Affiliates & applications

The application form

Partners apply through the page carrying [affiliate_factory_registration]. Under Settings → Application form you control what it asks and how it reads: the title, intro text, button label, and success message are all editable, you can add custom fields (ask for their website, audience size, promotion plans — whatever you need to make decisions), pick a form accent color to match your theme, and add form-scoped custom CSS.

To keep bots out, the form supports CAPTCHA — Google reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha, or Cloudflare Turnstile, using your own keys. See integrations for setup.

Reviewing applications

New applications appear under Affiliates → Affiliates with a badge count in the menu so they're never missed. Open one to see every answer, then approve or reject. Approval triggers the welcome email (editable under Affiliates → Emails) containing their referral link and personal coupon code — everything they need to start promoting the same day. The onboarding sequence guide shows how to build on that first touch.

Adding partners manually

Recruiting someone directly? Affiliates → Affiliates → Add affiliate creates the account without an application — useful for migrating known partners or onboarding a friend's newsletter over coffee.

Statuses

An affiliate is pending, active, or rejected. Deactivating a partner stops new referrals from being credited to them without deleting their history — reversible, and the honest tool for pausing a relationship while you investigate something.

Who on your team can manage the program

Under Settings → Access & roles you'll find two mechanisms:

• The Affiliate Admin role — a toggleable WordPress role that can run the entire affiliate program but touch nothing else in wp-admin. Ideal for a VA or marketing hire: they see the Affiliates menu, not your plugins or settings. (On WooCommerce stores the role carries store-admin access so they can actually see order-linked referrals.)
• Per-role access levels — give any existing role No access, Manage program, or Full access. Administrators always keep full access.

Every approval, rejection, and settings change lands in the activity log, so "who changed this?" always has an answer.