All referrals credited to “Direct” but hits showing for affiliates

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by

Christina

We recently implemented a new web site on Woo using affiliates Pro. We are seeing plenty of hits, but all referral orders are being marked as “direct”. Our affiliates are getting pretty frustrated and we need advice on this ASAP. We are hosted on BlueHost. PLEASE HELP ASAP!

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Comments

20 responses to “All referrals credited to “Direct” but hits showing for affiliates”

  1. Christina Avatar
    Christina

    I changed nothing else in my configuration. It seems that was the culprit. The site is hosted on Bluehost – so I guess varnish is a popular default.

    Thanks for your help on this!

    1. kento Avatar
      kento

      You’re welcome and thanks for your feedback on that, this will surely be helpful for others using a similar setup.

  2. Christina Avatar
    Christina

    And it’s fixed, it was varnish! Thanks

    1. kento Avatar
      kento

      Hi Christina,

      Great that we have this resolved! I’ve added an entry in the troubleshooting section for future reference Varnish Cache – if you’d like to explain briefly what you changed in your configuration, I’d be happy to include it there, too.

      Cheers

  3. Christina Avatar
    Christina

    And I changed the theme because it was interfering with the debug.

  4. Christina Avatar
    Christina

    debug is set to true!

  5. kento Avatar
    kento

    I’ve deactivated several plugins on your staging site and there are still no cookies created on the front end.

    Are you using Varnish?
    Can you check with your host to see if they have anything in place that interferes with cookies?
    Please enable debugging for the staging site – I’ve added a small test plugin that sets a cookie on each request, if there is any output generated before the cookie is set, we would have headers already sent and would see that in the debug.log.

  6. Christina Avatar
    Christina

    And I have created a development site and still I am unable to see a cookie set for affiliates.

    Same user and password for the WordPress installation

    I used http://www.stage.sparoom.com?affiliates=2
    No cookie!

    1. kento Avatar
      kento

      Thanks that’s great, I’ll have a look on the staging site instead and do the tests there.

  7. Christina Avatar
    Christina

    I reactivated it, though. And you are welcome to do it, also if you will reactivate after you test.

  8. Christina Avatar
    Christina

    I don’t show the cookie after I deactivated the redirection plugin.
    Any thing else?

    1. kento Avatar
      kento

      Thanks Christina, I’ll have a second look.

  9. Christina Avatar
    Christina

    Antonio,
    Am down to these plugins

    Affiliates Pro
    Affiliates WooCommerce Integration
    Gravity Forms
    Gravity Forms User Registration
    Menu Items Visibility Control
    New User Approve
    Redirection
    User Role Editor
    Woo
    Woo advanced free shipping
    woo authorize
    woo video
    woo sequential orders

    and it still isn’t working

    Any other ideas?

    1. kento Avatar
      kento

      Hi Christina,

      I’ve had a look at the admin section and there is one plugin that could be interfering: Redirection.

      As your site is live I’d rather not change anything there, you can either set up a staging site based on a copy of this one or if you can disable that plugin yourself and give it a try please? After you deactivate that plugin try visiting an affiliate link and check if the wp_affiliates cookie is set.

      Cheers

  10. Christina Avatar
    Christina

    Antonio,

    I am also seeing discrepancies in the order numbers, the affiliate order number and the actual order number are off by one. Can you look into this as well?

    Thanks in advance!

    1. antonio Avatar
      antonio

      Thanks,
      hits are recorded but affiliate cookie is not created so the referral is assigned to Direct. Probably there is a conflict with another plugin.
      Pease disable all other plugins except essential ones and verify that it works correctly. Then you can enable other plugins individually to see what is causing the conflict.
      cheers

  11. Christina Avatar
    Christina

    just to clarify, we do see hits assigned to affiliates, but not referrals. Again, we need help on this ASAP. Your product is not working.

    1. antonio Avatar
      antonio

      Thanks,
      you can send us dashboard admin access to support at itthinx dot com and we’ll have a look (please indicate this topic in the email).
      cheers

  12. Christina Avatar
    Christina

    They are assigned to the affiliate listed.

    Thanks

  13. antonio Avatar
    antonio

    Hi,
    in Affiliates->Visit & Referrals if you select ‘Expand hits’, Do the hits are assigned to Direct or to another affiliate ?

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