Link Cloaking Plugin for WordPress

I’ve created a plugin for WordPress that can cloak outgoing links in your posts and/or pages.

Features

  • Choose what to cloak – all links, only the links you specify or no links at all.
  • Choose where to cloak – posts, pages or both.
  • Configure the URL – you can set the “prefix” part of the URL (see examples below).
  • Exception list – links pointing to domains in this list will not be cloaked. For example, this is useful if you have chosen to cloak all links but don’t want to cloak the links to your own domains.
  • Compatible with all browsers – the link cloaker plugin doesn’t use JavaScript so it will work even for visitors that have disabled JS.
  • “Smart” cloaking – relative, ambiguous or malformed URLs will not be cloaked. Better safe than sorry.
  • As of version 1.1, static link cloaking.

New! The premium version of this plugin is now available and includes several new features :

  • Cloak links in any part of your site, including the comment section and the sidebar.
  • Works with plugin-created links.
  • Five new cloaking types – for example, you can display the cloaked URL in a frame, or use a special redirect that hides the referrer.
  • Improved link management and click statistics.
  • Free automatic updates.
  • And more. Check out EclipseCloaker.com for complete details.

Examples

Here’s a link explicitly tagged for cloaking -
<a href="http://evil-guide.tripod.com/"><!--cloak-->A Cloaked Link</a>
And here’s what it looks like in the post – A Cloaked Link
If you have configured the plugin to cloak all links (the default) you don’t need the <!–cloak–> tag inside your links.

Installation

  1. Download the link-cloaking-plugin.zip file.
  2. Unzip the file.
  3. Upload the `link-cloaking-plugin` folder to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory.
  4. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
  5. (Optional) Go to Options -> Link Cloaking and modify the default settings to your liking.
  6. Re-save your permalink settings to insert the plugin’s link redirection code to the WordPress .htaccess file :
    • WP 2.7 and above : Go to Settings -> Permalinks and click “Save Changes”.
    • Older versions of WP : Go to Options -> Permalinks and click “Update Permalinks”.

Download

Version 1.4.1 : link-cloaking-plugin.zip (9 KB)

Requirements :

  • WordPress 2.2 – 2.9
  • mod_rewrite. If “pretty permalinks” work on your blog then you probably have this already.
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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 28th, 2007 at 16:38 and is filed under Applications, Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

482 Responses to “Link Cloaking Plugin for WordPress”

Pages: « 1 2 3 4 5 [6] 7 8 9 10 11 … 17 » Show All

  1. 123
    Make Money says:
    April 21, 2008 at 02:42

    First of all I want to say great plug in. At first I had the 404. It was simply fixed by moving the lines in the .httacces file to the top of the file … works like a charm now

    # Link Cloaker Plugin BEGIN

    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteRule make_money/([^/]*)/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/? wp-content/plugins/link-cloaking-plugin/wplc_redirector.php?post_id=$2&link_num=$3&cloaked_url=$0 [L]
    RewriteRule make_money/([^/]+)[/]? wp-content/plugins/link-cloaking-plugin/wplc_redirector.php?name=$1&cloaked_url=$0 [L]

    # Link Cloaker Plugin ENDS

  2. 124
    Daid says:
    April 22, 2008 at 19:14

    If your link prefix is “goto”, you should add

    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /goto/

    In general, the form is “Disallow: /link_prefix_here/”

    Thanks for your last reply,do i had to add Disallow: /goto/ ?
    If i don’t add Disallow: /goto/ ?
    What may happen ?

  3. 125
    White Shadow says:
    April 22, 2008 at 19:42

    If you don’t disallow the links and don’t use the nofollow attribute on them, they (the links) will pass the mystical “link power”, or whatever they call it. That is, your links will (slightly) help the target website to rank better.

    Whether this is good or bad for your own website is highly controversial, and I’m not expert enough to comment on that.

  4. 126
    Daid says:
    April 22, 2008 at 19:46

    Thanks for your reply, i know some where google don’t like website with a lot of affiliate links : )

  5. 127
    Bert says:
    April 26, 2008 at 04:45

    Hello,

    The start out working great then the redirects started to fail. Here is the error in Firefox.

    The page isn’t redirecting properly
    Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.
    * This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept
    cookies.

    Any ideas of what it could be? Thank you for the your time,
    Bert

    Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.

    * This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept
    cookies.

  6. 128
    Bert says:
    April 26, 2008 at 05:29

    Want to say thanks again for the plugin, but nothing says thanks better than a donation. :)

  7. 129
    White Shadow says:
    April 26, 2008 at 11:23

    Hey Bert, thanks for the donation :)

    As far as I know, FF shows this error when a script redirects to itself several times, like in a loop. That should never happen with this plugin, but there’s always a possibility of a stealthy bug. Can you give me an example link that has this problem (so that I can investigate)?

  8. 130
    Bert says:
    April 26, 2008 at 19:01

    I sent you an email with the details of the issue. Once we figure out what happen we can post the answer here for the benefit of all endusers. Thanks again!

