart / Checkout sidebar Widget and easy product insertion in to posts and pages with no copying and pasting of button code. Get the plugin and more details from the download page: DPD-Cart Plugin Our friends at Inspired Mag have also created a tutorial with step-by-step instructions and screenshots showing how to get up and running with the DPD-Cart plugin. Check out: Start Selling Downloads from your Wordpress Blog in 5 Minutes

DPD has a new blog located at http://www.digitalproductdelivery.com/blog Come check it out and leave a comment- we'll be posting system updates, how-to articles, and more!

DPD offers a PDF buyer tracking feature that automatically marks PDF products with the buyer Name, Email, and Transaction ID. This helps to prevent sharing sharing of your file because people have an aversion to mass distribution of their personally identifiable information. Well, everyone except for that LifeLock Guy and it didn't turn out too well for him. The best part about PDF Buyer Tracking? It's turned on with a single checkbox during product setup! There are only a few conditions to using the PDF Buyer Tracking feature: You must have a DPD Paid account plan- this is a premium feature not available to free accounts! Your product file must be a single PDF upload and not contained in a ZIP, RAR, ISO, or any other archive file. Your PDF must be a Acrobat 5 compatible file. Your PDF must not have an edit password set in the PDF file....