question regarding redirect, masking, analytics

Hmmm

So let me get this right, you want your users to see this AFF link on your site:

mysite .com/?ref=myusername

And when a user clicks they are redirected to:

affiliatesite .com/?ref=myusername

One of the easiest ways to do this is to edit your sites index.php file and create a header redirect with an IF statement. Right at the very top of the file add this:

<?php
$kw = $_GET['ref'];

if ($kw == "myusername")
{
header( 'Location: affiliatesite .com/?ref=myusername' );
}
?>

If you don't want to edit your sites index.php file, an EASY alternative would be to do this. Create a PHP file and call it whatever you want, say "go.php". Place it in the root of mysite .com, then place a simple redirect within the go.php file like this:

<?php
header( 'Location: affiliatesite .com/?ref=myusername' ) ;
?>

Then use this for your AFF link:

mysite .com/go.php?ref=myusername


The Analytics code, not sure about this without looking at the PHP file your redirect script is using. However, the best place for the Analytics code is at the BOTTOM of the HTML or PHP page just above the </body> tag. Google's Analytics server can sometimes overload causing your page to stop loading in the users browser if the code is in the header - so place it at the bottom.


Hope this helps.

Note to admin/mod: Site doesn't let me use PHP BBCode tgs with less than 15 posts.

Google analytics runs through javascript. In theory you place this on your landing page, and with your redirect this runs when the user ends up on the destination page. You can use your server logs to understand the number of "redirects" unless you were trying to use google's goals to identify affiliate tracking. IMHO- not a very trustworthy way considering you lose the tracking if the client doesnt support javascript. You can also do a meta-refresh but if your timing is off you may not get the record of the impression.