New Year, New Admin

  • Jason@DPD
  • January 7, 2019
  • 2 Comments

Last week we warned told people that we were releasing a totally redesigned admin and today we made good on our threat promise!

After hours of annoying database updates and migrations and a bunch of boring stuff that nobody really cares about we’re happy to share that the upgrade is complete and live!

We thought about showing you a bunch of screenshots of the new admin, but you can just log in and see it for yourself! Instead, here are some tips to help you get acclimated to the new layout:

New Admin Navigation Tips

The new admin has a simplified main navigation and we’ve reduced the 25+ items down to logical “modules” for each section. All the modules follow the this same design pattern:

  1. Module
  2. Primary action button and secondary action menu on the module “index” page

For example, to do anything with a product (create, edit, delete, get button code, copy, import, whatever) go to Product in the left menu, then either do the primary action on the page (create new product) or select your secondary function (like FTP import) from the menu at the top of the page. Or, open the product and do all existing product related functions there.

Store Options

We’ve consolidated store options that used to be in the theme and sprinkled around DPD in to two main menu items- Store Setup (store name, URL, contact emails, etc.) and Checkout which handles everything that used to be in theme, cart text blocks, store logo, policy pages, error pages, up-sell and cross sell text, etc. No more digging through 20 pages to find options!

Where did __________ go?!

We’re going to try to answer a few of these right off the bat to save everyone time!

  • Switch Store, Add new store —> Change Stores link at the top of the page
  • Add new product, FTP import, bulk edit products, deleted products —> Product page, menu at the top right
  • Purchases —> Orders
  • Import Customers, export customers —> Customer page, menu at the top right
  • Preferences Page —> Settings / Store Setup
  • Policies Page —> Settings / Checkout
  • Affiliate Options —> Affiliate menu item, store and global settings
  • Checkout Setup —> Settings / Checkout
  • Email Templates —> Settings / Store Emails
  • Theme —> Settings / Checkout
  • Individual page checkout settings —> Settings / Checkout

Having Trouble or want to give Feedback?

We’re in the process of updating all the KB articles and tutorial videos with the new admin, so if anyone has any questions on how to find anything or has any issues please yell at our support team via live chat or support ticket- they’ll be happy to help!

We welcome any and all feedback, good or bad. Please drop us a line, send us a chat, or leave us a comment here. We’ve already received a few suggestions and we’re going to do our best to tweak things to make them easier for everyone!

Coming Next Week: All New Vendor Admin

  • Jason@DPD
  • January 2, 2019
  • 4 Comments

We’re making this post ahead of the update (scheduled for Monday, Jan 7th) so everyone will have a bit of a heads up before the log in and everything looks different. We know change is kinda scary, but we promise this one is a good one. We’ve made it easier to find things, cleaned up the design and navigation, and gave everything a modern facelift!

Simplified Navigation

DPD’s navigation was getting cluttered with years of adding new features to our top-level navigation menu. Most stores had over 25 menu items in the main menu alone, and then sometimes multiple sub-pages and menus to get to the option you needed. It was a real drag, and features are cool and all but if you can’t find them when you need them that’s no good either.

So, we’ve cleaned that up quite a bit!

The new navigation shows what module you’re working in at a glance so you don’t get lost and is greatly simplified so you’re not spending 30 seconds scanning through a giant list of options trying to find the thing you need.

Primary and Secondary Actions

We’ve also refined navigation within modules- Instead of having 4 or 5 top level navigation links for product related functions, now you simply go to the Product list and either do the primary action (the green button) or open up the secondary action menu to do other things.

This same “primary action button, secondary actions menu” system is used throughout DPD. For example: the product detail page which is now the one-stop shop for all product related functions. We’ve tried to make all interactions in DPD linear, with a clear straight line to what you want to do instead of 3 different ways to get to a specific option.

Store Option Consolidation

Previously, we’ve been tacking on checkout options on the theme. You want to turn on the coupon field? You had to go to Theme > Edit Current Theme > Find and open the the checkout page options > Edit and save.

This was terrible for a number of reasons, mainly that it was impossible to find anything and you had to write us a support ticket to figure out where to turn on core functionality of DPD.

So, we fixed it! Now all checkout settings are on a page thats under Settings > Checkout. I know, crazy right?! No more clicking 3 layers deep in to the theme system and going through 12 pages of options to find the one you want.

We’ve also consolidated options like the actual store theme, store policies, error page messages, cart page text blocks, etc. to this page to further reduce menu items and places you have to look.

A million other updates too!

We’ve moved the customer view to a timeline layout that lets you see when notes and purchases were made in chronological order, and added stats like Lifetime Value (LTV) and lifetime purchases. We also try to pull in their Gravatar if they’ve set one up so you can put a face with a name, as shown by the ruggedly good looking customer below.

Pages like the Payment Methods page and Integrations page are cleaned up and easier to read and interact with and reflect how most people use DPD.


All in all, this update has touched every single page of the DPD vendor admin and we’ve spent hundreds of hours of development time working on it. We hope everyone likes it! As always, if anyone has a question about where to find something, needs to report a bug, or just general feedback please send us a support ticket or start a live chat from the admin and we’ll do our best to help!

Making Great eBook Covers on a Budget

  • Jason@DPD
  • February 23, 2018
  • 1 Comment

One of the biggest things you can do to improve sales and give a professional appearance to your information products is have a great cover / product photo for your downloadable product. In the case of ebooks or PDFs, this means you need a cover you can use on your website, on your product in DPD to be shown in the cart and customer portal, and when marketing your product. In this post we’ll go over some options for creating covers and show you a simple workflow to create your own.

Continue reading Making Great eBook Covers on a Budget