When giving links to your website to your partners, often times you want to embed an identification string that will link visits or eventual sales to the corresponding partner.

Interchange supports affiliate tracking; the source of the visit or order is always accessible using [data session source].

So when giving links to your affiliates, make sure the affiliate code you assign them is embedded in one of the following ways:

http://myhost.mydomain.local/cgi-bin/standard/index?;;thesource         (old Minivend 3 way, still works)
http://myhost.mydomain.local/cgi-bin/standard/index?mv_pc=thesource     (Interchange way, still works)
http://myhost.mydomain.local/cgi-bin/standard/index?mv_source=thesource (current way)

Note that mv_source was added as an affiliate code-passing option only in Interchange 4.9.x. Before that, affiliate code was passed in mv_pc. The mv_pc variable is used as a variable containing a random number to prevent caching of pages. So if you want to use mv_pc as a way of carrying over the affiliate code, it must contain at least one non-digit. (mv_pc=A12 is a good affiliate code, mv_pc=12 is not). If using mv_source, affiliate code is free of this restriction.

Sometimes you want the affiliate code to disappear from the URL after the visitors get redirected to your page. To enable that feature, see BounceReferrals configuration directive.