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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The plugin works independently of the browser. If it works in one, it should work in all. If you have problems with FF in particular, then most likely it’s something to do with FF itself.
Hi, I use this static cloaking plugin for my WP 2.7, it work fine but still contain numbers at the end like http://www.example.com/go/test/4/1. How do I remove those numbers? I hate them
My guess would be you have removed your own site to the “Exceptions” list in Settings -> Link Cloaking, so the plugin is cloaking the links twice. Add your domain name to that list and the numbers should go away.
I already tried with domain names with and without www prefix (my blog has domain name with www prefix) but it didn’t work. 🙁
Interesting. Now, let me get this straight – do you get the link with numbers when creating a cloaked link in “Tools -> Cloaked Links”, or do the numbers get appended when you view a post containing the coaked link?
The link in “Tools -> Cloaked Links” does not contain numbers but numbers get appended when I view a post containing the coaked link and cloaked link works fine, just don’t like the numbers.
Some more ideas :
* Is there a <!–cloak–> tag in the link? (There shouldn’t be).
* Are you sure you’re using the static cloaking correctly? Correctly : create a static link and use the plugin-generated cloaked URL in your posts/otherwheres in place of the original URL.
* If you put a cloaked link somewhere else than in the post – like the sidebar – are any numbers appended (probably not)?
Thanks, I remove tag in the link and then replace the original URL with the plugin-generated cloaked URL and it works.
Gocodes disappointed me.
Glad to be here knowing your plugin. I’ll try it.
Thanks. 🙂
I ‘m using piwik.
How to track outlinks from link cloaking?
Now, no track link cloaking in actions –> outlinks by piwik
Hi there!
I really like the plugin, and I was excited to use it but unfortunately it doesn’t work for the purpose I was looking for. I was looking to turn this huge, affiliate link into something more manageable like this:
http://www.musttap.com/link/0028383
Or something similar, unfortunately as the links are custom fields in wordpress, they seem to not be affected by the cloak. Would you happen to know what’s going on?
For clarification, I set a PHP variable to pull the custom field and put it into a link in the template:
<a href="”>
And it still shows up as the affiliate link.
Unfortunately the plugin doesn’t work that way. It only deals with links inside post content, so even if you format your PHP code the way you did the custom-field link still won’t be cloaked.
I’ll add the ability to cloak any link – whether in the post content, sidebar, headers or somewhere else – eventually (probably in a commercial version). That won’t be very soon though.
It is a very good thing,
This plugin is exactly what I need.
May I suggest one small feature to add “target=”_blank”” option. So the click on the link automatically open in new window.
Thanks!
Thank you for this great plugin. This is the only cloaking plugin where you can configure global cloaking and specify exception domains. But unfortunately it redirects all cloaked links to my main page. The .htaccess is correctly modified like described in readme.txt. Do you have any suggestions?
That usually happens with links added by other plugins. Does that ring any bells?
It happens to all cloaked links. Those generated by plugins but also to cloaked links directly in posts or pages. I have turned every additional rewrite rules off in .htaccess, but the plugin still redirects cloaked links to the mainpage instead of redirecting it to the target url. There isnt any other cloaking plugin out there with outstanding features like your plugin and I do not really want to miss it. Do you have any other ideas how to figure out the problem?
Send me the URL of the site where you have installed the plugin, I’ll take a look and maybe figure something out. You could also email me your .htaccess file, unless it’s secret 🙂 My email is on the contact page.
And sorry for the late answer, my computer broke.
I’m having the same problem
“the plugin still redirects cloaked links to the mainpage instead of redirecting it to the target url”
What was the solution?
Thanks
No idea, André never got back to me on the issue (unless I’ve lost the email to my overzealous spam filters or something).
Anyway, here’s what I know for sure : cloaked links redirect to the homepage when the plugin is unable to find the original URL that corresponds to the cloaked link. This usually happens when the post in question contains links generated by plugins (or other dynamically generated links).
If that’s the case for your site then the only practical solution is either deactivating the plugin that generates the links, or getting the premium version of the link cloaker that can also handle dynamically generated links.
If plugin-made links aren’t the problem additional testing will be necessary to localize & fix the issue.