The Webamaze Blog

After just a few days trying WP out I’m now in the process of getting a commerce site/blog off the ground. More site than blog though.

I’ve been toying with the idea of an affy site for Mini Notebooks, seeing as they’re becoming quite popliar. I had another bash at Affilistore so I uploaded it to a Hot Mates  db for what seems the umpteenth time and then went looking for some deep links on my affy programmes.

I’m with a fair few affies: Affiliate Future, Affiliate Window, Buy.at, DGM, Paid On Results, Tradedoubler and Webgains so I had a look around. I didn’t look on TD though because they don’t like you spreading merchants over sites other than the one they’re registered with. Dummies!!

What did I find? nothing.

Looks like I’ll have to hand pick them then so Affilistore is out the window again. I don’t really like it anyway because their categories don’t tally with the Affies feeds. I’ll delete it off Hot Mates soon.

I then thought about designing a site from scratch but that met with a brick wall when I got a mental block on the look I wanted so I thought about WP. I found the e-commerce section and that lead me to Instinct so after a bit of research I decided to install a fresh WP on a database on Harriers Online to try it out.

I wasn’t looking forward to it because the H-O db’s are hosted with Streamline and nothing ever seems to go right when uploading via FTP. Too bloody right it didn’t! Only half the package went up with files missing from folders and that error I keep getting with them where I find what should be a full folder has vanished to be replaced with a file called something like ‘pure #### something or other. It has the effect of giving a 404 and one day I’ll look up what this weird file is all about.

Anyway, after a bit of trial and error I eventually got the WP package working and then I installed the Instinct package – wp-e-commerce.3.6.8RC1

I don’t really think it’s what I want. very complex and full of stuff I don’t want like Carts, Checkouts, tax levels, UPS Shipping etc so now I’m going to treat my new baby as a straight forward site with a page for each Notebook manufacturer and then stick my own concocted deep links straight on the pages. Add in a bit of chat and plenty of linky stuff and by Christmas Rodders we’ll be millionaires.

Tags: Affiliate, Affiliate Future, Affiliate Window, Affilistore, Buy.at, DGM, Harriers Online, Hot Mates, Instinct, Streamline, Tradedoubler, Webgains