Building an Affiliate Sign-Up Page and Partner Portal in a Block Theme (No Shortcodes Required)

Every affiliate program needs two public pages: one where partners apply, and one where approved partners see their link, their coupon, and what they've earned. For years the only way to put those on a WordPress page was a shortcode pasted into a text block — fine, but a little 2012, and awkward in a block theme where everything else is a real block you can see and arrange.

Since version 1.25, Affiliate Factory WP ships both pages as proper blocks: Affiliate Application Form and Affiliate Portal. This guide walks through building the two pages with them, in whatever theme you run, and ends with the handful of decisions that make the difference between a sign-up page that converts and one that just exists.

The thirty-second version

If you want the pages and don't care where they live: go to Affiliate Factory WP → Tools and click Create missing pages. The plugin creates an application page and a dashboard page, drops the right block on each, and wires them together. You're done; skip to the decisions.

The rest of this guide is for the more common situation: you already have a "Partners" or "Affiliates" page in your site's navigation, and you want the form and the portal to live inside pages you designed.

Step 1: Place the application form

Open the page where partners should apply — or create one — in the block editor. Click the + inserter, type "affiliate", and pick Affiliate Application Form. The editor shows a labeled placeholder (the real form only renders for visitors, since it depends on who's logged in), so position it like any other block: after your intro, before your FAQ, inside a two-column layout next to a testimonial from a partner — wherever it belongs on the page.

The block has no settings of its own on purpose. Everything about the form — the title, the intro text, the button label, the success message, which fields it asks for, the accent color, and the CAPTCHA — lives in one place, Settings → Application form, so the form reads the same wherever you place it and you never hunt through block settings to change a label. You can add custom fields there too: ask for a website, an audience size, how they plan to promote. The affiliates documentation covers each option.

One thing to know: a visitor who isn't logged in sees a short login-or-register prompt before the form, because an affiliate account is a WordPress user account. That prompt uses your site's normal registration flow, so if registration is turned off under Settings → General in WordPress, turn on "Anyone can register" or partners will hit a wall.

Step 2: Place the portal

Repeat the process on your dashboard page with the Affiliate Portal block. The portal is where approved partners land after they log in: referral link and short /go/name link, personal coupon code, ready-made banners with their link already inside, live stats, the leaderboard if you've enabled it, and payout history.

Like the form, the portal is configured centrally under Settings → Affiliate dashboard: which sections show, every piece of text, and the accent color. Anyone who reaches the page without an affiliate account sees an invitation to apply rather than an error, and the portal link in approval emails points wherever you tell the plugin the page lives — which brings us to the next step.

Step 3: Tell the plugin where the portal is

Approval emails and the "apply" links need to point at the right URL, so once your dashboard page is published, select it under Settings → General → Affiliate portal page. That's the one piece of wiring the plugin can't guess when you build the page yourself.

The application form needs no registration — it works on whatever page you place it. One cosmetic note: the setup checklist on Affiliate Factory WP → Dashboard and its Pages & shortcodes panel track the pages the plugin created with Create missing pages, so a hand-built application page can show as "not set up" there even though it's live and working. You can ignore that line, or hide the checklist once your program is running.

If you use a page builder or a classic theme

Nothing changes except the mechanism. Elementor, Bricks, Divi, Beaver Builder, and the classic editor all accept shortcodes, so use [affiliate_factory_registration] for the form and [affiliate_factory_portal] for the portal — they render exactly the same output as the blocks, from the same code, with the same settings. Classic themes using the block editor can use the blocks directly. There is no "block version" and "shortcode version" to keep in sync; it's one form and one portal, placed two different ways.

Styling without fighting your theme

The form and the portal pick up your theme's fonts and inherit its base text styles, then apply their own layout and the accent color you chose. Three escalating options when that isn't enough:

First, the accent color and texts in the plugin settings handle most brand alignment with zero code. Second, Settings → Custom CSS applies your own rules scoped to the affiliate-facing pages, so a stray selector can't restyle your checkout. Third, in a block theme, the surrounding layout is yours: put the form in a Group block with a background, constrain its width with a Columns or Row block, add a Cover block above it. The block respects the container it's in.

A tip from support tickets: don't shrink the form to a sidebar. Applications are a decision for the partner, and a cramped form reads as an afterthought. Give it the width of your content column.

What to put around the form

The block is the easy part; the page around it is what gets applications. Four things belong above the form on any sign-up page: the commission in plain numbers ("25% of every order, paid monthly, 30-day cookie"), who the program is for and who it isn't, how and when partners get paid, and one or two sentences about what you'll give them to promote with — banners, a personal coupon, product samples. Partners skim for exactly these before they fill in anything; our guide to writing a program page that converts goes deeper, and the launch checklist covers the policy decisions you should have made before the page goes live.

Below the form, a short FAQ handles the objections you'd otherwise answer by email: when commissions become payable, whether coupon orders count, what happens on refunds, how self-referrals are treated. Every one of those has a precise answer in your settings; write it down once.

Checking the result

Open the application page in a private window, apply as a test partner, approve the application from Affiliates, log in as that partner, and look at the portal. Then visit your store through the partner's link, place a test order, and confirm the referral shows up on both sides. If you're doing this on a staging copy of your site — and you should — set Settings → Notifications → Delivery to "Pause all emails" first so the walkthrough never emails anyone real; the staging test plan runs through the full lifecycle.

That's the whole job: two blocks, two settings screens, and a page that explains the deal clearly. The program's success is decided by what you offer and how you treat partners afterward — the page just needs to stop getting in the way.

Quick answers

Do I need the shortcodes anymore? No, but they keep working. Blocks and shortcodes render the same form and portal from the same settings; use whichever your editor prefers.

Can the application form and portal be on the same page? Yes, though a separate page for each is clearer for partners and for your navigation. Both blocks render happily on one page.

Does the block work in the site editor and in templates? Yes — it's a standard dynamic block. Most programs still place it on a normal page so the URL is easy to share.

Why does the editor show a placeholder instead of the live form? The real form depends on who is viewing it (logged in or not, affiliate or not), so it renders on the front end only. The placeholder marks the position and size.

What if my theme's styles clash with the form? Use the accent color and texts first, then Settings → Custom CSS, which is scoped to the affiliate pages so your changes can't leak elsewhere.