Hiding Affiliate ID

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Hiding Affiliate ID

mike2010

1:28 pm on Sep 8, 2008 (gmt 0)

Can someone help me with this. Im working on hiding my affiliate ID's for my sites and have a small issue.

Instead of pointing directly to the links , I've made the subdirectory for them to click on.

Instead of clicking a direct affiliate link , they click on :

mysite.com/mysite/

inside /mysite/index.html is :

But when mysite.com/mysite/ is clicked on , the affiliate ID still shows up on the next page. I see a lot of affiliates are able to do it so that all you see is www.affiliatesite.com and not the ID afterwards.

How do I get to that next step?

Any info is much appreciated.

btw, all the above links are examples, not my real site or id's.

piatkow

2:56 pm on Sep 8, 2008 (gmt 0)

I would imagine that is down to how the affiliate site tracks referrals and is probably outside of your control.

Personally I wouldn't think hiding the affiliate id was worth the effort.

phranque

8:07 pm on Sep 8, 2008 (gmt 0)

what server platform are you using?
this can be done with mod_rewrite on apache and isapi rewrite on ms servers.

Staffa

9:16 pm on Sep 8, 2008 (gmt 0)

Shouldn't your meta tag be inserted between your head tags ?

[edited by: Staffa at 9:21 pm (utc) on Sep. 8, 2008]

mike2010

1:49 am on Sep 9, 2008 (gmt 0)

what server platform are you using?
this can be done with mod_rewrite on apache

Linux. Apache/2.2.8 (Unix) PHP/5.2.5 with Suhosin-Patch mod_ssl/2.2.8 OpenSSL/0.9.7m mod_apreq2-200512

I had mod_rewrite already enabled on the server.. So I guess it shouldnt be much harder from here on out.

I appreciate it if you could give me an example to try out. Im guessing i'd have to edit it in .httpd .. around the virtual host area? I have root access.

phranque

9:23 am on Sep 9, 2008 (gmt 0)

Shouldn't your meta tag be inserted between your head tags

even if the meta tags are working correctly, that response gets returned to the user agent (browser), which then makes a new request for the new resource after the refresh period.
so you will see the meta-refreshed url in the address bar of the browser.

mike2010:
i misread your situation and didn't realize the refresh was to another domain.
you can only do an internal rewrite as i was suggesting to a relative url.
i think the only way those other affiliates can do that is to use a frame in the page.
have you looked at the source of those pages?

mike2010

2:33 pm on Sep 10, 2008 (gmt 0)

i misread your situation and didn't realize the refresh was to another domain.
you can only do an internal rewrite as i was suggesting to a relative url.
i think the only way those other affiliates can do that is to use a frame in the page.
have you looked at the source of those pages?

I tried using an online 'view source' of their pages, but couldnt figure it out since I could only view the processed information.

not2easy

4:50 am on Sep 16, 2008 (gmt 0)

If you save the file rather than view it you can see all the components individually.

Marcia

4:56 am on Sep 16, 2008 (gmt 0)

Just use a PHP jump script to redirect affiliate links through a subdirectory, and disallow that subdirectory from bots. I believe PHP is cross platform, but if not there should be an asp equivalent. One way or another, it's very simple to do.