Required Gems ============= Rspec gem install rspec Packet gem install packet Friendly gem install friendly Setup ===== 1. Copy the config/database.example and config/friendly.example and modify to suit your needs 2. Generate the authentication key rake auth:gen:site_key 3. Create databases, Friendly tables, and seed database rake db:create:all rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV=production rake db:seed RAILS_ENV=production Usage ===== After affiliates sign up or are created in the admin, they can be assigned codes to link to your site's pages. This will require some modification of your storefront's code, but only enought to track the current affiliate code through the session. An example usage for affiliate 'marty123' with a trackback code 'mar' would be as follows: 1. marty123 links to your store with his affiliate code http://widgetsrus.co.uk/index.html?affiliate=mar 2. Your site drops in a tag on the linked page (or use curl, or any method to perform an HTTP GET) passing the trackback data to the affiliate application (on http://widgetsrus.co.uk/index.html) <img src="http://affiliates.widgetsrus.co.uk/track/mar" height="1" width="1" alt=""/> 3. Place a similar tag or otherwise GET the affiliate application through the user's visit on any pages you want trackbacks recorded on. Any additional metrics you want recorded can be included in JSON format as such: http://affiliates.widgetsrus.co.uk/track/mar/{'search_terms':'purple widget', 'other_key':'other_value'} 4. In the event the user purchases something in your store, the tag on the order completion page is a bit different: http://affiliates.widgetsrus.co.uk/track/mar/{order_number}/{order_amount} -- e.g. -- http://affiliates.widgetsrus.co.uk/track/mar/234494/23.45 Available tracking routes: track/{trackback_code}/{order_number}/{order_amount} //-> +Trackback, +PageView, +PayableAction track/{trackback_code}/{extra_data} //-> +Trackback, +PageView track/{trackback_code} //-> +Trackback, +PageView