For WordPress: Affiliate Link Cloak Plugin

August 27th, 2008

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 :

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: