Campaign Performance Report README

1. Create a database, or you can use an existing database. The script will use a table named campaigndata, so if you use an existing database, do not use one that contains a table with that name.
2. Create a database user and password (or you can use an existing database user and password.) Assign privileges for that user to the database you will be using.
3. Unzip the zipped file you downloaded.
4. Open the conn.php file and look in the CONFIGURATION section at the top. You need to enter your database name, database username, database user password, and database host between the single quotes on lines 6-9. (Usually localhost is the database host, but depending on your specific hosting company that may be different.) You ALSO need to enter your ePN login email and password on lines 12 and 13.
5. There are a couple of additional options that you can change in that configuration section, but normally you can leave those "as is." If you wish to change them, read the information in the configuration section very carefully and be sure you understand the ramifications of your changes.
6. Upload the entire campperf directory to your website.
7. Call the install.php script in your browser to create the database table. Follow the instructions on that page.
8. Follow the link to the next page. The links you will find on the next page will allow you to download all of your transaction reports from ePN. Read and follow the instructions carefully on that page. You can also get to that page by clicking the "Download ePN Reports" at the top right in the header.
9. To collect your ePN reports automatically on a daily basis, you must set up a cron job in your cPanel or control panel. See the cron.php file for instructions -- there's a link to "Cron Setup" at the top right in the header of every page with instructions for setting up your cron job.
10. After importing your data, you can view your reports. Click the "View Report" link in the header at the top of the page.
11. We STRONGLY recommend that you password-protect the directory that contains these files. Check with your hosting company for the easiest way to do this.

A note of explanation about the data collection schedule:

When you set up a daily cron job to run the data retrieval script, each day the script will retrieve the ePN transaction report for 3 days previously. This time frame was chosen to give ePN time to post the report. ePN posts the reports daily for the previous day, and often very late in the day, and sometimes there are additional delays. We can't collect today's report, because it would be full of zeroes. Yesterday's report will be full of zeros until whenever ePN gets the report data posted. The day before yesterday (2 days ago) would *probably* be safe, most of the time, except when there are unexpected delays. Therefore, we chose to set this up to collect the data for 3 days ago. So keep in mind that your reports will always be 3 days behind your current data.

You can change that by changing line 24 of conn.php to some other number. If you change that number, any problems you might experience with your reports are your own fault. To ensure that your reports contain the data they are supposed to, we strongly recommend leaving this at its default setting of 3.