FREE TOOL: Create Landers From Slack! Free CMS To Organise Your Lander Nightmare (4)

So, I've seen a lot of questions over the recent past about how to manage landers. Should you use Wordpress, Unbounce, or another content management system to manage them and make them easier to create?

Well, I really don't recommend Wordpress. And non-affiliate lander solutions tend to be slow and inflexible.

So, whilst I was preparing for Affiliate World Europe 2016, I put together a test-of-concept for an affiliate-centric content management system. I gave that CMS out, as one of many free scripts, as part of my talk on automation there.

And now as AWA comes toward us, I'm sharing the same content management system for landers here on STM, free to use for you.



Features

The short version: this is a content management system for your landers, like Wordpress. However, it's much faster than Wordpress, much more minimal, and lets you create landers in a single line right from Slack!

• It's Ridiculously Fast. This CMS leverages a very little-known feature in the web server Nginx to serve pages ridiculously fast. See the screenshot above. It'll serve your landers to visitors close to the server's physical location in 50ms.
• It's VERY Efficient. Again, see above. That's the smallest VPS that DigitalOcean will allow you to buy, serving just under the equivalent of 3 million visitors a day.
• Uses Lander Templates. Don't code each and every lander from scratch. Templates are easy to create, and once you've created them all landers you develop will automatically be available using all your templates. Want to split-test a coupon style, an app store style, and a minimalist style? It's 2 min work.
• Create Landers From Slack. Yes, that's right. The primary way to create landers in this system is with a one-line command in Slack. WARNING: this removes all excuses for not testing enough landers.
• Tame The Chaos. This CMS uses a database to hold all your landers, so you don't have the chaos of a million folders full of landers.
  

worker_processes  1;
error_log logs/error.log;
events {
    worker_connections 1024;
}
http {
    server {
        listen 80;
    root /var/www;
    location /images/ {

        }
    location /slack-upload/ {
    content_by_lua '
    ngx.req.read_body()
    local args = ngx.req.get_post_args()
    ngx.say("Lander will be " .. args["text"])
    if args["token"] != "YOUR_TOKEN_HERE" then return end
    local mysql = require "resty.mysql"

        local db = mysql:new()
        local ok, err, errcode, sqlstate = db:connect({host = "127.0.0.1", port = 3306, user="root", database = "cms",password = "password"})
                if not ok then
                    ngx.say("failed to connect: ", err, ": ", errcode, " ", sqlstate)
                    return
                end
        local query = "insert into landers values " .. args["text"] .. ";"
    local res, err, errcode, sqlstate = db:query(query)
    ';
    }
        location ~ ^/(?<lander>[^/]+)/(?<template>[^/]+)/ {
            default_type text/html;
            content_by_lua '
        local template = io.open("templates//" .. ngx.var.template .. "/template.html")
        local mysql = require "resty.mysql"

        local db = mysql:new()
        local ok, err, errcode, sqlstate = db:connect({host = "127.0.0.1", port = 3306, user="root", database = "cms",password = "password"})
                if not ok then
                    ngx.say("failed to connect: ", err, ": ", errcode, " ", sqlstate)
                    return
                end
        local query = "select * from landers where id=/"" .. ngx.var.lander .. "/";"
        local res, err, errcode, sqlstate = db:query(query)
        local templatetext = template:read("*a")
        templatetext = string.gsub(templatetext, "||HEADLINE||", res[1]["headline"])
        templatetext = string.gsub(templatetext, "||SUBHEAD||", res[1]["subhead"])
        templatetext = string.gsub(templatetext, "||CTA||", res[1]["cta"])
        templatetext = string.gsub(templatetext, "||IMAGE||", "/images//" .. res[1]["image"])
        ngx.say(templatetext)
        template:close()
            ';
        }
    }
}

• Install OpenResty on your web server. Full installation instructions are here. This bit is a bit techie, but it's very doable.
• Create a directory to run your lander system from, and create the directories ./conf, ./logs, ./images and ./templates in there
• Install MySQL or MariaDB.
• Create a file called conf/nginx.conf and paste in the above code. Change the database information appropriately (in BOTH places it's used).
• Create at least one template - see "templates", below.
• Create a database. The database should be called "cms", and should have one table called "landers". That table should have 5 columns: id should be varchar, and headline, subhead, cta, and image should all be text. SQL below!
• Create at least one lander - see Slack Landers, below.
  

create table landers (id VARCHAR(20), headline TEXT, subhead TEXT, image TEXT, cta TEXT);

• Where the Headline is, replace the text with ||HEADLINE||
• Where the subhead is, replace the text with ||SUBHEAD||
• Where the image is, replace the URL with ||IMAGE||
• And where the CTA is, replace the text with ||CTA||
  

• Click the cog at the top right of your channel, choose "Add An App Or Integration", then choose "Build" at the top right, and choose "Something just for my team".
• Choose "Slash Commands".
• Call the command "lander" (or anything else you want).
• Set the URL for the slash command to the IP of your server, followed by /slack-upload/ . So if my IP is 193.141.231.1, I set the slash command to http://193.141.231.1/slack-upload/
• Copy the token and paste it into your nginx config, replacing "YOURTOKENHERE".
• Click "save integration" and you're done!
  

/lander ("name_of_lander", "headline", "subhead", "image_name", "cta")

/lander ("iphone5_straightup", "You Could Win A New iPhone!", "Unbelievable? But true!", "iphone.jpg", "Will You Win?")

Hey Caurmen, great write up. I will plan to test this soon.

Question: What speed test / benchmark site are you using in the screenshot above?

Originally Posted by mrpayne

Hey Caurmen, great write up. I will plan to test this soon.

Question: What speed test / benchmark site are you using in the screenshot above?

Yup, it's Blitz.

I don't recommend them for super-thorough load testing (that's what Gatling is for), but it's a good way to get a quick insight into how a server's doing.