The un-sexy side of the adult industry...

December 2, 2006 2:09 PM

How Does one go about with the generation and delivery of adult hosted galleries for website affiliates. The un-sexy side of adult website management is inside. This is a purely technical (and long) question, but be warned: questions, ideas and answers inside may be NSFW, and definitely are not NSF Children.

I own and run an adult website which caters to a niche of a niche, consisting of content I created (not purchased or leased content). I have had the site for about 6 years.

For this site I have an affiliate program (run through CCBill, my credit card processor). Basically what this is is, when an affiliate signs up they are automatically assigned, through CCbill, a numeric code. The affiliate puts this code inside any html link they create on their site, like a banner, (or any where else they link to me from), which sends traffic to my site. This code can be tracked and anytime someone joins my site after following the affiliates coded link, the affiliate receives a commission on the sale. This works very well.

The affiliate code looks like this:
http://refer.ccbill.com/cgi-bin/clicks.cgi?CA=XXXXXX-XXXX&PA=ZZZZZZZ

Where
“XXXXXX-XXXX” is my static account number that will be the same in every link, no matter the link or affiliate

And
“ZZZZZZZ” is the affiliate number assigned by CCBill to the affiliate.

The larger sites take this a step further and offer “Hosted Galleries”. These are generally one-page galleries, not just banners, which the adult webmaster hosts and the affiliate then places the link to out on the web.

I've wanted to add hosted galleries to my program for a while. I would initially design the gallery page, but the links on it back to my site would have to contain the individual affiliate codes in the link.

But what keeps getting in my way is that I cant figure out a way to get the links in the hosted galleries generated with the affiliate member’s codes already on them. Or a way for the affiliate to insert their code and generate the page at will. And the put the page on my server.

For example, as I see it, if I have 100 affiliates and 20 hosted galleries I'm going to need 2000 hosted pages generated automatically, or at will by the affiliate, with proper affiliate codes in the links (100 sets of 20). The only difference in the html would be the 7-digit affiliate ID code. The generated file would probably also have to be named “gallery01ZZZZZZZ.htm” or something like that

eeek!

I am looking for a script (ideally free, of course), or something I can built a page/site around that can do this. Or any other solution that doesn’t involve me manually changing the code on 2000 pages :-)

My HTML brain hurts!

Any thoughts?
TIA!

P.S. No, CCBill does not offer a tool to do this.

posted by sandra_s to computers & internet (8 comments total)

If it has to be HTML, why not create a generic template, and use Perl/Python/awk/language-of-choice to insert the affiliate IDs?
posted by spaceman_spiff at 2:17 PM on December 2, 2006

It should be extremely easy. Just let people pass the refer code in the URL as a variable.

So, if you were writing PHP, you could make your hosted gallery links look like.

http://tomatosex.com/galleries/3123213.php?affcode=ZZZZZZ

Then in your PHP code you make the 'click here' links this way:

<a href="http://refer.ccbill.com/cgi-bin/clicks.cgi?CA=XXXXXX-XXXX&PA=< %=_REQUEST['affcode']%>" >Click here to sign up for tomatosex!</a>

That way, people with affiliate codes could make URLs by replacing ZZZZZ with their code, and that code would passed along to CCBill if they click from the link on the page. I haven't tested this though, but that should be how it works.
posted by delmoi at 2:21 PM on December 2, 2006

Oh, was there a requirement that each of the pages be static HTML, not generated content? There are ways to 'hide' the generated-nature of the code, look at flickr, for example. All of the URLs look like normal links (rather then parametric links) and yet the pages are obviously generated on the fly. Metafilter is the same way, you can view anyone's profile with the URL

http://www.metafilter.com/username/sandra_s

Just change the user name to whatever you want.

You can use apache's mod-rewrite to acomplish this. You could generate links that looked like:

http://tomatosex.com/galleries/100/ZZZZZZZZ.htm and got converted internally and automatically to links like the one in my last comment.
posted by delmoi at 2:25 PM on December 2, 2006

Thanks, delmoi and Spaceman_spiff. My problem is that although I know my way around in HTML (i can diagnose my html problems by dissecting the code), I am not familiar at all with Perl/Python/awk/language-of-choice or PHP.

I'm not a programmer :-(

But i am pretty good at having semi-dirty pictures taken of me, if that counts :-)

To delmoi: The gallery (the html file) needs to exist on my server, how would the affiliate be able to make changes to the html code (to put their code on it) without access to my server. Which they cannot have.

Or, my brain is nott understanding your answer (entirely possible)
posted by sandra_s at 2:33 PM on December 2, 2006

The content is static. The same file (photo and associated URL to it) would be constant no matter the affiliate.
posted by sandra_s at 2:40 PM on December 2, 2006

Now, to clarify my capabilities, I am very good at HTML. I can dissect code and solve problems without a GUI program (like dreamweaver). Utilizing scripts inst a problem for me. I just have no programming skills. :-)
posted by sandra_s at 2:57 PM on December 2, 2006

It's not a big job, even with the mod_rewrite. Sounds like you need a web monkey. Try the jobs section, maybe?
posted by Leon at 3:19 PM on December 2, 2006

Sandra, I've written this exact thing for myself in the past. Drop me a line with your hosting details (as in supported languages/etc...) and I'll see if I can cook one up again.

I also need the template you're using.
posted by MrHappyGoLucky at 8:22 PM on December 2, 2006