Dynamic creatives let you build one banner that fills itself in differently for every affiliate – their coupon code, name, QR code or profile picture merged into the image automatically.

They appear on the creatives tab of the affiliate dashboard like any other creative, except each affiliate sees their own personalised version.

Creating a dynamic creative

Ir a Coupon Affiliates → Creatives, click “Add New”, enter a creative name, and set the Creative Type to “Dynamic Creative: Visual Designer”. The designer opens below.

Background, or a blank canvas

There are two ways to start. Either choose an Image Background to design on top of, in which case the image sets the canvas size, or leave it empty and design on a blank canvas at whatever size you like.

With no background image you can set the width and height yourself, and give the canvas a solid colour, a gradient (two colours and a direction), or a transparent background. The Presets dropdown covers the common sizes, so you do not have to look them up: social landscape, square and story, leaderboard, medium rectangle, wide skyscraper, large mobile banner and email header.

Very large background images are refused with a message, rather than failing part way through generating.

Start from a layout

If you would rather not start from nothing, click Start from a template. There are sixteen ready-made layouts, grouped into feature graphics, square and vertical, banner ads, and email and print. They are built from merge tags, so a layout is useful the moment you apply it.

Applying a layout replaces the layers you have now, and undo brings them back. By default the layout brings its own canvas size with it – tick “Keep my canvas size and scale the layout to fit” to keep yours instead.

Adding layers

Everything on the design is a layer, added from the toolbar above the canvas:

• Text – any text, with merge tags in it.
• QR code – a scannable code for that affiliate’s referral URL.
• Image – a logo, or any other upload.
• Profile image – each affiliate’s own profile picture, or their Gravatar if they have not set one.
• Shape – rectangle, circle, triangle, diamond, arrow, chevron, star, burst, pentagon or hexagon.

En Layers list on the left controls what sits on top of what, and lets you hide or select a layer. The Layer panel on the right holds the settings for whichever layer is selected. A creative can hold up to 40 layers.

Moving things around

Drag a layer to move it, drag a corner handle to resize it, or drag the round handle above it to rotate (hold Shift for 15° steps). Shift-drag constrains movement to one axis, Alt-drag ignores snapping, and the arrow keys nudge by 1px, or 10px with Shift. Double-click a text layer to edit it in place.

Ctrl/Cmd+click a second layer to select more than one and move, duplicate or delete them together. Ctrl/Cmd+Z undoes, Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Z redoes, Ctrl/Cmd+D duplicates, and Ctrl/Cmd+C and Ctrl/Cmd+V copy and paste.

Layer options

Text layers have a font (Normal, Bold, Italic or Serif), size, colour, case, alignment, line height, letter spacing and wrap width, plus a drop shadow, an outline, a background behind the text with its own padding and corner radius, and a gradient fill. Every layer also has rotation and opacity.

Shape layers have a size, colour, corner radius and gradient fill, a drop shadow, and a fill setting – switch it to “Outline only” for rings and frames.

Profile image layers can be a circle or a square, at any size, with an optional border ring. QR code layers have a size, colour, background and quiet zone.

Merge tags

Merge tags go inside a text layer, and are replaced for each affiliate:

• Utilice {coupon} to insert their coupon code.
• Utilice {descuento} to insert the coupon’s discount percentage or fixed amount.
• Utilice {nombre de usuario} to insert their username.
• Utilice {first-name} to insert their first name.
• Utilice {company} to insert their own company name, taken from their billing details.
• Utilice {store} to insert your shop’s name. This one is the same for everyone.

In the designer these show example values. For a QR code, add a QR code layer rather than typing a tag into text.

Preview it as a real affiliate

A layout that looks fine with a merge tag in it can fall apart once someone with a long name and a twelve-character coupon code turns up.

Enter a coupon code or affiliate name in the Preview as box and the design fills in with that affiliate’s real details. Preview exact PNG goes further, and renders the design through the same engine that produces the affiliate’s downloadable file, so what you see is exactly what they will get.

A Things to check panel sits below the canvas, and points out text that runs off the edge of the canvas or is too small to read.

Publishing

When you are happy with it, click publish. Affiliates can then view, download and embed their own version from the creatives tab of their dashboard.

Creatives made before version 8.3.0

Creatives built with the old ten text slots keep rendering exactly as they always did. Opening one shows a notice that it still uses the classic layout, with its text converted into layers so you can edit it visually – but nothing changes for your affiliates until you press Update. Use “Preview exact PNG” to compare the converted design against the current output before you save.

Activar la caché para creatividades dinámicas

This option is in the plugin settings page (“Creatives” tab), and is enabled by default. Each generated creative is saved as an image file in your uploads folder and served straight from your web server, with no PHP involved. Cached images are rebuilt automatically whenever you update the creative, and are built when you save, so the first affiliate to open their dashboard afterwards is not left waiting.

A creative with nothing affiliate-specific in it – no merge tags, no QR code, no profile picture – is generated once and shared by everyone, rather than once per affiliate.