For Wordpress: Affiliate Link Cloak Plugin
I have created a simple Wordpress plugin for anyone who wants it.
Basically it allows you to cloak any links of your choosing so that the user doesn’t know where they are to be redirected when they click on them.
There is a page in the admin section of Wordpress to maintain the list of cloaked links as well as a sidebar option list in the “Write Post” page so that you can easily choose which link to insert into the post you are constructing.
The links will be in the format :
<your site>/go/<your link text>
e.g http://blog.mcnicholl.com/go/musicreviewzone
The above example is setup to redirect to http://www.musicreviewzone. There are many improvements that I could make to this plugin, but finding the time is difficult. If there is enough demand for enhancements - then I’ll see what I can do 
The plugin is pretty simple but hasn’t been extensively tested - definitely working with Wordpress 2.3.2 - definitely not working with 2.6 - I’ll find out why and post an update. So be warned. Any feedback is welcome and if you could drop me a note to say how it is working out for you - that’d be great.
User Manual:
- Install the plugin
- Go to Manage->Redirect Links to administrate your cloaked links
- Go to Write->Post to use the links. You should see a side menu called “Redirect Links” - from here you just have to click on a cloaked link to insert it into the body of your post.
- That’s it!
Screenshots:
Download the plugin here : 20080827_mcn_redirect
on August 27th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
OK - So the problem seems to be with the install of the plugin for at least Wordpress versions 2.6+.
I’ll try testing tomorrow to get a work around.
on August 31st, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Awesome idea, but it’s kind of already taken by WP-Affiliate. Heh. Best of luck!
I know how much work goes into making a wordpress plugin!
on September 2nd, 2008 at 9:08 pm
I find wp-affiliate disgusting to use!
on September 26th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
I’m getting this array error when I try to add a link, what does that mean?
on September 26th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
hey Jake,
Please dump the error message here.
Where are you seeing the error and what version of Wordpress are you using?
on October 6th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
looks interesting…i’ll check it out…
thanks..
on November 8th, 2008 at 6:21 am
Great tool… thanks…
I didn’t like WP_Affiliate either..
Re the “Array” error problem mentioned above:
I was getting the same error on WP 2.6.3, so I had a look at it and the problem was that the database table hadn’t been created - so I created it manually and now it seems to be working fine…
Hope that helps,
Pablo
on November 8th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Hi Pablo,
Yeah - the issue with the plugin is how the new versions of Wordpress handle Global Variables.
I’ll create a new post with the updated plugin.
Thanks for trying it out though!
I appreciate you taking the time to respond.
on November 8th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
[...] For Wordpress: Affiliate Link Cloak Plugin [...]
on November 8th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
@Pablo:
Please find the updated plugin - which works with Wordpress 2.6+ at the link below:
http://blog.mcnicholl.com/2008/11/08/for-wordpress-affiliate-link-cloak-plugin-051-beta/