Post-Installation Steps
From TMM Wiki
Jump to navigationJump to searchThe following guide is intended for NEW clients who are looking to take the necessary steps to bring their fresh NATS4 installation live. It will outline the steps needed to make sure that the core aspects of their new installation are set up properly and working.
Note: Please keep in mind that your first month's lease begins as soon as the initial installation is complete. Thus, it is very important that you follow these next steps in order to move your fresh install to a "live" status as soon as possible.
The following steps provide you basic instructions you need to go live; steps marked with a "+" indicate that this step can be done at any time, and are not dependent on the other steps:
- Schedule your Part I walkthrough with Michelle. She can be reached at (732) 385-1536 x1116 10:00AM - 5:30PM US Eastern time Monday - Friday. Alternatively, you can reach her via ICQ at 215542318 during the same hours.
- Create and input all of your desired Billers, Sites, Programs, Join Options, and PayVia Types into your NATS install.
- + Start templating your NATS affiliate area and join pages. The amount of time you spend on this step can vary greatly depending on how much you want to customize.
- If you like our default templates, you can make modifications to the affiliate area or join pages with the CSS color picker.
- If you have your own design concept and want to build your affiliate area from the ground up this will require you to modify the templates available in the Skins and Templates Admin.
- If you already have an existing HTML design that you want to integrate with Smarty (the templating engine used by NATS), we can provide a value added service where we will add the Smarty code to your HTML design at an hourly rate. If you are interested in this service, please submit a support ticket.
- Complete documentation on how to properly construct your NATS templates can be found at http://wiki.toomuchmedia.com
- + Alter your available tours and adtools to point to any NATS signup pages instead of your old join pages, and pass along the corresponding NATS code in the URL where appropriate. We recommend that you make copies of your previously existing tours/adtools, edit the copies, then move these tours/adtools to your live URL's when you are ready to go live.
- **IF YOU HAVE AFFILIATES THAT NEED TO BE IMPORTED** We will help you import your affiliates from your previous affiliate tracking program. The cost for the initial import is included in your setup and training fee.
- We require at least the following information in order to properly import your affiliates:
- username
- password
- payvia type
- programs they belong to
******Optional information:****** - Referring affiliate
- Name, address, and any other personal info
- We will either need this information via a flat dump file, or via a direct connection to your old database. A Web admin access will NOT work in this case.
- Once you have all of this information available, please open a support ticket stating that you would like your affiliates imported, as well as where we can find this information.
- We will also redirect any links from your old affiliate program to your NATS installation. Please provide an example of an old linkcode, as well as any details regarding the example in your affiliate import ticket.
- Assuming we have all of the data we need immediately, the affiliate import process takes approximately 1 week from the time we start working on the import.
- We require at least the following information in order to properly import your affiliates:
- **IF YOU HAVE MEMBERS THAT NEED TO BE IMPORTED** We will also help you import your members who joined your sites prior to your NATS install. Please note the following:
- The affiliate import MUST be completed first if you wish to import both members and affiliates. This is so we can accurately tie members to their original referring affiliates.
- You must first obtain a dump of your members from ALL of your billers. We need at least the following information on each of your members in order to properly import them:
- username
- password
- referring affiliate (if any)
- site
- program
- join option (a.k.a. price point)
- biller subscription id
- expiration date
- status (active or expired)
- Once you've obtained ALL of this information, please place a SEPARATE support ticket asking to import your members and how we can gain access to this necessary information (Please do not post SSH information to the ticket directly).
- Assuming we have all of the data we need immediately, the member import process takes approximately 1 week from the time we start working on the import.
- Once these steps are completed, the next step is to test your tracking/signup/cascades/billers. We ask that you run transactions using LIVE (currently active) credit cards, as test credit cards will not work. This is because many billers do not post complete information back to NATS when using their test credit cards. When the transaction goes through, make sure that this test sale gets associated with the correct affiliate. Also make sure you test rebills, credits, and chargeback transactions as well for ALL of your billers.
- The next step is to set up your member authentication software to work alongside NATS.
- If you plan on routing 100% of your traffic through NATS, it would be best to set up your member authentication software to query the NATS database directly. This can be done by using a method similar to what is outlined in our MySQL Auth article:
- If you are performing an action that requires outside actions on your members, or for some reason need to manage an access list outside of NATS, you will have to configure NATS to post user management calls to your outside system. For details on how to do this, please visit our Site User Management article.
- Once you have tested your billers and your member-related settings (tracking, signup, etc.), you can move on to your NATS affiliate areas, tours, and signup pages to ensure that they look and behave the way you want them to.
- You're almost done! The next step is to follow the NATS Go Live Checklist found here: http://wiki.toomuchmedia.com/index.php/NATS4_Go_Live_Checklist . Although there may be some duplicate steps/items in this list that you have completed beforehand, our Go Live Checklist is meant for double-checking essential elements of setting up your NATS install.
- In order to import any affiliates and/or members that have joined from the time of your import to the time you go live, a TMM tech will have to complete this process. Please place a support ticket at least 2 business days in advance of you going live, so we will be able to import any missing affiliates/members just before you go live. Keep in mind that any imports done after this final "catch up" import will be charged at our hourly rate.
- When you are ready to go live, have your host switch any DNS/tour settings over to NATS as necessary.
We hope that you find this guide helpful and informative in setting up your NATS installation as a powerful reporting tool. Please schedule your walkthroughs as soon as possible, and we look forward to working with you!
