Capitula

The brief

Capitula is a UK business-to-business affiliate company. It connects two kinds of business: Promoters, who show ads for complementary brands to their own customers, and Commissioners, who pay for the clicks, leads and sales those ads bring in.

To run that model, Capitula needed one platform for everything: campaigns, tracking, fraud checks, credits and payouts, all accurate to the penny for every partner.

What we built

A complete affiliate platform, designed and developed from scratch in CodeIgniter 4. The admin dashboard is the heart of it.

A dashboard built around the numbers

Live totals for cost per click (CPC), cost per lead (CPL) and cost per acquisition (CPA), each with its average. The latest transactions show the value, total commission, the Promoter's share, Capitula's margin, ad position, device and country. Every amount is calculated to four decimal places, and everything can be filtered and exported.

Fraud checks and payment status

Every transaction has a status: requested, paid or rejected. If a click looks fake, the admin rejects it and the commission is reversed before anyone is paid. A wrong call can be reverted with one click.

Automatic payouts

Each Promoter has a payout threshold. When their balance reaches it, the system creates the payment request by itself. The admin approves it, records how it was paid (bank transfer or credit) and attaches the receipt.

A credit system for Commissioners

Commissioners keep a credit balance that pays for their campaigns. Top-ups are requested, approved with proof of payment, corrected if needed, and refunded through the same workflow.

Campaigns and ads

The admin pairs a Commissioner with a Promoter, sets fixed CPC and CPL rates, a CPA percentage, CPM and the commission split, then uploads banner and text ads for up to three positions such as the blog, an article page or the checkout. Each position can have its own mobile image.

CDN based tracking

A lightweight tracking script served from a CDN records clicks, leads and sales on the Promoter's own website and feeds them straight into the dashboard.

Reports, accounts and security

Eight analytics reports (commission by campaign, metrics by ad position and month, rejections by Promoter and more), plus account management with roles, company details, sector tags, memberships, payment methods, suspensions, notifications and security settings.

A Shopify app and a WordPress plugin

Partners run their shops on different platforms, and the tracking had to be exact on all of them. So we built two integrations alongside the platform:

• Capitula Campaign Config for Shopify: adds the tracking script through a theme extension, captures leads from forms and sales through an order webhook. No theme edits needed.
• A WordPress plugin: tracks WooCommerce orders, form submissions from Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms and WPForms, and new registrations, with a choice of lightweight AJAX or pure PHP tracking.

Shopify changed its checkout rules part way through the project, which meant reworking the integration. The result is one unified tracking system that rewards partners accurately whichever platform the customer comes from.

The website

We also designed and built capitula.co.uk in WordPress, explaining the partnership model to Promoters and Commissioners.

In the client's words

Your knowledge, transparency, and skill were greatly valued on this project, and you delivered my vision.

We didn't just fix a problem, but built a resilient, high-fidelity tracking system for all our affiliate partners.

Paul Boorman, Founder, Capitula

Built with

CodeIgniter 4 (PHP), a CDN tracking script, a Shopify app, a WordPress plugin, and WordPress with Elementor for the marketing site.