Internet Profits Blog

aMember is a great membership site script. But, it can be expensive at $180 and it supposedly only works with 1 domain.

Here is how you can use aMember with just 1 install, on multiple domains, and staying within the terms of the product license.

Presumably, you already have aMember installed on a domain if you are reading this.

For your second website, in your cpanel create your second website as an add-on domain for the same web hosting account as your first domain. (If you only have one web hosting account this is your default situation). This tip only works within the same web hosting account.

Within aMember create a new product. For the new product the script asks for a url. Give it the full url of your second website and subdirectory you want to protect.

Example: domain2.com/membership/

Now, within aMember you need to protect the folder.

Typically, the option used will be new_rewrite, which presents users with a nice login form to login to your membership area. That will not work.

Instead, choose the htpasswd protection option. This will give users a popup box to enter their username and password. Not nearly as nice looking as the new_rewrite created screen. But you’re also saving $180 and only needing to update and use one script install, instead of juggling multiple script installs.

The protected url to enter on the Protect Folder screen will be

/home/YOURWEBHOSTINGACCOUNTNAME/public_html/YOUR2NDADDONDOMAIN.COM/MEMBERSHIPFOLDER/

Example: /home/bob/public_html/domain2.com/membership/

That’s it. Very easy.

Since the aMember script stays installed on only 1 domain you are not violating the software license agreement:

“aMember license grants you the right to run one instance (a single installation) of the Software on one web server and one web site for each license purchased. Each license may power one instance of the Software on one domain. For each installed instance of the Software, a separate license is required.”

Depending on your setup, you may want to modify some of the default emails sent by the script so they are generic and do not refer to a specific site. This can be done in the admin area under Global then Email.

There may also be some membership related files you will want to put in a frame so it is not apparent the user is on a different domain.

Since the login page has a link to the main domain registration page, which may be odd for the second domain, you can delete the link under templates for the login page.

Note: due to the multiple domains there may be issues with staying logged in or accessing membership admin pages if the user’s web browser does not accept third party cookies

I’ll have to admit that my “smart phone” is not an iPhone or an Android. In fact, it still says Cingular on it – a company that has not existed for many years.

It’s old, small and still works for me.

But problems arise when all my friends are communicating by text, and it takes me an hour to peck out a text message. And my allowed message is very limited.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could send text messages from your computer?

I found it is possible by knowing the person’s phone number and carrier, and sending them an email. But it wasn’t very convenient or nice looking.

Fortunately, I just found a web service that makes this real convenient and easy to do. Here is a video showing how it works:

Texting.ly.

I can see where this would be real convenient, especially for some businesses. Manage your texts to customers and others from your office without needing to use someone’s personal phone – which can raise privacy and legal issues.

Here is the link to Texting.ly.

After installing the Piwik web analytics software, and using the default JavaScript tracking, it was quickly apparent that the tracking was miserable.  Using other trackers at the same time, plus of course testing it with my own clicks, hardly anything was registering. Not sure why I was having a problem with the JavaScript, after testing it on several websites.

Fortunately, that all changed when I shifted to using the php api tracker.

Here is what I did:

- Deleted the JavaScript tracking code from the tracking text on each page.

- Added the default php tracking code and made the following changes:

1. Added the url to my Piwik tracking script and reference to where the piwiktracker file is.  See the note below for more about this.

2. Added php code to capture the file name of the page being tracked.

3. Changed the image being echoed to refer to the captured file name instead of the default – This title will appear in the report Actions > Page titles – which was showing that exact text in my report instead of the actual page title. My ‘fix’ does not show the page title, but the file name, which is perfect for my use.

The change for #2 and #3 results in this php code below the initialization code:

function curPageName() {
 return substr($_SERVER["SCRIPT_NAME"],strrpos($_SERVER["SCRIPT_NAME"],"/")+1);
}

$title = curPageName();

echo '<img src="'. Piwik_getUrlTrackPageView( $idSite = 5, $customTitle = $title) . '" alt="" />';

Remember the idsite has to be different for each site with a number matching the website in the control panel.

Note: Since I have multiple domains to track on one host I installed the piwiktracker file in the root domain of the host (after adding the link to my piwik install in the file) so that this only has to be installed once.

Bottom line: for each domain to be tracked add the new tracking code, remembering to change the idsite number.  That’s it.  Now it’s as simple as adding the default JavaScript and piwik is working so much better for me.

Update:

The above is using the api advanced image tracker.

The problem with the advanced image tracker is that it leaves a reference in the source code of each page referring back to the main piwik install. Not so great for security, it lets anyone find all your sites – and that includes Google.

But this tracking is solved using the api http request.

The http request has the same problem with the page name, so here is my new code (below the beginning lines telling the script where the piwiktracker file is and where the script is installed:

$piwikTracker = new PiwikTracker( $idSite = 1 );
function curPageName() {
 return substr($_SERVER["SCRIPT_NAME"],strrpos($_SERVER["SCRIPT_NAME"],"/")+1);
}
$title = curPageName();
$piwikTracker->doTrackPageView($title);