Affiliates?

What are they? Other than a little pic in your portal page? And what are partners?

affilates tends to be the term given to those whom support your site by advertising in return for commision.

For forum lingo however, affilates are those whom you have exchanged links with to help each other promote each others site, there is not normally any cash involved.

Partners are the same thing as affilates, though occasionally these are sites ran in conjunction with yours, like a 'sister-site' as such.