Beginner guide

Ground rules: the instructions here are honest and complete. Follow the bold steps and you'll get there. The jokes live in the margins — we never hide them inside a step. Let's go.

The four words it all starts with

Before you press a single button, learn four words. It's literally the best thing a beginner can do for themselves. All of AlterCPA — here it is, in full:

• Campaign — the link you run in your traffic source. One link = one campaign. It has its own short code and a live url.
• Stream — where the link goes. A campaign can hold many streams, and they rotate by turns under the rotation rules. Streams are the thing that switches.
• Landing — the page a human sees. Upload a ZIP or mirror a URL and you get a landing, served from the tracker's own domains.
• Filter — the cloaker. Bots and moderators go to the white (safe) page, real humans go to the black (money) page, split by geo, device, language and lists.

Step 1. Log in as usual

There's no separate login for the new interface — you sign in exactly where you always have.

1. Open your AlterCPA Lite and log in the normal way — same username, same password, same classic login screen.
2. You'll land on the familiar classic interface. Everything's as before. That's expected — we turn the new look on by hand, with one button.

Step 2. Turn on Inclusive Design

Here's the moment. The new interface flips on with one modest button in the menu.

1. In the classic menu, find the low-key button "Inclusive Design" — greyed-out, with a little accessibility glyph. Yes, it's really called that.
2. Click it. The tracker remembers your choice and redirects you to /app/ — that's Lighter.
3. Done. You're inside the new interface. Sidebar on the left, context bar up top — all the muscle memory from your old tracker, just labelled.

Step 3. Meet the dashboard

You're on the home screen. There's no traffic yet, so the dashboard says so honestly.

1. Look around. The date range up top, then a KPI row (clicks, leads, approvals, revenue, profit, ROI), a chart and top campaigns. It's all zeros for now — that's fine, you just started.
2. In the middle you'll see an empty state prompting "Create your first campaign." That's your goal — but first, five minutes on account setup so you don't have to come back.

Step 4. Set up your profile

Five minutes here save you an hour of confusion later. Open your profile and fill in the basics.

1. In the sidebar, at the bottom, click "Profile."
2. On the "Account" tab, check and fill your name and email — notifications go to that email.
3. Set your "Timezone" — all your stats and reports are calculated in it. Use your real one, or your "today" numbers will drift.
4. Pick your interface "Language."
5. On the "Interface" tab, choose a theme — light, dark or "match system."
6. Go to the "API" tab and copy your API token — you'll need it for postbacks and integrations. Keep it secret.

Step 5. Goals and events (optional)

If you work with deposits, registrations or add-to-cart — set up goals ahead of time so your reports colour correctly. If you don't, skip this and come back later.

1. Open the account menu → "Settings."
2. On the "Goals" tab, fill the free slots: each goal has a code (e.g. dep) and a name (e.g. "First feed"). Five slots total.
3. On the "Events" tab, set up events the same way (e.g. addcart — "Add to cart").
4. Your changes flow into the report columns automatically.

Step 6. Add a domain (optional)

Your own domain lets campaigns run through your address instead of the tracker's shared one. Domains are a personal thing — like underwear, you don't want to wear someone else's.

1. In the sidebar, open "Domains."
2. Click "Add domain" and enter your domain (a list works too — one per line).
3. Expand the DNS panel — it shows the tracker's parking IP. Point your domain's A record at that IP with your registrar.
4. Come back and click "Check" — the tracker verifies DNS and SSL. Wait for the green status.
5. Later, in the campaign editor, you'll pick this domain on the "Settings" tab — that's what glues the domain to the campaign.

Step 7. Upload a landing (optional)

If you want to serve the page from the tracker's domain instead of pointing at an external URL — upload a landing. But first you need a place to store it.

1. Open "Landings."
2. If you see a banner saying storage isn't configured, set it up first: account menu → "Settings" → the "Storage" tab, and follow the one-line install instruction. Without storage there's nowhere to upload landings.
3. Back in "Landings," click "New landing" and upload a ZIP of your page (or give a URL to mirror).
4. You can edit the files right in the browser — with syntax highlighting. Later you'll pick this landing as a stream's destination (the "Site" tab inside a stream).

