NATS4 Sites
A NATS site is a website promoted through a NATS affiliate program. Most site administration happens in Sites Admin.
Types of Sites
NATS tracks traffic for several different site types.
- Membership Sites credit affiliates for referring members.
- Store Sites credit affiliates for referring sales made through a shopping cart.
- Third-Party Sites credit affiliates for referring members to a site you don't own, but which you promote as if it were you own site.
- Token Sites credit affiliates for referring token sales made through a biller.
- Webmaster Referral Sites credit affiliates for referring new affiliates.
Site, Join Form, and Tracking basics
NATS tracks incoming traffic to your landing page.
Traffic goes to the NATS tracking script, the landing page, the NATS sign-up form, and the cascading system. (Note: some sites don't use the cascade system.) This lets NATS track referrals, sign-ups, and purchases without hosting your content. A linkdomain hides the NATS server from the surfer.
Each sites holds one or more tours. Each tour has several options.
- The URL lets NATS send traffic to your landing page.
- Join options let surfers join your site.
- The join form template lets you customize your site's join page.
- The Sparta URL applies to users of the discontinued SPARTA product. It sets the Sparta-protected domain for this given site.
- The Language & GeoIP Settings let you specify the Allowed Languages. If the surfer's language isn't allowed, NATS redirects them to the Alternative URL. You may also specify language-specific redirects.
- The Email Events send emails about specific action. To send an email, fill in the subject line and optionally edit the email template.
- Approval, Denial, and Upgrade Actions let you display a customizable template or send surfers to a URL after an approval, denial, or upgrade. Note that the templates themselves are completely blank by default.
Postback URLs
You may specify postback URLs for a variety of other events:
- Recurring Billing (Rebill) transaction,
- Credit (refund) transaction,
- Chargeback transaction,
- Member Expirations,
- Username Verification Posts, and
- Pre-join form submission posts.
NATS posts all related information about the above events to its postback URL. For example, all of the pre-join information is sent to the pre-join postback URL when a surfer submits the pre-join form.
User Management URL
NATS posts to the user management URL every time it changes the access permissions for a member. You can use a user management script to maintain an external member authentication database or password file.
NATS comes with an example User Management script in nats/includes/htpass.php. Posts to this script expect return values in a particular format; please read the Site User Management article for details.
Biller Details
The Biller Details section lists site-specific options for the billers that may be used on this site. The Biller Instructions menu on the right side of this page contains specific instructions for each biller.
Join Options
Join Options represent the memberships and products your surfers purchase. Join options have the following attributes:
- Free Pre-Initial check box lets you indicate that there is a free period included before the Initial period and charge for this join option. Your biller must support this.
- Join Form Text sets the text that's displayed on the pre-join form for this option.
- No Old Members rejects sign-ups by accounts that purchased trial or full memberships before.
- All Tours check box puts this option on all of this site's tours
Token Options
On token sites, the join options fields don't contain any information about rebills. The purchase details box lets you set the price point and number of tokens; for example: $10 for 3 tokens. One token should correspond to one unit of whatever your system sells; for example, a token can be a minute or a video play.
Default Payouts
The Default Payouts icon lets you override the default payout settings. Note: these settings may be overridden by affiliate specific payouts. You can alter the payouts for each Program, Join Option, or Site, enable disabled join options, or disable enabled join options on a per-program basis, disable trial join options from Pay Per Sign-up programs, or specify the default join option for your join forms for this site
Site Partners
NATS lets you turn affiliates into partners that share in the total revenue of a specific site. You can set the percentage the partner gets paid and deduct expenses. Sites may have more than one site partner, but NATS won't stop you from paying your site partners more than 100% of your total revenue.
