About: Benny Lewis

No thoughts at all?

Hello?? Can someone please help me with this?
I just need to know where I can make the link change. I’ve had this dead link on my homepage for ages now :(

I tried several PHP plugins to no avail. It doesn’t make sense that it would suddenly stop working like this. I have the plugin on my other site and it’s working fine there, even on new posts, so it hasn’t spontaneously broken for everyone.

No other thoughts or suggestions?

Hi Cristián. I haven’t ever used the visual editor on this page, and I used the HTML one on the new page to test some basic PHP code to display a date and it isn’t working.

I’m only in the HTML editor, and resaving in that interface does nothing, but old pages are still working fine. As I said, I tried disabled all unnecessary plugins and all new ones I added in recently. Other thoughts?

Solved. Not sure why it wasn’t working before, but just adding &autoplay=1 to the end of the URL with the plugin did the trick. I’m still not sure whey it plays by default without that on one page, but no worries. All is good now. I thought this might be an s2member conflict in some way, but that wasn’t the case so sorry for the irrelevant question.

Thanks!

OK, I think I might have found the problem. It’s annoying how much time I wasted to get here, but hopefully this will help someone else in future.

Using VWO on a traditional A/B test, where a single page has particular points altered (as you may have seen me discuss in a different thread), means that the page is actually run OFF SERVER. I wasn’t aware of this, but clearly that messed up the use of s2member and its buttons (as well as my affiliate tracking system).

So, using the same system, I’ve created a SPLIT TEST. This is subtely different in that it automatically redirects people to two URLs on my site, and as such everything is displayed on my server and now the buttons are working fine.

Since all it does is randomly split to two URLs rather than dynamically change content on arrival, I’m starting to think that this plugin was a huge waste of time, since I can get conversion data on Google Analytics and have a simpler plugin split traffic randomly. For future reference, this is my recommendation to avoid VWO with s2member!

Are you comparing split test A and the /faq/ page? There is also a /frequently-asked-questions/ page that is pertinent to split test B.

In both the main page of A and /faq/, this is the code being used

[s2Member-PayPal-Button level="3" success="http://www.speakfromday1.com/thank-you/" ccaps="" desc="Speak from Day 1 + Full Language Hacking Guide package" ps="paypal" lc="" cc="USD" dg="0" ns="1" custom="speakfromday1.com" ta="0" tp="0" tt="D" ra="97" rp="1" rt="L" rr="BN" rrt="" rra="1" image="http://speakfromday1.com/wp-content/themes/OptimizePress/images/addtocart-style1.png" output="button" /]

It’s precisely the same, character for character. If you are getting different readings from them, it’s possible that my A/B split test is interfering in some way, although I don’t see how.

Just wanted to say that I solved this problem! If anyone is interested, what I did was to simply write the two sales pages one after the other, with the different links required within each one. Then in the A/B test I made it such that each test would display just one half of the page.

This meant disabling the default of displaying the entire page, but it was way simpler and gets the job done and is working great! So if someone else wants to try this, just put BOTH buttons on the same page and remove one or the other in your tests.

Consider the thread closed. Thanks!

OK, I do have a follow up question in the end. It’s looking likely this will be the last one if I can get it to work.

VWO requires that you edit the page from the outside, in its own interface separate to WordPress. This means that you can change all the text and images that it sees, appropriate to the visual or text differences of a particular test group. You cannot however edit the button code, as that is hidden to the outside.

This isn’t a huge problem if I can just get a variable to be sent from one interface to the other. You can edit HTML within their interface, so I tried to use the little PHP I know to implement

<?php $group=1 ?>

or

<?php $group=2 ?>

at the start of the page, and then just call this variable within the button code in WordPress and that will help me get a particular goal as

http://mysite.com/thank-you?group="<?php echo $group ?>"

, so I know I could add this variable into the URL too.

But the problem is that their interface supports javascript API code but NOT PHP code. Their default javascript code to be edited is:

<script type='text/javascript'>
// The following API function is called just before a variation is inserted. The variation is passed to the function as a (wrapped up) DOM element. Control is a DOM element on the page which will be replaced by the variation. Remove all comments here for faster loading tests. 

_vwo_api_section_callback[VWO_SECTION_ID] = function(variation, control)
{
	// jQuery is available as shorthand vwo_$. Example: vwo_$(variation).css('font-size', 'larger'); 
	
	// INSERT YOUR CODE HERE
	
}
</script>

Is there some way to allow Javascript and PHP to play together nicely? i.e. create a variable within Javascript on their interface, but call it in PHP on my interface so that I can add it into the URL?

My other question is this (because I’m not so great with coding as you may have guessed). Will that variable only be stored for that user while they are on that page, or can it stay with them for their current session? There are 3 pages for them to look at, each one with buy buttons, and I want to make sure they are clicking the buy button appropriate to their goal group.

I’m pretty sure this is the very last hurdle for me to get over and then I can have a fully operational A/B test!

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by  Benny Lewis.

Thanks for the specific details Cristián! Last question:

Is that thank you page fully secured, and only accessible after payment? (If not by default, how can I be sure of it not being accessible by simply copying the URL elsewhere) If it is, then I can simply add the Free Registration Form on it, and I’d have everything I need with a custom URL for the sign-up page.

Appreciate a quick hint and then I should hopefully have all the information I need. Thanks!!

Thanks for the reply.

“Well, I’m not experienced with VWO, so I’m not sure what they give you in order to track those things.” – that’s the point, it’s not about what THEY give me, it’s what s2member gives me! They rely on URL appending (like *?*utm_campaign=your_campaign* ), or an unspecified script being run, and everything else I listed as proof of a conversion. They presume this is part of the site’s set-up in some way.

There are no separate URLs to be called, or pixels or anything of the like that I can see.

I need s2member to produce some data that they can latch on to. What kind of URL is the user sent to after a successful payment? Can I check this without actually making a payment myself? http://www.mysite.com/signupform.php?success or what?

And most importantly, how can I add some code to the payment button [s2Member-PayPal-Button level="3"....] (at the moment I can add price, currency, level of access provided etc.) that can demonstrate that it is either funnel A or funnel B, when they arrive on either the a) sign up page to enter their username and password, immediately after payment or b) the welcome page.

The only thing I can think of is to create different access levels for the two funnels, and ultimately give them the same file access but run a script on the welcome page that is level restricted, to take advantage of the custom conversion option.

The problem is that I don’t know what script to run for this, and I’d rather not use an entire level for people for this test, so for me the absolute easiest option would be if some code in the button controlled SOMETHING in the actual URL itself for sign-up, even if if there was some way to just add on a ?groupA or ?groupB to the URL, or a second slightly different version of the sign-up page or whatever.

Do you know what I mean? It’s not about tracking pixels and the like (that I’m aware of), simply a particular URL being accessed. Hopefully you have some suggestions, that involve either a small change to my button code or an understandable use of the API option.

Sorry the FTP details I sent weren’t working, perhaps I typed the password wrong. I’ve tried again so you should see it now. Thanks for running that full diagnostic!

My hosting company is dreamhost. Thanks for investigating!!

Then why am I getting the errors, and why are so many other people getting it too? Browser settings? IP address? There must be something.

It does indeed work fine for some people (why not every single person ends up emailing me), but there is a clear problem happening for others. Is there some way to analyse why I’m not being authenticated when clicking the link?

As the system currently is, it’s a lot of work for me because I have to manually email Dropbox links to people and write an apology that they didn’t get instant access to the files as advertised. I’m lucky they aren’t asking for refunds because that’s false advertising on my part.