Step 8. Create your first campaign

This is what it was all for. We build the first campaign — the link you'll later drop into your traffic.

1. In the sidebar, open "Campaigns."
2. Click "+ New campaign." Next to the button sits a quota chip (e.g. "1/10 campaigns") showing how many campaigns your plan allows.
3. In the "New campaign" dialog, set a name that means something to you, e.g. "Cat Food Premium — GEO RU."
4. Choose the first stream's destination: the "URL" tab (point at an external link) or the "Site" tab (point at your tracker-hosted landing).
5. Pick a delivery method (the default 302 redirect is fine).
6. If you just want one simple link with no rotation or branching — flip the "Simple mode" toggle. It hides all the stream complexity and leaves a single row. Want variants and cloaking? Leave it off.
7. Click "Create." The campaign is created and opens straight in the editor — with one Default stream.

Step 9. Fill in the campaign editor

The editor is six tabs, and it has no "Save" button: every change saves itself as you type. Let's go through the tabs top to bottom.

1. The "Streams" tab — the heart of the campaign. Here's your list of streams. Click "Add stream" to set up a destination (URL or Site), a method, weight, priority, caps, schedule, geo and device type. Streams are the thing that rotates between each other.
2. The "Rotation" tab — pick the algorithm streams rotate by (round-robin, random, by CR, by EPC and so on). Each mode has a short explainer — read it and choose.
3. The "Filter" tab — if you need cloaking, turn filters on and attach a filter from the list: bots go to the white page, humans to the money page. No cloaking? Don't touch this tab. Deep authoring — in the filters guide.
4. The "Tags & data" tab — name your incoming parameters: utm_*, subid, extra fields. Alongside is a list of macros ({click}, {geo}, {subid} and more) you can drop into links.
5. The "Postbacks" tab — paste per-status notification URLs (global, new, hold, approve, cancel, trash). This is where conversions arrive from your affiliate network. Next to it, a template generator for popular networks.
6. The "Settings" tab — pick a domain for the campaign (the one you verified in Step 6) plus the housekeeping flags. The "Simple mode" toggle lives here too.

Step 10. Set your click cost (optional)

For the tracker to calculate ROI on its own, it needs to know what you pay for traffic.

1. Open "Sources."
2. Find your source (that's one utm_source value) and type the click cost right into the cell — or set cost in bulk (by CPC or a total sum).
3. As soon as the cost is set, the profit and ROI columns calculate themselves and colour up: green for plus, red for minus.

Step 11. Read the results and fix the mess

Traffic's flowing — now let's see what's happening.

1. Open "Reports" — your statistics and analytics in one place. Start by grouping by date to see the day-by-day trend. Then group however you like — by geo, device, source, stream — and expand the drilldown tree deeper. The full breakdown — in the reports guide.
2. Open "Conversions" — every lead, its status and its history. Click a lead to see everything, right down to the UA and utm tags. More — in the conversions guide.
3. If something doesn't add up, open "Logs": clicks, API calls and postbacks. When a conversion "didn't land," this is where you see exactly what happened. More — in the logs guide.

The way back out: Classic interface

No lock on the door. If the new look isn't for you, one click takes you back to the old one.

1. Open the account menu in the top-right corner.
2. Click "Classic interface" — the tracker clears the opt-in and returns you to the classic UI. All your data, of course, stays put.

Congratulations, kitten

You logged in, turned on Inclusive Design, set up your profile, built your first campaign with a stream, and saw your first report. Remember where we started? Four words. Campaign — the link; stream — where it goes; landing — the page; filter — the cloaker. And now you also know what those same things are really called in AlterCPA Lite: поток, путь, сайт — the correct words you'll drift toward. Half an hour ago you were just learning to stand on your paws — and now you've taken your first steps. That's how kittens grow into cats. Пурь sees it — and narrows her eyes in quiet approval. Welcome.