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General Links
ONLINE MANUAL
General Sections
affCAFF Manager - The Basics
affCAFF Manager - Advanced
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affCAFF Manager Default Settings
There are several settings in the affCAFF Manager that you can change. These are system
"default" settings, meaning they don't have to be altered, but you may wish to.
Care must be taken to ensure that only permitted values are input, or the affCAFF data streams could stop
functioning. A "Restore" option is provided on your Manage Settings page in affCAFF
Manager should this happen.
Advanced Stats Tracking
The advanced stats tracking will prove to be a valuable tool in time. If set to "Y", it sends each
link through a tracking script (maintaining your affiliate links!) and creates a communal
set of stats, such as feed popularity, visitor locations and browsers used, referring sites
and pages...a fair bit of useful information. More on
Advanced Stats Tracking...
Message If No Items
This is the message you would like to display to visitors on your website if a data stream has
no items at any given time. While this will be rare, it is possible that a content provider might
deactivate all items on a specific property temporarily.
Show Latest Items First
Set to "Y" by default. If you prefer to have the most recent items at the end of the lists, set it
to "N".
Headlines To Link Out
By default this is set to "Y" meaning that all your item headlines will link out using your
affiliate links. Setting it to "N" will disable headline links altogether, but still display
the headlines as text.
Link Window Target
Set by default to "_blank" which is HTML code for pointing a link at a new browser window. You
can use any HTML entity, or your own "target". Any time a visitor clicks one of the headlines on
your site, it loads your affiliate linked property in the target browser specified here.
Default CSS Class
The CSS class is an optional class to configure the look and feel of the headline link. The default
class is set to "acLink", so you can either set up a CSS class with this name, or use your own. If you
create new templates, then you may choose not to use the "{class}"
setting at all, but leaving this to default will not have any detrimental effect.
Default Template
Each data stream can be configured how you like, but two basic item display templates were
installed with the affCAFF system - one that displays both Headlines and Descriptions for each
item, one that only displays Headlines. The templates section
explains how you can create your own, and set them as the default here, but by default this
setting picks up the "headlines_and_descriptions.inc" template. Change it to
"headlines.inc" if you just want headlines displayed in a list.
Default Stream ID
The "Default Stream ID" is just a fallback ID that is used if the system can't find another ID
that you have specified. It should never be needed, but if you were to get an ID wrong, at least
something will fill the gap.
Max Items To Display
This refers to the default Maximum Items To Display in each data stream shown on your site. In actual
fact, this setting will usually be over-ridden when you add the code to your page by the
$params['maxitems'] parameter set in the Data Generator,
but it does no harm to have a backup setting.
Enable Automated Updating
Each time you log into affCAFF Manager, it looks to bring down new properties and any files that
need updating. You can turn this off, though it is not recommended as you could end up being
some way out of date, plus any fixes or improvements will not install.
Retrieve Data With CRON
This is for advanced users with access to run CRON jobs only - leave it
as "N" if you are at all unsure about running CRON jobs. If changed to
"Y", this will prevent user-triggered data stream retrieval and replace it with
retrieval via the "acCron.php" script. If used, this script would be set up manually to run once a day
(preferably overnight). Please refer to the "Using CRON To Retrieve Data Streams" section on the
Advanced Data Generation page before changing this setting.
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