Affiliate Stores

Steven and I are still working to get a release out, which will happen as soon as we are happy that it is stable.

Subscribers have been asking for more information, so here are some of Stevens notes around the mods that show a feature rich list of changes. So far, he has incorporated :

General Settings
=================

Nav Options
———–

Allows Navigational Group order setting
Show NavCat dropdown setting

Restrict popular product option

Page Links (left) order setting

Page Menu options (Custom Page Menu)
 -turn on/off
 -order
 -disable home link
 -disable sub menu
 -show submenu as css (i/e ul>li>ul>li)
   or leave as current sub menu

New Category Menu (existing categories)
 -turn on/off
 -order
 -enable home link (useful if page menu turned off
  or menu placed elsewhere)
 -disable sub menu (puts all seleced categories on   same level otherwise by category heirarchy)
 -show submenu as css (i/e ul>li>ul>li)
   or leave as pagemenu sub menu functionality
NavCat Dropdown
—————
Customisable dropdown totally seperate from side custom navigation but using same categories.

Use all or specified groups
ignore or use hidden groups & categories
group & category order
DOM autoconfirm
Website Details
=================

Added META description. Overrides current functionality if set.

Site settings by selected skin (if more than one)

Logo per skin

Meta keywords by skin

Custom Navigation
=================

New functionality to split categories into groups & categories

Groups > Categories > Subcategories

Group ordering options
Hide group (and any associated categories)

Category description (tool tip hover / alt)

Set as parent category
display sub menu at category level
sub-menu ordering at category level
hide category (& associated sub-categories)

Display categoryin category menu - observes category menu submenu setting.

Build structured group & category heirarchies with custom ordering

Theme Control
==============

Install new themes
Activate themes - must observe correct filesystem permissions.

Edit Theme once installed & activated

Theme Control - complex customisable teme options built around the theme structure & css

Ajax support (lightbox) - not in default

Left, Right & Footer display options. Mainly leave at default but allows total control of when to display navigational columns at page/category & module type. Overrides all other column module settings. i.e no left nav > no category menu.

Theme CSS must support column widths. Not for the fainthearted - really a futureproofing option.

Theme banner option.
Page Control
============

Pages to 4 levels
Page > page-s1 > page-s1-ss1 > page-s1-ss1-sss1
Observed in page menu submenu css

Page description - tooltip / alt hover

Sub page ordering & visibility

page visibility

page ordering (observed at top level only)

page banner by skin
MultiFeed RSS
==============

Main settings
—————
Cache activity
max feed items
max description
global cache status
cache directory (must observe filesystem settings)
global homepage setting

Feed Level
———–
Multiple feeds.

Feed per tag e.g feed id 1 -> {RSS1}

Feed controls can override or use global settings

atom / rss2 formats

feed cache

display description html (strips html tags for difficult feeds)

Feed activity

Cache
—–
Cache clear if globally turned on
Blocks
——-
Deprecated AdBlocks. New functionality

Built around google heatmaps
top left
bottom left
top right
bottom right
top content
bottom content
footer
header

Blocks assigned to block position

use & display assigned title

arbitrary block order if multiple blocks per block position

block page display

block module display - empty for no display / 0 for all, comma delimited e.g 1,3,5 for 3 categories

Block activity status

Assigned to {BLOCKXX} template tags
AffiliLink
===========

Obfuscate links around a custom tag. Hides external links e.g affiliate urls around seo links

Main affililink settings auto generated (to abide by global .htaccess)

Allow remote url. Can place affililink in external pages and use stored settings to do site redirect. Sort of grey hat way of getting lots of inward links to your affiliStore site.

link tag - Place this anywhere in content as http://www.siteurl/go/lowercasetag Can have no ending, slash, .htm or .html ending. Better for seo if used consistently.

.htaccess translates to affid parameter which database translates to url. Based around wordpress golink plugin methodology.

Custom Tag
============

Create custom tag. Allows pure html (valid!) to be put into tag and inserted into template. With work can be use to add internal content units to site or affiliate widgets. HTML only no php.

Show at page / module level

Tag activity

give tag name e.g tag1 -> {TAG1}. Place anywhere in index.tpl. Must abide by valid html rules & fit with theme structure.

Cache
========
Global site caching. Overrides rss caching when set. better to leave defaults & abide by file permissions.

Cache clear option when active

Analytics
==========

Places google analytics code when active. Can ignore logged in admin & admin pages by default. Uses new ga.js or legacy urchin, though better to upgrade.

Built in functionality / extras
===============================
Concept of isType & isNav e.g isType['page'], isType['news'] & isNav['left']. Built into head & control includes. index restructured to use them.

imgerr javascript replaced with DOM functionality.

query strings encoded (htmlentities)

new int_smart function to complement quote_smart. SQL for integer values non-quoted integers to enhance security.

Default theme validates at WC3 transitional html & css levels

.htaccess in folders

Note: We can’t yet confirm a release date, but rest assured we will get it out as soon as possible.

The release respects Steve Balfour’s investment in the core product and it is therefore is based around his Affilistore v2.01 licensing conditions to maintain his footer links or to purchase the Footer Link Removal patch from Affilistore to remove them.

Affilistore Enhanced will ship with one theme (based around Affilistore default). Further themes are expected to become available in due course.

In the very near future, I also expect to set up a Forum to allow for support type discussions covering Affilistore Enhanced amongst other affiliate topics.

As ever, subscribe to the feed here to get the latest news on Affilistore Enhanced and the new board.