Make referral URLs like a Boss
September 14, 2011 – 9:33 am |So many great podcasts have referral or affiliate URLs that absolutely rock, something like myblog.com/affiliateName.
I was curious how they were doing this, because most of my favorite podcasts are about streamlining and the hosts aren’t that technical! I realized instantly that they were not doing this with .htaccess, which would totally work. The problem is that it is hard to manage and the easiest way short of deleting your database to screw up your site.
In my quest, I found the Redirection plugin. It very quickly and easily allows you to put in 301 redirects, custom redirects, and redirects based on GET parameters, which .htacces can’t do! Basically, it inserts itself into the beginning of the mechanism in WordPress that handles what files WordPress calls when a request is made to the software and looks for your custom redirects first.
Your redirects can be as simple as a basic old page -> new page, or a non-existant path on your server to one that exists somewhere else.
For my example, I am going to set up a quick redirect to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection/ from http://wp-relief.com/redirection
It is as simple as copy paste:
Then, once you add the redirection in, you get a nice little green bar to show you the redirect is setup and how many times people have used it:
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The same functionality holds true for referral URLs as does for my redirection in the example. Just enter the name you want to give people and then the URL, save it and you are done!
