Creating an WordPress affiliate site with WooCommerce
Guest post by 2020Media customer Andy Clark
My wife Rebecca asked me to setup a website for her that could showcase some silk flowers. As a way of judging interest for this market we decided to build it using affiliate links.
I had built affiliates sites before using hand crafted PHP and HTML, but as I would not be managing the site myself something easier would be needed. The site needed to be flexible to grow and change with the business and low maintenance.
We asked 2020Media to provide a managed WordPress site and register the domain. That service comes with managed upgrades, backups as well as some handy plugins for images, SEO and analytics. 2020Media also provided us with quality WordPress themes from CSSIgniter and the selected theme was installed by Rex. The themes had all the features you would expect from a modern theme such as responsive design and easy to use widgets.
After experimenting with custom post types and an affiliate plugin, I realised that the theme had built in support for WooCommerce and that in turn supports affiliate links. After installing the WooCommerce plugin the setup adds in all the pages needed for the shop.
The plugin allows you to categorise and enter the products. As there was only a handful of products these were entered manually, import tools are available if you have many to enter. When entering the products you need to select the external/affiliate option, enter the SKU and affiliate link and set a product image. Additional information can be added in the product short description which will allow people to find things via the search.
The theme is responsible for the display of the shop and products. It can be configured and customised without any need for coding. A simple bit of styling was added to hide the shopping cart and the site was configured to show the shop on the home page. A product search widget was added in the sidebar and the product categories were added to the menu.
All in all a very easy way to get an affiliate site up and running and it provides a solid platform going forward. The whole thing was up and running in a few hours.
Thank you Andy, we hope the added benefits of our Managed WordPress service enable you to get this site to the top of the search engines! Check out the finished site at http://www.becasblooms.co.uk/
CiviCRM 4.7.0 is here! | CiviCRM
Thanks to the efforts of an incredible group of contributors, the Core Team, and the financial support of members and partners, we’re pleased to announce the latest release of CiviCRM. We invite you to enjoy a host of improvements and new features only available in version 4.7.
Source: CiviCRM 4.7.0 is here! | CiviCRM
Used by nearly 11,000 organizations worldwide, CiviCRM is open source software built and supported by a generous community. Its purpose is to empower nonprofit and civic-sector organizations to achieve meaningful impact around the world.
Learn more here
Volunteer Syndrome – Part One
How many times have you heard a person referred to as “just a volunteer” as though “Justa” were a first name?
This really interesting article on the nature of Volunteers does not apply just to Joomla, or indeed software – well worth a read.
Read more: Volunteer Syndrome – Part One
To all the professional, caring, volunteers out there – in all fields, well done!
IETF approves HTTP error code 451 for Internet censorship
Source: IETF approves HTTP error code 451 for Internet censorship
The 451 HTTP error code, first proposed in 2012 as a tribute to Ray
Bradbury's classic novel is now an IETF standard and is the preferred
error message for a server to send to a browser when content is
blocked for legal reasons.