David Fiske Affiliate Marketing & Web Development

This series of articles has been designed to help explore the world of PHP. We've set up a site from scratch and added some basic functionality. Admittedly, I've probably glossed over some areas and gone into too much detail in other areas. All I know fo sure is writing a detailed tutorial is hard work :-)

So let's conclude the series by exploring what could be. What could we do with the site if it were a) a serious venture and b) on a much better domain name?
 
There's quite a bit of padding we could do to make it more user-friendly and popular.

More Recipes

Naturally, the more content we have, the better. A smart affiliate would try and get users to post their own recipes (remember they need attributing to the user and they may need to be validated) thus saving time and money.

Comments / Tips / Advice

User interaction can help foster repeat visitors. Why not invite users to post their comments about the recipe or their own hints and tips.

User Photos

One step further would be introducing some way for users to add their own photos of their attempts at the chocolate recipes. It's a "claim to fame" for them and proof that the recipes work for you!

Rating

An easy way for visitors to determine whether they should attempt the recipe would be to add a ratings system. There's various Ajax rating scripts available that plugin nicely into PHP. Alternatively, it is relatively straightforward to code one once you understand the basics.

PDF Guides

I originally wanted to be able to print recipes in PDF format. One step further would be to collate all the recipes (or 100 highest rated ones for example) into a PDF document. You could then sell this as an e-book or.....

Newsletter

.... give it away to new subscribers of your newsletter! Giving something away for free in exchange for email addresses is a sure-fire way of getting email addresses more easily than not.

I'm not sure why you would *need* a newsletter but having one means you have a ready made market of people interested in chocolate gifts and chocolate recipes.

Forum

My last suggestion would be to open up a forum of sorts. Perhaps visitors are having trouble making a recipe or need help n which products to purchase. A forum is a great way to foster interaction and repeat visitors although it can be a handful trying to manage it properly.

COURSE SUMMARY

Over the course of the tutorial, we've delved into coding a site from scratch, styling it using a CSS stylesheet and then adding a few ideas. We've not looked at traffic, optimisation, conversion rates keywords, etc. We've looked at creating a solid foundation for testing and development upon.

Remember that sites are only limited by your knowledge and ideas. Try and think outside of the box when developing new sites to ensure you add some quirky features. Create something unique and different from the rest to stand out.

Hope this all helped :-)