Affiliate Links Designer

Affiliate Links Designer

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So, you've got XML Feeds, Inline Feeds, Search Boxes, and even Cobrands ... all great ways for your affiliates to send you traffic ... but how do you let your affiliates know about these?

There are 2 link plugins built into the account manager application that you can use to link to the Affiliate Cobrand Design Form and/or the Affiliate HTML Grabber page.


Use this plugin inside an "href" tag in your account template. This will bring up a simple screen where your affiliates can enter their HTML "Header" and "Footer", which will be placed around the "cobrand.php" output. It should be noted somewhere on that page that the affiliate needs to reference any images, javascript files, stylesheets or other external entities with the full "http://...." url to those, as the cobrand.php runs from YOUR server, while all of that fancy stuff will need to be called from theirs. The language value "affiliate_design_header" (located in the "affiliate" language screen) is shown above the header/footer entry form ... you can use that to give them this guidance. Note that you can use <<URL>> within that language variable to have your cobrand.php url inserted into your text.


Use this plugin inside an "href" tag in your account template. This will bring up a simple screen where all of your affiliate linking and searching options are listed for your affiliates to view, copy/paste, and sample. You design each of the links/forms, along with sample code and instructions, as follows:

First, design the preview "page".

Each of your Link/Form options will be run through a template, so that you can control how they show to your users. This Internal Template is located in the "Jackhammer" area of the Internal templates manager, and is called "searchboxdisplay". Note that the system encloses all of your defined options inside of a <table></table> tag, so we recommend that you design your "searchboxdisplay" as a <tr> .... </tr> (table row), or series of rows so that everything lines up right.

Within it, you can use any of the following replacement variables:

<<name>>	The name of the linking option
<<instructions>>	Instructions on its use
<<code>>	The actual copy/paste code for your affiliates
<<sample>>	A visual sample of how it'll look when in use.

Here's a sample (the system default):

<tr bgcolor='black'>

<td colspan='2'>

<font color='white'><<name>></font>

</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td><<instructions>></td>

<td valign='top' rowspan='2'><<sample>></td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>

<textarea cols='50' rows='5'><<code>></textarea>

</td>

</tr>

<tr bgcolor='white'><td colspan='2'> </td></tr>

Now, Design each of your linking / form options

You may design as many of these as you like. However, unlike all other Internal Templates, these require a special naming convention, and a special format.

NAMES: You may define as many affiliate linking or form options as you like. Each of them, located in the "Jackhammer" area of the Internal Templates manager must be named "SEARCHBOXCODEx", where "x" is a unique number, starting with "01". For example, if you were to create 4 different affiliate linking/form options, you'd name them: SEARCHBOXCODE01, SEARCHBOXCODE02, SEARCHBOXCODE03, and SEARCHBOXCODE04. These must be "LAYOUT" internal template types.

FORMAT: Each internal template has 4 parts: "Name", "Instructions", "Code", "Sample" ... contained within "blocks". Blocks resemble HTML tags, bearing the name of the part of the template. A block needs both an opening and closing tag. Here are the parts required:

"NAME"	The name of the linking option
"INSTRUCTIONS"	Instructions on its use (HTML is permitted .... and recommended)
"CODE"	The actual copy/paste code for your affiliates. Note that you can (and should) use <<URL>> within the code definition to insert the URL to your search program (or <<COBRANDURL>> for the URL to your cobrand application), as well as <<AFFILIATE>> to insert the affiliate's user id. This will enable them to copy/paste the exact code needed, with the right URL and their ID built into it.
"SAMPLE"	A visual sample of how it'll look when in use. If you just want to show an exact sample of this option, use "showcode" within the sample block. Otherwise, use HTML to draw a sample. In most cases, you'll just want to use "showcode", but in some (such as XML or INLINE), you'll need to fudge an example, In the default Hyperseek setup, the Inline and XML listing options are setup this way.

Here's a sample affiliate link/form option -- a standard search box.

<NAME>

Old Fashioned Search Box

</NAME>

<INSTRUCTIONS>

<br />

You may create a search form on your website that

sends your visitor to our results page</b>

<br />

To use the search box, copy the HTML code below, and

put it onto any HTML page on your web site.

</INSTRUCTIONS>

<CODE>

<FORM ACTION="<<URL>>" METHOD="post">

Search: <INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="Terms" SIZE="15">

<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="affiliate" VALUE="<<AFFILIATE>>">

<INPUT TYPE="submit" VALUE="Go">

</FORM>

</CODE>

<SAMPLE>showcode</SAMPLE>