Integrating third-party affiliate systems with iPanel/iHost

Question:

Q: I have a third-party affiliate system that I would like to integrate with iPanel/iHost. It requires that I add some code to the "thank you" or "payment received" page. How can I do this?

Answer:

There is no "thank you" page that can be consistently relied upon to be displayed receipt of a payment. This is because there is no guarantee that the user will be present upon payment at all -- i.e., for PayPal, the IPN is received asynchronously and may take up to 2 minutes after the user returns to iPanel from PayPal, and for batched CC payments it won't happen until the admin runs the batch. A similar situation exists for bank transfer and cash/check payments.

The only way to do this is if you're using instant-result gateways like authorize.net in non-batch mode. If so you can try editing the templates under templates/payment/, although please be aware that the specific template used will vary depending on the type of payment gateway and the result of the payment.

If you're familiar with PHP scripting you may also want to check the developers/event_api/ directory, as you may be able to use the account_provisioned() event handler to do what you're looking for in a more secure manner, which will reliably work with all payment gateways. This requires a good working knowledge of PHP programming, however, so it may not be suitable for all users.