Frontdesk

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Documentation

Frontdesk Installation, Setup, and Use

Control Panel

Overview

The Frontdesk control panel is your admin area. You use it to manage your accounts and change Frontdesk's settings. You can sign in to the control panel at this URL on your site (Replace "example.com" with your site's domain name):

http://example.com/frontdesk/app/admin.php

Note: Frontdesk automatically checks for expired accounts each time you sign in to the control panel.

Dashboard

You land on the Dashboard each time you sign in to the control panel. You can perform the following actions from the dashboard page:

• See how many accounts you have altogether along with the number of active, inactive, and expired accounts. You may click on an account type to jump to the "View Accounts" page listing accounts that match the type.

  More on the 3 account types:

  • Members with active accounts can sign in to your members area.
  • Members with inactive accounts cannot sign in. Their account is inactive because they've gone over your IP/hostname limit or you have suspended their account from the "View accounts" page.
  • Members with an expired account can't sign in either. The expiration date for their account has passed.
• Export all your accounts to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet containing a tab-separated table of your members' data.
• Subscribe to an RSS feed of members' changes to accounts. The feed is updated whenever members sign up, update their profile, etc.

Add an account

Click "Add" from the control panel menu to navigate to the "Add an account" page. Your members can sign up for themselves using a Frontdesk registration form, or you can create accounts for them here.

To add an account, enter a user's name, email address, username and password, and the number of days they should be able to access your members area.

Click "Add more details" link near the bottom of the page to fill in any custom fields you may have created. (See the "Settings" section below for more details.)

Note: Only the username and password fields are required. To create accounts that never expire, enter 0 (zero) in the "Days" field or leave it blank.

View accounts

The "View" menu option leads to the "View accounts" page. Here's what you can do there:

• Click "Logins" to go to the "View logins" page.
• You'll initially see all your accounts, regardless of their status. You can click the links on the far right to view active, inactive, or expired accounts.
• Click one of the column header links (Username, Name, Email, etc.) near the top of the page to sort accounts using that column's values.

• Click the single-letter links (E, D, S or A or R) next to each account to its status.

  Details on the EDSAR links:

  E

  Edit account

  View and change a member's account information.

  D

  Delete account

  Delete an account and all its information from the database.

  S

  Suspend account

  Suspend an account so a member can no longer sign in your members area.

  A

  Activate account

  Make a suspended or inactive account active so a member can sign in. The "A" link only appears next to suspended accounts.

  R

  Renew account

  Make an expired account active so a member can sign in. This link only appears next to expired acounts.

Edit account

The "Edit account" page is shown whenever you click the "E" edit link next an account on the "View accounts" page. It's also shown when you click a member's username on the "View logins" page.

The page displays a member's name, email, username and password, and the number of days their account will remain active.

Click the "Edit more details" link near the bottom of the page to view information entered into any custom fields you've created.

The member's account status and the start and expiration dates for their account are displayed on the right side of the page.

You'll also find options to delete, suspend, activate, or renew their account on the right side of the page.

View logins

Click the "Logins" link on the "View accounts" page to see details related to each member's sign-in to your members area.

You can click one of the column header links (Username, IP, Platform, etc.) near the top of the page to sort logins using that column's values.

You may also click a username to view and edit a member's account data.

Email members

Clicking the "Email" menu option in the control panel takes you to the "Email members" page. There you can email all your members or just those with active, inactive, or expired accounts.

You can send a plain text or HTML messages. To send an HTML email, include HTML tags in the body of your message. Here's an example:

<p>Hi [name],</p>
<p>Don't miss out on our latest designs. Renew
your membership now for just $39.</p>

You may have noticed "[name]" in the example message above - Frontdesk helps you personalize your messages using tags in square brackets. With tags, you can include account information from the database in the subject and body of your messages.

Frontdesk automatically replaces each tag with the data it represents. So, using the example message above, Frontdesk would replace [name] with each member's name:

<p>Hi Jenni,</p>
<p>Don't miss out on our latest designs. Renew
your membership now for just $39.</p>

Here are all the database field names you can use in your tags:

• username
• password
• first_name
• name
• email
• username
• status
• days
• start
• expire
• custom_01
• custom_02
• custom_03
• ...
• custom_20

Note: If you are sending a message to hundreds or thousands of members, Frontdesk will email them in batches to avoid overwhelming your server. It may take several minutes for your message to go out to everyone. That said, you don't have to stay in the control panel while it's sending.

Search accounts

The "Search" menu option leads to the "Search accounts" page in the control panel. This is the place to look up members' account information.

Enter any term you like (3 or more characters) and click the "Search" button. Frontdesk will find accounts that contain the term in any of its data fields. The search results are displayed on a page similar to the "View accounts" page.

Templates

You can view and edit the automated emails Frontdesk sends to your members from the "Templates" page.

To edit a template, select the one you want to change from the dropdown menu, and click the "Edit this template" button. Change the subject and body text to your liking and click "Save changes" when you're done.

Note: The email templates can be personalized just like the messages you send from the "Email members" page.

The templates follow:

• Account Activated
• Account Added
• Account Suspended
• Account Expired
• Account Expiring
• Account Renewed
• Password Found

The "Account Added" message is sent whenever you or a member creates an account.

"Account Suspended" goes out when you suspend an account from the "View accounts" page, or if a member has gone over your IP/hostname limit.

Frontdesk sends an "Account Expiring" email to members 3 days before their account expires.

"Account Renewed" is sent when you renew an account from the "View accounts" page, or if a member signs up again using the same username and password.

Settings

Change how Frontdesk works from the "Settings" page.

You'll see 4 tabs near the top of the page: Email, Security, Custom fields, and Profile.

About the tabs:

• The "Email" page displays several checkboxes you can use to and enable and disable the email messages Frontdesk sends you and your members.

• The "Security" page lets you do the following:

  • Limit members to one login at a time.

    When enabled, Frontdesk will prevent multiple users from signing in with the same login at the same time. The user that is already signed in with the login will be automatically signed out.

    To reiterate: If a user is already signed in, and another user in a different location signs in using the same account, the first user will be automatically logged out.

  • Limit members to 3 IP/hostname combinations.

    When this option is enabled, Frontdesk will suspend accounts of members that sign in using more than 3 IP/hostname combinations within a 24-hour period.

    Note: Members that go over the limit may not be sharing their password with others. You can reivew their login history from the "View logins" page in the control panel to decide for yourself.

• "Custom fields" is where you can assign names to any custom fields you've added to your registration forms.

  Frontdesk displays the custom field names you assign in these places:

  • On the "Add account" page when you click the "Add more details" link
  • On the "Edit Account" page when you click the "Edit more details" link
  • In the "Account Added" email Frontdesk sends you
  • In the error message it displays when members forget to fill in a required custom field on a registration form or profile page

  Note: The first custom field, Custom 01, is already assigned a name: Payment ID. Whenever a customer submits payment for an account, Frontdesk will automatically fill the Payment ID (Custom 01) field with the transaction ID or number your payment processor assigns to the transaction.

• Update your name and email, and change your control panel password on the "Profile" page.

  Note: The name and email entered on the "Profile" page is used in the "From" field for all messages Frontdesk sends your members.