Testing the WP Affiliate Platform is very easy. Do the following steps:
Step 1) Make sure you have setup this plugin following the Usage instruction from our documentation page.
Step 2) Visit your affiliate signup page and register for an affiliate account.
Step 3) Navigate to the Banners/Links page after you log into the affiliate portal using the account you just created. Get a banner/link code from this page and put it on any of your other WordPress page (if you have any) or just put it in the same site.
You can simply make a link that looks similar to the following if you don’t want to get the full banner/link code:
http://www.your-domain-name.com/url-of-page?ap_id=YOUR_AFFILIATE_ID
Step 4) Now, click on that link. In your affiliate portal, go to Stats -> Referrals page to make sure that the click was tracked.
Step 5) Next, we are going to test the commission tracking. It is a good idea to enable the debug option in the plugin settings before doing the transaction test. The debug log file can tell you if everything worked correctly or not. So go ahead and enable the debug logging option from the settings menu of the plugin.
Step 6) Make a purchase using a Buy button that you have on your site. Visit the Stats -> Sales page to make sure the sale has been registered.
Step 7) Verify all these data from the WP Affiliate Admin panel inside the WordPress dashboard. You can also check the log file to see if everything was a success.
If something is not working as expected, review the plugin testing checklist. If you need help tracking down an issue, just contact us and we will provide help.
Testing the Affiliate Plugin with WP eStore Plugin
If you are using the WP Affiliate Platform with WP eStore plugin then watch the following video to learn how you can test the affiliate tracking:
@Felipe, It can be any payment gateway. We have integration with many e-commerce plugins and solutions. Read the integration section from our documentation.
Hello,
I was wondering if they payment method for the order has to be paypal also for the plugin to work or if I can use any payment gateway on the site with this plugin.
Thank you
Method 1 is for PayPal payments. Unless you do an actual PayPal payment the plugin will not award the sale (the plugin has security checks to make sure the commission is only awarded after the payment is received).
ON Instinc’ts WP eCommerce Plugin
I have installed everything using method 1…..
here’s the problem
The affiliates get clicks correctly tracked, but not sales…just consider that I did a test adding the product trough wp-ecommerce without making hte final payment trough paypal…anyway…the sale is correctly tracked but only in the wp-ecommerce Plugin’Dashbord not in the affiliate dashboard.
regards
@Dating Solutions, Just move the “affiliates” directory that is inside the “wp-affiliate-platform” directory. Edit the on that you are moving.
Yep, there was a typo (what you did is correct.. I have updated my comment too)
I have a question about moving the affiliate directory so that it’s not in the wp-contents folder. Your instructions were to move the affiliates directory but do we move the whole folder or just the last “affiliates” folder in the structure to the root?
Also, the misc_func.php file, do we edit that one in the affiliates folder that we move or do we edit that file that is in the wp-contents/plugins/wp-affiliates-platform/affiliates folder?
I replaced that line with “uniqid(”, true));” but it parsed out so I removed the extra “)” from the end of “true” and that did the trick. Can you confirm that my removing the extra ) won’t cause an issue? I’m hoping you had a typo.
Here’s the praise. It’s a great plugin and I’m thankful that you have created it.
Change “uniqid();” from the “wp_affiliate_platform_menu.php” file to the following:
uniqid('', true);
That worked for most of it but there is now just one error in the Settings area:
Warning: uniqid() expects at least 1 parameter, 0 given in /home/datin29/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wp-affiliate-platform/wp_affiliate_platform_menu.php on line 240
Okies… this link should help:
http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/wp-affiliate-platform-php4-workaround
Yes, I just figured that out from your forums. The hosting won’t change the PHP so they told me to use htaccess but that effects other applications I have.
It appears that the site still functions properly even with those errors in settings, what is your workaround for this section?
Looks like your server is using a very Old version of PHP… this link will guide you:
http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/what-to-do-when-my-server-is-using-a-very-old-version-of-php
We have your affiliate program and there is an error when we go into the settings of the plugin:
Warning: cannot yet handle MBCS in html_entity_decode()! in /home/datin29/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wp-affiliate-platform/wp_affiliate_platform_menu.php on line 215
That is the top, there are tons of those and then the settings show up below it. How do we fix this error?
Okies, made the note more noticeable 🙂
Okay…I finally figured out what wased going wrong. I failed to notice that I need to put the code snippet into the checkout.php in my theme directory and not in the plugin directory because I am using my own theme. Yes I know you have a note there but it is easy to overlook, especially by a novice, so please change the instructions on this page http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/wordpress-affiliate/affiliate-platform-integration-with-the-shopp-plugin-132
so that the note “Note: If you are using your own theme-templates for the Shopp plugin then you need to change the “checkout.php” file in the “theme-folder”.”
is more prominent and appears first. I don’t imagine I am unique in following instructions step by step and not seeing the note until after I did the steps and then wondering why it doesn’t work.
Thanks…problem is resolved and things are working now.
Oh yes…I forgot to include in the message above that I have already installed the code snippet below as instructed on the “checkout.php” file from the “templates” directory of the shopp plugin
It sounds like the problem I am experiencing has occurred for others.
Thanks.
