How to create a clean-looking affiliate link

KingDomainNames · Apr 16, 2012

Recently saw a website where there was the following link:

Text said "buy online"
When I hovered over the link it just shows a nice clean "xxxxxxxxx.co.uk/tickets" link in the status bar at the bottom left of the browser.

When I clicked on the link it took me to the buyagift website, and the buyagift url showed a long url including the affiliate's id (as I expected).

However, how can I do the same on a website of mine - i.e. clean looking link shows in the status bar at the bottom of the browser window when you hover over an affiliate link, yet when clicked goes to the trackable link ?

I thought it was a 301 re-direct, but on looking into it it doesn't appear so.

Any help appreciated, many thanks.

(Admin - I didn't put this in new domainers forum, as I felt it was more affiliate-specific. Apologies of this is wrong)

chippyb · Apr 16, 2012

Meta redirect?

tifosi · Apr 16, 2012

probably htaccess, bit of code to translate to long aff url, then a header redirect. e.g. simpleurls plugin for wordpress.

Edwin · Apr 16, 2012

htaccess 301 via directory blocked off in robots.txt

johnnyboy · Apr 16, 2012

This is how I do it.

Create a new HTML/PHP file and name it "index" then edit the code so it looks like the following:

<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=YOUR_AFFILIATE_LINK" />
</head>

Replace YOUR_AFFILIATE_LINK with the affiliate URL.

If it is, for example, a link to an iPad on Amazon, you can create a folder called "Amazon" in the root folder then create another folder called "iPad" in the Amazon folder. Then paste the file in the iPad folder. Edit the link on the page to read "/Amazon/iPad".

dta · Apr 16, 2012

as folks as have mentioned, easiest to do this via the htaccess file

alternatively what I like to do is use the htaccess file to redirect to a local file with php code to provide some conditional processing, etc before redirecting. helps reconcile my click throughs in my log file with what the affiliate mgmt software shows.

KingDomainNames · Apr 16, 2012

Wow !
Thanks for all the useful replies - will look deeper into the options a little later, as I have to go out to instruct now.

Many many thanks indeed for all your replies. Much appreciated.
Steve