Thanks for the offer! What would you like to work on?
I’m afraid I won’t have much time to help you this week, but from next week I’ll be happy to help you get started and answer any questions you have about the code.
00christian00,
I haven’t tried it with the multiple website feature, though I can’t think of any reason why it wouldn’t work. Of course one issue is that the affiliate link displayed on the affiliate’s summary page could only point to one of the websites. If the affiliates adapt the link to the appropriate website, I think it should work, though.
If multiple website support is a common requirement, we should allow the display of multiple sample affiliate links, so affiliates don’t get confused. (This is probably a post-1.0 feature, though, unless someone wants to volunteer to implement it now.)
There is a config file, and there are two settings for commission rate. One sets a fixed amount per order, the other sets a percentage. If you set both, they add. These rates are the same for everyone, we don’t support the kind of programme where you get $10 per order for the first five orders, and then $15 or whatever.
The system does set a cookie, you’re right. If someone clicks two affiliate links, the second cookie will overwrite the first.
I would like to test AFA in Magento, but how do I “install” it? I’ve placed the dirs/files from carts dir into the corresponding magento-dirs. But nothing happens… ;-(
A few weeks ago, I could have suggested lots of core features that still needed implementing, but most of it is done now. If there is a particular feature that you want yourself, I suggest you work on that.
If you want a suggestion, you could try implementing the multiple website feature that Christian was talking about. That’s a fairly simple change, so you could get used to the AfA code without trying to do anything too involved. Basically you would have to change $store_home in config.inc so it accepts an array of stores rather than a single string. You would then make overview.php show a list of affiliate links rather than just one.
Marito,
Soon I will have some documentation for you, which should make this sort of thing easier.
You will find that there is one file and one directory to copy. You need to copy carts/magento/app/etc/modules/Afa.xml to app/etc/modules (just the one file) and you need to copy app/code/local/Afa to app/code/local (the whole directory, including subdirectories). The first thing is to make sure all these files are in place.
After that, when you log into Magento as an administrator, go to System/Configuration. You should see the Affiliates For All config screen at the bottom of the General tab. Click on that and complete the two values on the form. The secret should be the same as the value set in AfA’s config file, and the URL should be the base of your AfA installation. If you are unsure what to put, have a look at the way the demo is set up; that may help.
Once this is done, you should find that orders propagate from Magento into AfA automatically.
BTW, I think Magento calculates access rights when you first log into the admin system. If you get an access denied message when you first go to the AfA screen, try logging out and back in. This will force Magento to recompute your access rights, and—because AfA has now been installed—it should include the right to access the AfA screen.
@ Yosu & @PeterC can I humbly suggest a reward system adaptation for customers themselves ? i.e. earning $ / points for customers’ own purchases, not only affiliates.
Thanks
I’m happy to work with anyone who wants to implement a reward system, but as far as my own work goes, I don’t want to lose focus at the moment. I want to implement the features required for a typical affiliate programme, and get that release out of the door so people can make use of it.
Right now I’m really just tying up loose ends for 1.0.0. There are a few small features that I would like to put in before releasing a feature complete beta. That means that any large changes would really have to go on a post-1.0 branch (which I could create if someone wanted to contribute something).
One of our co-developers (my brother that is) has just finished developing a - after my opinion - really great Affiliate-system for Magento.
I started a new thread about this in the Suggestion-forum as we would love to get some of you people to test it out:
http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/20379
I’ve just uploaded the first stable version of Affiliates for All. The full release announcement is at http://tinyurl.com/3oy4ot . This is what you’ve been waiting for, please let me know how you get on!
aFFi,
I registered as an affiliate on your system and it looked good, well done and good luck with it.
It sounds as though PHP has been built without xmlrpc support.
PHP has an xmlrpc module which is built along with PHP itself. There are also various third party libraries that provide xmlrpc. To avoid bloating AfA with lots of third party code, I went with the built in module. Unfortunately this now seems to have bitten us because, assuming you’re using a shared host, you can’t easily add a module to PHP itself.
Has anyone else tried to install AfA on a shared host, and hit this problem? If it’s a widespread issue, I will bundle a third party xmlrpc solution with a future release, avoiding the problem.
Thanks for your information. I’m indeed on a shared(cluster) hosting and therefore cant just ask for an activation. It would be really great if it would be possible to use your solution, because it looks great.
If you like, I could host your Affiliates for All installation on my own server.
I was always intending to offer this service, but when I raised the possibility a while ago, everyone wanted to host AfA themselves. As a result, I never set anything like this up. It would be a way round the problems you are having with your host, though. If you would be interested in taking that route, please let me know.
(Of course, while AfA itself is free, there would have to be a small charge for hosting it.)