Hi there
I have installed the affiliate and created banners and processed orders. The affiliate stats show all the click throughs but are not registering or reporting any sales or commissions. Shopp is showing me the sales as processed and so is PayPal. Why are my affiliates or me, the admin not seeing any sales show up for commissions? Commissions are set at 10% and I assume that it applies to any product purchased on the site.
Can you tell me how to fix this problem?
Thanks
Hello. Great job. I did not expect to find info this good. Thanks!
Hi Adrienne, The “User name” field has a hypen (-) in it. The only allowed characters in the username are letters (a-Z), numbers (0-9) and underscore (_). This is for security reasons (this can be changed on your installation if you want though).
If you signed up the affiliates from the usual “Affiliate Sign up” page you would have seen an error when you entered that username.
I pre-populated the Afffilate information for 4 affiliates. I used their Member ID they already have with our association, however when I go to login to the Affiliate portal using the exact info I used to create the accounts, none of them works.
By way of example here’s the login link:
http://workingartistsnetwork.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-affiliate-platform/affiliates/login.php
Here’s the user info for one of the Affiliate accounts:
User: 081409-KDIXO
Pass: [email protected]
Please help!
Thanks,
A.
Hi Mark, It has got nothing to do with PHP4 and PHP5. The software runs on all PHP version (I am using the latest PHP version on this site myself) and you as the customer shouldn’t have to worry about it (thats my job). If you face this login issue on your host then contact me and I will give you a fix for it.
Just to give you an update… I am also redesigning the login page for the next release which will introduce a few nice features and fix this issue for good.
This needs to be fixed. I did Amanda’s fix, but…
Everything runs on PHP5 now. Switching to PHP4 brings down the main site. I shouldn’t have to create a separate site for this plugin in order to run PHP4. Doing this means incompatibility with themes and other plugins.
Please advise.
Hi Mugger, Looks like you introduced an error in the script when you did the custom modification. Thats what the “Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘.’” mean. Can you please send me the ‘misc_func.php’ file so I can see what the error is? I will send you an email so you can just reply to it and attach the file.
re: misc_func.php
I have WP installed in domain/wp2
so set
include_once(’../wp2/wp-load.php’);
Calling
http://domain/wp2/wp-content/plugins/wp-affiliate-platform/affiliates/signup.php
[or other modules] gets
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘.’ in /home/eatslim/public_html/wp2/wp-content/plugins/wp-affiliate-platform/affiliates/misc_func.php on line 3
Obviously, I don’t yet know if
http://domain/affiliates/ will equal
http://domain/wp-content/plugins/wp-affiliate-platform/affiliates/
Hi Debo, Thanks for the feedback… I will try to follow it up in the next release.
Regarding the Referral ID change… it’s not a bug.. for security reasons it doesn’t allow you to change the referral ID of an affiliate.
Great plugin and loving the ease and simplicity…some suggestions:
– integrate the username/password with eStore/wp
– integrate template with wp (full width page)
– promotion emails for affiliate to use
– Confusing labels – in the login and sign-up pages, label are Username vs Affiliate ID vs Referral ID in the add/edit affiliate page.
this may be a bug:
if you change the Refferal ID on the add/edit affiliate page, the message says “Affiliate “Name” updated.” but nothing changes
Keep up the great work…
hi,
Thank you for that. It was a great help. I am using aweber for my list management and was looking for a way to get this software working together with that but one step at a time.
I am more than happy to help with the details of how I fixed the problem and hopefully it will help people in the future.
thanks again
amanda
Hi Amanda, Glad to know you figured it out and it’s working for you. Also, thanks for the detailed rundown of how you fixed it. Anyone else reading this… please don’t try this fix. Contact me if you are having this issue and I will give you a fix.
I didn’t add this option (email all the affiliates) cause I figured most people will use a separate email management software but since you asked I will add it in the next release.
Yes, you can add/configure text ads too. Just fill in the “Target URL” and “Anchor Text” field in the ‘Add/Edit Banners’ menu and that will be a text link (leave the banner image URL filed empty). You can see an example of text affiliate link in the demo account.
Hi,
thank you for your quick reply. After i sent this message I went through some of the other messages and I found someone else that had this problem.
I then went to find a solution to this problem and I did find out how to make it work.
Here is what i did for future reference;
Login in to your cpanel (http://www.yourdomain.com/cpanel)
then go the the ‘Software / Services’ and click on “PHP Configuration”
the at the top of the page you will see ‘The “.php” file extension will be processed by ‘
and the setting will say ‘System Default’ change this to “PHP 4” and click on the ‘update’ button.
this made the affiliate program work.
I just have 2 question/ improvement suggestions.
I was wondering if it is possible to email all the affiliates at once through this program. This way you can notify them on new product launching etc. If not is there a chance you could make this possible.
The second is there are places for banners but is there an area for emails or text ads. If so how can I use it or if not is this an improvement that could be made.
I have found this software fantastic and I look forward to my affiliate campaign.
thanks
amanda
Hi Amanda, It happens when you don’t have PHP session working properly on your server. When you login with your username and password gets saved into a PHP session variable. Please speak to your hosting provider and they should be able to help. It is enabled by default on most hostings anyway, It is usually a matter of updating your php.ini file or something like that. Have a chat to them and get back to me so we can sort it out.
Hi,
I just purchased and installed this plugin. I can get everything to work but when I try to sign-in to the affiliate members area I just keep being sent back to the login page. Can you please tell me how to fix this?
thanks
Amanda