David Fiske A subtle blend of affiliate marketing and web development

Over the course of the next few weeks, I'm going to take Tania up on the idea of creating an in-depth set of articles detailing exactly how to go about creating an affiliate site with quirky features and functionality.

The aim of the articles is to show how easy it is to get a site up and running using MySQL, PHP and some (open source) ready made plugins.

Here's the order of the articles to follow:
 
The Basics

Everyone else has written about this so it would be pointless regurgitating it. Instead I'll provide links to the best articles I can find, as well as links to a few books.

1) Purpose & Structure

I'll be explaining the site that I'm going to build, together with information on what is about (in terms of competition) and what can be done to ensure differentiation.

I'll also explain the structure that will hold the site together. It would be daft heading into any project blind - always create a todo list as a bare minimum to make sure you can check progress.

2) Setting Up The Database

This will involve setting up the required tables and adding some sample data.

3) Setting Up The Site

This will involve setting up basic pages that interact with the database. I'll add a .htaccess file, a robots.txt file, a splash of style, colour and text to pad the site out.

4) SEO

I'll take a look at SEO, explaining the logic behind why I created certain aspects and why I used certain markup.

5) Adding Functionality

We've got the foundations and basic groundwork sorted so now it's time to add the extra functionality.

6) Looking Forward

The nature of the tutorial is to get a grounding of some basics as well as the more complex functionality. The articles are intended to encourage further research, to which I will help by posting relevant third party tutorials and articles.

I'll also post a few ideas about where I could see the site going, and would hope that readers (that's you!) would comment with their own ideas and takes on not only the future of the site, but the other articles in the series too.