Sometimes you need to mask your outbound links, so rather than linking directly to the destination, you link to a local URL on your site, which then redirects you to the final destinatoin. This is often done for affiliate sites, to mask the outgoing link so it doesn't show any affiliate tracking information.
Standard practice is usually to pipe affiliate links through a /hop/ script. We typically accomplish this by creating a .htaccess rule to redirect /hop/(.*) to hop.php, which will determine what hop was requested, and redirect based on that.
It's a pretty tidy method, but still not ideal. So I thought, wouldn't it be great to manage those hops through the WordPress admin? Much better than connecting via FTP to the server, and editing the hop.php file itself!
And so the Link Hopper is born. You can download it here:
I've written many custom plugins before, to satisfy client requirements on various sites. This is the first one I've developed fully on my own time, and listed in the public plugin directory.
Let's see if anyone else finds it useful!
There's a few advantages here:
- Technical skills not required
- It's not that complicated to FTP to a server and edit a file, but this is still easier
- Easier to manage outdated links this way
- Prior to using a /hop/ file, one could have an affiliate link on dozens of pages
- When the merchant closes a product line, or changes a link, all those pages have a dead link
- Now there's a single setting which can be easily changed when this happens!