More New Admin Updates based on Vendor Feedback!

  • Jason@DPD
  • January 29, 2019
  • 1 Comment

We’ve received feedback from many vendors about the new admin and its been mostly positive, but a few have asked us for tweaks here and there to make their life easier. In this update we have another round of minor changes to make things easier for everyone!

Made it easier to disable Integrations and Payment Methods

Previously form validation (making sure all the fields were filled out correctly) required API keys, etc. filled out in integrations and payment methods even if you were just trying to disable them on your store.

This wasn’t ideal, for example if you wanted to remove your credentials from DPD, so we made it where you can save them them as disabled with blank fields. If the integration is enabled you still need to fill out the required fields to make the integration or payment method work (because why would we save an active integration in a non-working state?) but now you can disable them and leave fields blank.

Mobile Layout Tweaks

With the new admin we’re trying to move the entire DPD admin to a mobile friendly layout that works on phones, iPads, etc. We’re about 80% there (some of the data tables are big and we’re working on getting them mobile friendly) and we’ve done some tweaks to button layout, etc. so that everything lines up and wraps correctly on mobile devices.

Specifically, we’ve fixed the button layout for saving pages on mobile, which was a little wonky, to use “block” buttons on small devices:

Easy clicky buttons on the small screens, natch.

This update wins the award for “the most work that nobody will notice” with 482 changes just to make buttons look a little different.

More Key Product Improvements

Vendors use DPD to deliver product keys it for a multitude of uses- delivering activation keys, phone card codes, gift card codes, keyed URLs as unique links, coupon codes, and all sorts of other things.

In the last update we added a key count display to the product list to make it easier for key sellers to see how much key inventory they had left:

Color Coded Key Inventory display on product list

This was great, but for vendors who deliver the same key to every customer or keys generated at an external URL or with Aquatic Prime it was annoying- it would show a red 1 or 0. So, we fixed that by adding different icons for “deliver the same key to everybody” and external methods and added helpful tooltips to tell you whats going on with product keys:

“Infinity key” for deliver the same to everyone and a “server key” for external generation!

Per Product Key Inventory Warning Threshold

We also added a per-product low key warning threshold, so you can manually override DPD’s sales velocity based warnings and set your own limit:

This field is optional- you can leave it blank or 0 to use DPD’s built in sales velocity based 7 day warning threshold.

Quick Actions Menu added to Product List

Based on popular demand, we’ve added a quick actions menu to the product list so you can jump right to a product’s specific task:

Jump right to what you need with the new Quick Actions menu.

You can still click on the product name or View button to see product detail and see everything about a product including stats, past product updates, existing fulfillments and price points, etc. but hopefully this makes basic tasks for people that know exactly what they want to do quicker and easier!

Other Minor Tweaks and Changes in this update:

  • Fixed the expired account message on the Dashboard when you no longer have a DPD subscription
  • Fixed a misplaced form tag on vendor/manageaffiliate
  • Made the Zapier link on integrations open in a new tab/window
  • Removed some dummy text that made it in to production on one obscure tooltip on one page that we’re pretty sure nobody ever noticed.
  • Depreciated 2CheckOut because even though they account for 0.059% of checkouts they are responsible for waaaaaay more than that in support requests, they have 3 different systems and it’s a crap shoot which one people are on, and their support desk will only send us canned responses.

Delivering Media to Mobile Devices

  • Jason@DPD
  • July 8, 2012
  • 1 Comment

Here at DPD we often get asked what is the best format to deliver a file to Mobile Devices. These include Android, Blackberry, and iOS devices like the iPad, iPhone, and iPod.

Delivering Files to Apple Devices

The bottom line: You can’t without special apps.

iOS devices, including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod do not have a user accessible file system. It’s not like a PC or Mac where you just download the file with the browser to your desktop. There is no way for a user of an Apple mobile device to “download” or “save” a file to their device from the internet without a specific app that is associated with that file type and includes the ability to save it.  

For example, if buyers have iBooks and you’re selling a compatible PDF, they’ll probably be able to save it (if they know how).   If you’re delivering a zip file that contains a PDF, chances are they won’t be able to open it unless they have an app that handles zip files and allows them to save and open them.

There are free apps available in the iTunes App Store like iDownloader Pro Free that will let you download just about anything, but there is no guarantee that buyers will have an app like that on their device or that once they download the file they’ll have an app that will play it!  As you can guess, delivery gets complicated when every single file type needs to have an associated app.

This is not a limitation of DPD. This is a limitation of Apple that affects every single web page, shopping cart provider, and content delivery service on the internet. With DPD the user will be able to stream compatible media types immediately to their iOS device, but they will never be able to save directly to the device without an associated app.

Because of the above reasons, iOS devices only have one option to get the media on to their device that works 100% of the time- to download it to their PC or Mac and use the iTunes proprietary system to move the media over to the device.

Delivering Files to Android and BlackBerry Devices

Android and BlackBerry devices can save files directly to the device. Your only considerations with these devices are to

1. Deliver a file that is compatible for playback

2. Be aware that the download speeds of mobile data connections to these devices (3G, 4G, whatever) will be slower in most cases than home or office broadband connections, and encode / pack your files with this in mind (aim for a smaller size).

So What’s the Best Format for Mobile Devices?

As a vendor, if you want to deliver files that work with the vast majority of mobile devices, including Android, BlackBerry, and iOS devices (once they are transferred through iTunes to the device from a computer) you should deliver the file in a format that can be played by the device. Below are the most cross-compatible formats for all mobile devices:

Documents:  PDF, epub, mobi (it really depends on the reading app they’re using)

Video: MP4 – H.264 Video / AAC Audio

Audio: MP3 – All bitrates are acceptable, including VBR

References:

Comparison of e-book Formats: Supporting Platforms
iOS Supported Media Types

Android Supported Media Types
BlackBerry Supported Media Types