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TMM Insider
2017
JUL
More News
Highlighted Features
Cascade Weights

NATS allows Admins to split traffic between two cascades by using the weight setting. This weight can be modified so that one cascade may show up for a surfer more often than another. The cascade weight can be used in other ways such as setting the order of the cascade on the join form or changing the cascade to one of the special weights: Automatic Cascade, Gateway One Step Cascade, and Hide Cascade.

The cascade weight is set when editing the cascade in the Billers Admin. In this page you will have the option to set either a numeric weight or choose from the available alternate cascade settings. With a numeric weight, you can either set the order of the the cascades are displayed on the join page or set how NATS chooses between two or more cascades if they have the same description. Cascades are ordered by the highest weight at the top to the lowest weight at the bottom. Details on using weights to split traffic between two or more cascades can be found in our online documentation.

Additional settings for Cascades set alternative behavior, sending a member through a new cascade process or preventing them from seeing the cascade at all.

  • An Automatic Cascade, allows surfers to bypass the NATS pre-join page, sending them directly to the first biller in the cascade. Common uses for this feature include sending the member to the first biller to collect all necessary information or to consolidate the join process into one page rather than two. Information about automatic cascades can be found here.
  • Gateway One Step Cascades lets surfers fill out all of their sign up information on one page with your gateway billers, skipping the pre-join form. Read our article on Gateway One Step cascades here.
  • Hide Cascade, this removes this cascade as an option on the NATS join page and can only be used by forcing the cascade id on the join template. This is useful if you want to have this cascade only show up for a specific join template or to automatically submit the join form with a cascade not available on the template. More details on setting up a hidden cascade can be found here.
Deep Linking

Deep linking within NATS allows either the owner or affiliate to link to a specific page of the specified tour by adding text after the NATS tracking link itself. This feature allows for more precise control of where the surfer ends up and can allow your affiliates to take a more active roll at sending traffic to your site by providing links to your specific areas of your tour page.

Any NATS tracking link can be deep linked and it is as easy as adding text to the end of the NATS link itself. If you have a specific page you would like surfers directed to (eg: tour2.html) you or your affiliates would just add that to the end of a NATS code link (http://join.example.com/track/MC4wLjEuMS4wLjAuMC4wLjA/tour2.html). Additionally, NATS has a special deep link setting which will direct a surfer directly to the join page of the site while going through a track link. This involves just adding "join" to the end of the NATS tracking link (http://join.example.com/track/MC4wLjEuMS4wLjAuMC4wLjA/join).

For additional information on using deep linking with your NATS tracking links, visit our online documentation here.

Available Security Configurations for NATS Admin

Available Security configurations in NATS allow the program owner to ensure security of their Admins, Affiliates, and Members. Available Configurations in NATS include restrictions on Admin IPs, Encryption of emails and/or other personal data, and Throttling to restrict hits to the same page multiple times from the same IP address. All of these Configurations are found within the NATS Configuration Admin under the section "Security".

IP restrictions are set within area labeled "Admin IPs". These restrictions include the configuration variables, ADMIN_IPS and ADMIN_API_ALLOWED_IPS. Each of these configuration variables accepts a list of IP addresses separated by commas(,). If you leave a configuration variables blank, all IP addresses will be allowed for that setting.

  • ADMIN_IPS - This restricts access to the Admin area pages in your installation to the list of IP addresses provided. Anyone attempting to use an Admin page outside of the list will be redirected back to the main Affiliate page.
  • ADMIN_API_ALLOWED_IPS - This restricts what IP addresses can utilize/access the NATS API of your installation. Setting this will ensure only approved IPs can use this feature.

Encrypting Membership or Affiliate data is set within the area labeled "Data Encryption". This section includes options to encrypt Membership email, password, firstname, lastname. This area also has options to encrypt Affiliate email, information, and payment information. Turning these configurations on will tell NATS encrypt this data moving forward. If you need any old information encrypted, please put in a support ticket with us here.

Throttling allows for you to set limitations on how often a particular page can be accessed within a given time period. The pages that include this restriction are the Membership approval page, upgrade plus, upsell plus, token plus, package plus, cancel plus, the duplicate page, verifyplus, signupplus, and the Membership Password retrieval page. Each of these pages include settings which you can set to the degree with which this feature is active, the number of attempts you wish to allow, and the time in seconds you want NATS to check for duplicate requests. In addition to these settings you can set THROTTLE_WHITE_LIST_IPS and THROTTLE_BLACK_LIST_IPS which are lists of IP addresses that respectively allow to skip checks entirely or fail checks immediately.

Further details on Security configuration options can be found in our online documentation here. Further information on setting up and configuring Throttling can be found here.

NCR Verify Email

Do you need added verification for your No Cost Registrations (NCR) in NATS? A new NATS feature will allow program owners to restrict access for their free members until they have clicked on a verification link sent to them by an e-mail. This allows program owners to ensure that those signing up for free accounts are valid users with access to the email provided.

In order to turn on the email verification for NCR options, you would go to your "Surfer" configuration admin and turn on the option labeled "ENABLE_NCR_EMAIL_VERIFICATION". With this option enabled, a new setting would be available for each of your NCR join options labeled "Email Verification Required". Once this NCR setting is turned on for a join option, any new member selecting that option will receive an email containing a verification link. If the surfer does not click this verification link before it expires, the member will not have access.

For further details in regards to this feature as well as other available settings, please refer to our on-line documentation here.

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