  10. 132
    3 Ways to Cloak Affiliate Links — TeenBlogger.net says:
    June 2, 2008 at 09:30

    [...] out this post for more [...]

  11. 133
    Sebastian says:
    June 11, 2008 at 23:39

    perfect plugin, working with every wordpress version since 2.5.1 for me.

  12. 134
    Authcode says:
    June 12, 2008 at 10:45

    This is a great plugin – thanks – but is there any way it can be modified to also mask links in the RSS feed? Can WP plugins even run on the RSS feed?

  13. 135
    White Shadow says:
    June 12, 2008 at 12:43

    @Authcode – Yes, it probably can. I think you would only need to apply the plugin’s the_content filter to the_content_rss and/or the_excerpt_rss, too.

    I don’t know if that makes any sense to you ;)

  14. 136
    Authcode says:
    June 12, 2008 at 12:56

    @White Shadow – Not really! :) But I’ll see what I can do (or break). Thanks again for a great plugin.

  15. 137
    bloggylicious says:
    June 26, 2008 at 00:11

    Thank You!!

  16. 138
    gulflee says:
    June 27, 2008 at 09:41

    The Plugin shows “could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.”" in wordpress 2.3.1 ? is there any things have to be fix?

  17. 139
    gulflee says:
    June 27, 2008 at 09:56

    the problem occur here
    WordPress database error: [Table 'localhost_name.wp_cloaked_links' doesn't exist]
    SELECT * FROM wp_cloaked_links ORDER BY name ASC
    any ideal ? tq

  18. 140
    White Shadow says:
    June 27, 2008 at 13:18

    That SQL query is executed only on the static link management page, so it can’t be running at activation.

    I don’t know what, exactly, causes the crash on activation, but apparently the required table wp_cloaked_links doesn’t get created. You could try creating it manually :

    CREATE TABLE wp_cloaked_links (
	id INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
	name VARCHAR( 150 ) NOT NULL ,
	url TEXT NOT NULL ,
	hits INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL,
	UNIQUE KEY name (name),
	PRIMARY KEY id (id)
);
  19. 141
    affboy says:
    June 29, 2008 at 12:29

    Here is a easy tool can cloak, even encrypt links.
    FYR
    http://Hide-Affiliate-Links.com/

  20. 142
    White Shadow says:
    June 29, 2008 at 14:01

    @affboy – yay, shameless self promotion.

  21. 143
    Anybody a 301 redirect expert - Affiliate Marketing says:
    July 25, 2008 at 00:15

    [...] expert Hi I am currently experimenting with the ‘link cloaking plugin’ available here: Link Cloaking Plugin for WordPress | W-Shadow.com It automatically cloaks all links barr your own domain by default. Thats from memory but pretty [...]

  22. 144
    Authcode says:
    July 25, 2008 at 10:42

    I’m running version 1.2.2 of this plugin which seems to have stopped working after I upgraded Wordpress to version 2.6. Is anyone else getting this? All my cloaked links goto my blog’s 404 page – I’ve had to deactivate for now.

  23. 145
    White Shadow says:
    July 25, 2008 at 10:56

    @Authcode – I had some problems with this, but I think updating permalinks fixed it.

  24. 146
    Authcode says:
    July 25, 2008 at 11:02

    @White Shadow – Managed to fix it by updating cloaking settings several times (strangely, didn’t work the first couple of times). I think the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin screwed my plugin settings when it tried to restart them all unsuccessfully after the upgrade. I’ll remember to check my links next time! Cheers.

  25. 147
    Jeff says:
    August 5, 2008 at 06:03

    I just installed the plugin on a couple of my blogs. The first blog the plugin worked great. The second one I had some problems with it. It was interferring with my other plugin “ALINKS” … a plugin to create links to certain keywords. I couldn’t figure out a way to fix the plugin for this page so I just deactivated it because I need the alinks plugin more… If you have a fix for this I’d love to hear about it!

    Otherwise great plugin!

  26. 148
    White Shadow says:
    August 5, 2008 at 12:43

    @Jeff – It might be possible to make both plugins work together, but the links created by ALINK wouldn’t get cloaked anyway.

  27. 149
    Jeff says:
    August 5, 2008 at 17:51

    Yeah, the links from ALINKS were getting cloaked correctly… However, all the links were off by 1. Meaning…. If I had three links in the page… the first link would direct to the second, the second would direct to the third and the third would direct to the associated tag.

  28. 150
    Ash says:
    August 14, 2008 at 17:14

    Is is possible that this plugin can cloak urls in comments and custom fields (of posts)?

  29. 151
    Ash says:
    August 14, 2008 at 17:38

    Found the solution to cloaking custom fields in the comments, thanks. Could’nt find anything regarding cloaking links within comments.

  30. 152
    White Shadow says:
    August 14, 2008 at 17:39

    @Ash – Not at this time; not in the foreseeable future either :P

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