Recently one of our clients needed and info on Affiliate module for Magento. When it comes to Magento, word “module” is loosely related. Sure, every module needs config files in order to report it’s “connection” to Magento core. Modules like this, Affiliates for all, are modules I consider loosely related to core. They are in one or another way connected to Magento but they are self standing, independent, applications.

Installation of Affiliate module is a trivial task. It mostly comes down to extracting downloaded archive file to a web accessible directory (to your server, hosting) and configuring the config.inc file. (For security reasons, try renaming the config.inc to config.inc.php, plus changing the /lib/bootstrap.php on line 23 to include config.inc.php). After importing affiliates.sql into the database our installation is done.

To configure Magento part, one needs to copy required files form /carts directory of Affiliate module and then (turn off Cache) go to System > Configuration and set the required options. After that you can go back to your Affiliate For All application, upload some banners and set their url links to point to your Magento shop. When you test banner the links (click on one of them to get you to Magento store, then Magento store url should have a little GET variable in url like ?ref=someNum). Now when you do the entire checkout process, order info gets recorded to Affiliate For All application.

If you wish to play with Affiliate For All without installing it, you can check out the demo (just use “Admin” both for user and password).

By Branko Ajzele from Inchoo.net

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