How to test that everything is working

In the vast majority of cases SliceWP works out of the box. However, because of WordPress’ large number of plugins and themes, issues can happen from time to time.

This article will guide you step-by-step on how you can test your affiliate program to make sure everything is running smoothly.

Creating an affiliate test account

Test affiliate accounts come in handy because it gives you the perspective on what your affiliates experience when using your website.

We recommend having multiple test accounts and playing around with them, as this will give you an overall feel of how SliceWP works behind the scenes. With this, let’s create your first test account:

1. Firstly, navigate to your WordPress admin area > Users > Add New.
2. Here, complete the fields for the new user, and, to make things easier on the long term, set the username to something memorable, for example testaffiliate1.
3. Before adding the new user, make sure the Register User as Affiliate field is checked. You can leave Send Affiliate Welcome Email unchecked for now.
4. Lastly, add the new user. In the process, the user is also added to SliceWP as an affiliate. To view this new affiliate navigate to SliceWP > Affiliates. Your manually added affiliates will be by default active. You can change their status anytime by editing their account.

Activating the Debug Logger

Before we dive into testing, let’s activate the Debug Logger, a tool that registers errors and success messages when doing certain actions in SliceWP. With it you’ll be able to track down issues more easily. To activate the tool:

1. Navigate to your WordPress admin dashboard > SliceWP > Settings > Tools (tab) > Debug Log (section).
2. Then, switch the Enable Logging option on and save the settings. Once the settings are saved, if you go back to the Debug Log section, you will have a new text area field. Here you’ll find the errors and success messages mentioned above.

How to test a visit

Now that we have a test affiliate, that’s also active, and that we can track issues let’s test a visit:

1. Firstly, open your WordPress dashboard in one browser (for example Chrome) and navigate to SliceWP > Visits. Here you’ll see all visits ever made. In a few moments here is where you’ll see the new visits we’ll going to make.
2. Then, open another browser window (for example Firefox) or an incognito/private window of the first browser (Chrome – Incognito in this case). In this newly opened browser window, access your website with the affiliate keyword appended to it, similar to: https://yourwebsite.com/?aff=1
   • aff is the default value set for the Affiliate Keyword option in SliceWP > Settings > General (tab) > Affiliate URL Settings (section). If you’ve modified this value, make sure to change aff to the custom keyword you selected.
   • The number that appears after the equal sign is the affiliate’s ID. In this case, it’s 1, as this is the first affiliate we added. Make sure to set the correct ID when testing.
   
3. Finally, switch back to the first browser window and refresh the Visits page. You’ll have the visit we just made in the table.

How to test a commission

Now that we have a recorded visits, let’s go ahead and make a purchase, like so:

1. Firstly, make sure the integration you’re testing is active. You can find all integrations in your WordPress admin dashboard > SliceWP > Settings > Integrations (tab).
2. Then, make sure you are on the second browser window, the one mentioned on point #2 from the above section (where you accessed the affiliate promotional link).
3. Here, navigate to the store/membership area of the site and make a purchase.
4. Once the purchase is complete a new commission will be generated for the affiliate. To view it, switch back to the first browser window (the one where you are logged in the admin area) and navigate to SliceWP > Commissions.
5. The new commission will also be reflected in the Visits page for the visit. Navigate to SliceWP > Visits and check the Converted column. It now shows yes followed by the commission’s ID, instead of the initial no value.

How to test an affiliate coupon

Affiliate coupons are one of the best ways to incentivize your affiliates to promote you. In essence, they are regular coupon codes that are attached to particular affiliates.

Whenever someone purchases using the coupon, they get a discount, the affiliate a commission and you a sale, creating a win-win-win situation.

To make sure an affiliate coupon is generating a commission, please follow these steps:

1. Firstly, make sure the integration you’re testing is active. You can find all integrations in your WordPress admin dashboard > SliceWP > Settings > Integrations (tab).
2. Next, create a new coupon from the integration’s interface. To make it easy, set a simple code for the coupon, AFFILIATECOUPON for example. In the integration’s new coupon page look for the Affiliate Name settings field. Here, start typing the affiliate’s name or email address and, once the affiliate shows up, click it to connect it to this coupon code. Save the coupon. For example, this is how the Affiliate Name field looks in WooCommerce. In all other integrations it’s similar.
3. Then, open a new browser window, and make sure you’re not logged in as either the affiliate or with an administrator account.
4. Here, navigate to a product from your shop and add it to the cart. Before checking out and finalizing the purchase, make sure to add the coupon code.
5. Once the purchase is complete, navigate back to your WordPress dashboard > SliceWP > Commissions. A new commission will show up for the affiliate that was tied to the coupon code used on checkout.