Zend recently introduced an affiliate program targeted at local user groups all around the world to allow them to get discounts on Zend products and services. Unfortunately, the program has met with some mixed reviews and Giorgio Sironi touches on just a few.

The program is intended to benefit all the parties involved; primarily, Zend gets a showcase for its products in an environment of dedicated PHP programmers like the ones in PHP user groups. In exchange, the group members obtain a discount on their purchases via a group-specific coupon code.

Some user groups are seeing it as a good thing, a way to provide the things Zend has to offer (software, training...anything on the Zend store really) for a discounted price. Others, however, see it has an unwelcome way Zend has tried to worm their way into local groups.

New from DevShed today, there's this article that seeks to help you build an affiliate system for your site in PHP.

Today, we're going to discuss building a simple Affiliate System. Affiliate Systems are useful for people who want to have affiliates on their sites to help boost sales.

Affiliates sign up and are given a link that they can use to redirect visitors to your site. The script will track clicks from each affiliate and also record any sales that come out of those clicks.

In the article they go all the way from explaining what an affiliate system is and how its used all the way out to how to integrate all of the code they give you into their site. It's a comprehensive look, giving you plenty of code and matching HTML to work with as well...