Pretty / Custom Referral Links?
Can any of the early testers confirm whether an affiliate can have a custom (pretty) affiliate link eg. ref?pushpatterns rather than just a number or their username (which is a bit weird)
Not sure, I understand properly.
So currently i use Solid Affiliate, it and YITH Affiliate prior to that allowed me to set up an affiliate and then assign them a referrall link name so for example the standard referall link would be https://isotonikstudios.com/?ISO=2
But then when i enter in the custom link it become https://isotonikstudios.com/?ISO=cdm
Darren Cowley I am not sure if you are looking for resolving/URLredirection ?from ref=userID to a ?ref=UserName once the link with a ?ref=UserID is clicked or a custom ref slug/alias.
Currently you can set the "ref" word to any custom string and when it comes to the second part of that queryString after the = sign you can select if you want to use a UserID or a UserName - only one ref version works at a time AFAIK.
Example:
domain.com/?ref=UserId
or
domain.com/?ref=UserName
There is no url redirection between these two if this is what you are asking for.
You can change the ref string itself to any custom one so it looks "better".
Example:
domain.com/?discount=1
domain.com/?friend=1
or
domain.com/?discount=ninja
domain.com/?friend=ninja
*Ninja is a UserName
ps. you cannot specify a custom slug like: an alias or a word/string for your UserName - Dont forget that a UserName or a UserID must be a unique value for the Affiliate user in the whole WP Users Directory and that is why giving users freedom to select a custom word instead of the WP UserName could be challanging in implementation (but it would be a nice feature and probably expensive when it comes to a url redirection).
Note: UserName is not the user email address but the User Name (similar to a Fluent Community User profil URL/slug).
Mat This is not a problem with other affiliate plugins and is considered a standard feature, user name is inappropriate as the email is used for this. User ID does not show the affiliates branding which they prefer to use with their audiences.
I'm not looking for a redirection, i'm looking for a pretty name option that would be defined by me when setting up an affiliate and therefore controlled to ensure no duplicates are made.
Darren Cowley Yes. Custom slugs should be available - no doubt.
UserId would just be a number, UserName is generally the affiliates email address so wouldn't be appropriate, i've not used an affiliate scheme that doesn't allow me to set a custom slug yet so this maybe a stumbling block :-(
I'm the same Darren Cowley - I'm using AffilateWP at the moment and each affiliate can choose a slug for their account (obvisouly has to be unique, but AffilateWP checks this when the user chooses or changes their slug).
It's also set to use URLs, so for us, and affiliate just has to add /partner/customslug to the end of any of our pages and it will pick up the affiliates traffic.
We also use domain tracking, so affiliates don't have to add anything to links they put on their website. We allow up to three domains to be added to an account and these have to be autorised by an admin before they are added.
Much as I'm desperate to move away from AffiliateWP, they do have some nice features and it does 'work'.
The thing I'm most interested in with FluentAffiliate is the ability to track multiple websites from one system. We have four distinct sub domains and have never found a reliable solution to track AffiliateWP accross each of them.
Yeah, i nearly went with AffiliateWP for the domain tracking but ended up with Solid because of the lifetime commissions feature.... regret that decision for sure....
This code should do in the meantime, you would have to enter your custom slugs and the new FluentAffiliate ID's
add_action('template_redirect', function () {
if (!isset($_GET['ref'])) {
return;
}
// Map of aliases → canonical ref codes
$ref_map = [
'pushpatterns' => '535',
'circuitguru' => '536',
'ldmdesign' => '537',
'manifestaudio' => '538',
'techtronix' => '539',
'andb0' => '540',
'slink' => '541',
'subtlepatternz' => '542',
'afta8' => '543',
'monomono' => '544',
'mudjaq' => '545',
'pinkai' => '546',
'dnbheads' => '547',
'deepselector' => '548',
'funkylofi' => '549',
'sbamcrew' => '550',
'drumvision' => '551',
'breakbeatenv' => '552',
'techhouseenv' => '553',
'lofidiscoenv' => '554',
'melodicenv' => '555',
'peakenv' => '556',
'oktopush' => '557',
// Add more as needed...
];
$incoming_ref = strtolower(trim($_GET['ref']));
if (isset($ref_map[$incoming_ref])) {
// Get current path without query string
$current_url = home_url(add_query_arg([], $GLOBALS['wp']->request));
// Build query with replaced ref value
$query = $_GET;
$query['ref'] = $ref_map[$incoming_ref];
// Rebuild URL and redirect
$redirect_url = add_query_arg($query, $current_url);
wp_redirect($redirect_url, 301);
exit;
}});
Darren Cowley Thanks for sharing. I was wondering if creating a re-direct would mess up the tracking. Trying to get all my old AffiliateWP custom slugs to work in Fluent so the transition is seamless for them. Was going to set up 301 redirects via Rank Math.
Aaron Pinto Pinto in testing with the release version the redirect does indeed work to track the visits, but it’s not successful in recording the referrals themselves so I’ll be waiting until there’s an official solution.