[ic] Affiliate links

Neil Hambleton hambletn at netvigator.com
Tue Sep 2 19:41:38 EDT 2003


I'm using Interchange 4.8.6 on RedHat, and am having a couple of problems
with affiliates.

1. What is the useage of the linkback URL? The comments and help text on the
Affiliates Manager page imply (to me) that it is the default Interchange URL
to which a customer from the affiliate site will be redirected. However the
Interchange Administration Tool Guide at
http://www.interchange.rtfm.info/docs/admin.pdf says: "Click the Linkback
URL to access the affiliate's page where your entry link is displayed."
which left me a bit confused (easily done!)
In the hope that it was a redirect, I tried creating a new affiliate with a
linkback pointing to the About Us page. From the Affiliates Manager screen I
can see my new affiliate, along with the linkback URL I entered. If I click
on that link in the back-office it takes me to the page I expect, the About
Us page. I was expecting the "entry" link to be the one that I would put on
my affiliate's site, and I was hoping that someone clicking on that link
would be automatically redirected to my linkback page. However they just get
sent to the home page. Tracking of views and orders seems to be working, but
not this redirect. Could someone clarify the use of these fields for me?

Affiliates Manager Screen shows:
Code: test
Name: Test
linkback: http://demo.icdevgroup.org/i/demo1/aboutus.html
entry: http://demo.icdevgroup.org/i/demo1?mv_pc=test
Active: Yes

I was reassured to find someone else had raised this issue:
http://www.icdevgroup.org/pipermail/interchange-users/2003-April/032947.html
But unfortunately I couldn't find a response, which always makes me worry
that the question has already been answered somewhere in a manual / FAQ /
mailing list. However I've looked through those (honest) without success, so
if I've missed something obvious I would greatly appreciate it if someone
could point me in the right direction.

2. On a related note, how is the "entry" link actually generated? On my
staging server I get an entry link of:
http://interchange.ideoconcepts.com/cgi-bin/<storename>?mv_pc=test
Yet on my live server I get a secure link instead:
https://liveinterchange.ideoconcepts.com/cgi-bin/<storename>?mv_pc=test

For the live server the back-office is using secure pages, so I suspect that
is important, but I took a look at
/usr/lib/interchange/lib/UI/pages/admin/affiliates.html and it mentioned:
entry:&nbsp;[calc]
        my $url = $Config->{VendURL};
        $url .=  q{?mv_pc=[item-code]};
        return qq{<A HREF="$url">$url</A>};
[/calc]

I'm not sure where $Config->{VendURL} is defined, but I assumed from
catalog.cfg, where  I find:
VendURL    http://__SERVER_NAME____CGI_URL__
which made me think that it should not be a secure link.

Thanks,
Neil



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