Designer Showcase Network

Introduction

You can purchase the DSN Starter Kit through the Clever Things main shop in Takalo, or through XStreetSL, and that purchase will constitute your one time network entry fee. The Starter Kit includes a dropbox, and several varieties of subscription kiosk for you to place appropriately.

Usage

Rez a dropbox somewhere you like to keep your various server boxes. Clicking it will pull up a menu with a single button: “Register“. Clicking that will register you in the network as a content creator and generate a password for you for accessing the web interface to see your statistics in the network. Make a note of that password. This button will only appear in case you aren’t registered yet.

Clicking the dropbox again will give you a menu with three options:

• Reset Passw — will generate a new password for you in case you forgot your old one.
• Channel — will give you a channel selection menu.
• Web — will give you a link to the designer web interface.
• Upgrade — will start the upgrade process if you wish to upgrade your dropbox to the next version in place with an Upgrade Disk that will come in the update package.

Channel selection menu lists the channels you can set the box to handle. Selecting a channel will cause the box to rename itself for convenience, and will be appropriately marked in the menu. If you don’t like the default automatic naming, you can rename it yourself after that, though that name will be lost if you change the channel again.

Once a channel is selected, another button will appear in the menu: Go Online. You cannot go online yet, though, because you need to do some extra things first:

1. You need to package your free sample into a prim object and place it inside the dropbox. Don’t forget to put a landmark inside, because otherwise it’s useless to you in the marketing sense! A notecard with a description of your business and some textures of your box labels is also a wise idea to put inside your free sample. It’s also good to name your sample package descriptively, as this name is used throughout the system and will be most of what the subscribers see before they rez and open it. I also recommend you use ‘DSN’ as part of the name, so people remember how they got it.
2. You need to create a texture for the Featured Designer blog posting in this blog — one random product on offer will be automatically blogged daily and will only get blogged once, though if you change the texture, it might get blogged again. As it is displayed on the web at 320×240 pixels, (Blame LL) it is best to create it at something like 640×480 pixels, resize it to 512×256, (or any other size you like that is an even multiple of 256 on either side) and upload this way. Whoever makes it, it must be full permissions to you, or it won’t work. Drop it into the dropbox next to the sample package. You can use it to show off your shop logo, but it’s probably better to draw something more tempting on it as well.
3. With that texture, a SLURL will be posted, and that needs a landmark to your shop to be in the dropbox — put it there as well.

A dropbox (grey) needs to contain: 1) a sample package (green) containing the sample itself, a landmark and a probably a notecard and texture inside 2) a texture and 3) a landmark.

Should you forget any of that, the dropbox will complain. Once all the preparations are complete, click the “Go Online” button in the menu, and if no unexpected snags resulted, you’re done.

While the dropbox is online, only the “Web” and “Go Offline” buttons are available in the menu, the action of the last new button should be obvious.

Gotchas

• Should you wish to change your sample on offer, you need the box to go offline. If you try to alter the box contents it will go offline on it’s own. Please don’t do it while it’s busy.
• If you want to offer samples in more than one channel, you will need to rez more than one dropbox. They will nicely coexist with each other, provided the selected channels are different.
• At any moment, only one dropbox handling any given channel will be online. Other boxes handling that channel will go offline upon checking in and finding that they aren’t the active dropbox for that channel.

Web interface

The designer web interface allows you to see some statistics about the network in general, and about your own activities in it in particular — unlike the stats posted on the blog, they are updated immediately and not once per day. You get the address to log in at by pressing the “Web” button. To log in, enter the avatar name that owns the Starter Kit (“Firstname Lastname”) and the login password generated by the system upon registration through the dropbox. You can change that password later. Please do not confuse the login button for the DSN blog with the designer web interface, use the “Web” button to get the proper link! If you forget the password, just rez a dropbox and use the “Reset Passw” button on it to generate a fresh one.

First thing you should do, you need to change your brand name if you do business under the name other than the name of the avatar that owns the Starter Kit — most people do. The entry field for this is straight on the first page after you log in. This brand name is used to list you in the designer list on the web site, and in case you get a featured designer posting.

The designer web interface is accessed by HTTPS for security. If you see the certificate warning, it’s normal — we cannot, at the moment, afford a certificate from a more supported authority (These things cost money and take days) so we’re using the CAcert service, which is still better than a self-signed certificate. Please visit their site for instructions on how to get their root certificate and install it into your browser.

The Statistics page is the first one you see after you successfully log in, and also contains the form to change your brand name.

The Dropboxes page will allow you to see where your dropboxes are, and manually remove their online status from the system if they got lost or destroyed before the automated 30-hour timeout kicks in.

The Transactions page will give you a list of all the delivery transactions that your dropboxes filled, listing date and time (in UTC) as well as the name of the recipient and the name of the object they have received, newest deliveries first, in pages of 30 — so that you can compare the deliveries to your sales and visitor lists and see how effective your sample has been in attracting new customers. This page also allows you to get the full list of all your transactions in CSV format so you can play with it otherwise.

The Effectiveness page will let you see which of your samples have resulted in the most visits if you have installed the DSN Visitor Counter. (see below)

The Change password page lets you change your password to something you remember better.

DSN Visitor Counter

This optional tool allows you to track how many of your sent samples resulted in confirmed shop visits. Once the visitor counter is placed on your property (preferably, right next to where the landmark that you have been giving out points to — you’re free to place as many visitor counters as you need to cover all landmarks and the entirety of your shopping space) it will keep track of visitors, and visitors that have received your sample product(s) will be marked in the transaction record list in the designer web interface and counted on the main designer statistics page. Visitors will only be counted once per sample they have received, and the date of their first visit will replace the date of the sample sending in the records, so you will know for sure just how many of your sent samples resulted in a shop visit. Visitor counters owned by you will only register avatars who have received a sample from you, so don’t be afraid to overlap your neighbours a bit.

That should give you a clear idea of just how effective your advertising through DSN was. If your package did not include a Visitor Counter, and you have not received one directly, please contact the DSN Team for a copy.

Link message API

In case you wish to have realtime information about what your dropboxes are doing, you can use the link message API provided. Dropbox script sends out link messages with num of 777111:

• ONLINE when it goes online, with key set to the channel number.
• OFFLINE when it goes offline.
• SENT when an item is sent out, with key set to the avatar key it went out to.

Support

From time to time, as new features are added and bugs are found, updates will be sent out, and you will receive them automatically as long as you have at least one dropbox rezzed. All updates will be announced further in the DSN blog.

While I will answer support questions, I cannot offer support in languages other than English and Russian. German language support is handled by Peter Stindberg. I urge you to be very clear in wording, syntax and spelling. As described in the rules, I cannot offer refunds in situations other than accidental double purchases. In case your copy of the DSN Starter Kit gets lost in the seas of SL, I will obviously send a new package your way on request as soon as I find your purchase in my records or confirm that you are registered in the network, but alts will not be honoured.

Rika Watanabe, Clever Things/DSN Team