Link Cloaking Plugin Update
Some time ago I created a WordPress plugin that can cloak affiliate links automatically. Today I’m releasing a new version, with all-new feature(s)!
The main improvement I’ve implemented is “static link cloaking”. The previous version of the plugin could only cloak links that you’ve actually used in a post, which is inconvenient if you want to use the cloaked link anywhere else, like forums or e-mails, because the cloaked URL might change or stop working if you edited the post. This is still true for automatically cloaked links, but now there’s a new feature available – static links.
Static Links Are Different
- Independent from the rest of your blog’s content – add any links and use them anywhere!
- No numbers tacked on the end.
- The number of hits is tracked!
Here’s an actual example of how a (static) cloaked link’s URL looks –
http://w-shadow.com/goto/GTrends/ (goes to my keyword research tool).
Using Static Links
You can add, remove or view the links in the Manage -> Cloaked Links tab. This page contains a form for adding new links and a list of existing cloaked links, if any. The list also shows the number of hits for each link. Note that the plugin counts all hits, including those generated by search engines and the like. This means that the number will probably be a bit higher than the actual amount of clicks the link received.
A link is defined by a name and a destination URL. The name is what you’ll see in the cloaked URL – in the example above it’s “GTrends”. The name shouldn’t contain any special symbols, like spaces, question marks, non-latin characters and so on. For best compatibility, use only latin letters, numbers and underscores in the name field. The name is case-insensitive and must be unique for each link.
The destination URL indicates the address to which the visitor will be redirected when he clicks the link. No surprises here – just make sure the URL is correct.
Adding static cloaked links is easy – just enter the name and URL in the corresponding boxes and click “Add”. The resulting cloaked URL will look similar to this – http://your_blog_address.com/more/MyLink/. “more” is a prefix that you can set in Options -> Link Cloaking and “MyLink” is the link’s name. You can also view the cloaked URL by clicking the “show cloaked url” thingy near each links destination URL.
To delete a cloaked link, click the “Delete” link in the corresponding row.
Download : WordPress Link Cloaking Plugin, ver. 1.1 (9 KB)
Installation Notes
After you’ve uploaded and activated the plugin, you must go to Options -> Permalinks and click Update Permalinks. This is necessary even if you have the previous version installed. The cloaked links won’t work if you don’t do this! Complete installation instructions and more information about this plugin are available in the original post.
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I got an error when trying to add a static link. The “hits” field in the db needed to have a default value. If you have this problem then the following sql query will solve it :
alter table wp_cloaked_links change hits hits int(10) unsigned default 0;
Very cool plugin though. Congrats.
How to make it work for subdirectory ? my wordpress is in /blog directory and the links are just not redirecting. So a page link like /goto/afflink don’t redirects anywhere, eventually showing 404 error as page example.com/blog/goto/afflink do not exist on my site.
@Pushkar – The plugin shouldn’t have problems with subdirectories provided .htaccess is set up correctly (and is located in that same subdirectory). I have tested it on another blog running in a second level subdirectory (like example.com/stuff/blog/) and it worked fine.
See what’s in your .htaccess file. There’s an example of how the file should look a few comments below (except your paths will be different, of course).
Hi Thanks alot 🙂 I got it working. I had to move the code at the top (it was at the bottom before) and things are working like a charm. Great plugin.
Thanks again
Somehow my links are not getting tracked in the manage cloaked links. I can add a link and remove it. But i thought ALL clicks where tracked? I tried turning off all plugins. no luck.
I’m using 2.6.1 of wordpress, maybe thats a problem?
@Michiel – Tracking works for me on WP 2.6.2 (I don’t have a 2.6.1 handy). Just to make sure we’re on the same page : only links you add on that tab (Manage -> Cloaked Links) will be tracked.
In general if a (static-cloaked) link works – i.e. redirects correctly – it should be tracked. However, the plugin might miss some clicks because if you click the link several times your browser might decide to cache it and go to the target page right away, without accessing the cloaked link again. In this case the click wouldn’t be tracked.
Thank you for the plugin.
2 suggestions for a future release (if there will be one):
1. Ability to edit/change static links in WordPress Admin (including destination url).
2. Ability to use keywords with static links. Enter certain keywords and those keywords will be turned into cloaked links anywhere they appear. For example anytime “Amazon.com” appears on your site it would automatically be converted into a link using one of your static cloaked links.
Just suggestions, but I think they could be useful! Thanks again!
This has been suggested already, but I probably won’t add it because I don’t feel like reinventing the wheel – there are already existing plugins that can do this, and you could configure them to use the cloaked URLs as the automatic links.
Overall, there aren’t any updates planned in the near future (for this plugin), just bugfixes – if necessary. Sorry 🙂
The plugin works great on other sites, however for this one when you click a link it redirects back to my site. I changed the theme but still does the same thing.
I am using WordPress 2.6.2, but that version is fine on other sites.
Any ideas?
@Andrew Clapham – This is sometimes caused by a conflict with another plugin. Are you using any plugins that add or modify links in the posts?
Question – will you still get credit for trackbacks when writing posts? Pingbacks are very important to the success of my blog.
Thanks.
@Patrick Curl – Yes, trakbacks should still work fine if you mark links with <!–cloak–> or set the cloaking mode to “Cloak all”. On the other hand, trackbacks probably won’t work with statically cloaked links (i.e. the links you define in Manage -> Cloaked Links).
[…] Re: Anyone Using The MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate WP Plugin? Have you guys tried this free plugin? I just installed it last night and it looks pretty good to me. Link Cloaking Plugin Update | W-Shadow.com […]
I’m not sure where you are getting your information, but the MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate WP Plugin is NOT a free plugin. It costs $97.00.
Great plugin but hit counter not working for static links.
Any suggestions?
@Paul –
Hmm, do you mean it doesn’t work at all, or misses some hits?
If it doesn’t work completely then deactivating and reactivating the plugin might help. If only some hits are not counted that’s probably because the browser caches the redirect sometimes and doesn’t actually query the cloaked URL when the user clicks it.
@White Shadow –
The hit counter doesn’t seem to work at all.
Tried different settings; cleared cache, saved Permalinks, tried cloak all/specific links.
@Paul – Okay, I’ve uploaded a slightly modified version of the plugin, maybe it will solve the problem. Note : in this particular case you will need to deactivate the previous version before uploading the new one.
Still no joy. Thanks for trying. Must be an incompatibility somewhere. Will continue to use, but without the tracking.
I am using the static cloaking and it does not work with firefox.
Mike