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How do I format links to my site to pass an affiliate ID?
Question
I have a number of affiliates signed up with my site. I want them to be able to direct traffic to my site and pass their affiliate ID in the link. How should the links be formatted?
Answer
In v5.x
The URL should link to:
http://www.demo.xyz/aftrack.asp?ID=[affiliate ID]
(where demo.xyz is replaced with your site's own URL)
Note that the affiliate ID is the AF_ID value from the tblCactuShopAffiliates table.
In v6
In CactuShop v6, you can pass the affiliate ID to any front end page as a parameter in the querystring, for example:
http://www.demo.xyz/product.asp?P_ID=123&af=[affiliate ID]
(where demo.xyz is replaced with your site's own URL)
Note that the affiliate ID is the C_ID value from the tblCactuShop1Customers table. In v6, the affiliates system was merged with the customers system, so a customer record holds information on whether that customer/member is also an affiliate.
If you have upgraded your store from v5 to v6, you may have legacy links from outside going to the defunct aftrack.asp script. It is advisable to notify all affiliates that they will need to upgrade these (a simple redirect from that script to elsewhere is not possible, since the old affiliate ID and the new customer ID required to identify the affiliate in v6 will not be the same. There is however some advice in the CactuShop v6 Manual PDF (see our downloads page) for handling existing affiliate links that you cannot get changed.