quick web design tip

[mypokercorner]

Most of you probably already use this approach, but I figure I may as well right about it in case newer affiliates/webmasters don't know about it. It's so much web design in terms of interface a but rather in terms of file management/structure.

Everyone once in a while, there's always some poker room that decides to change their links. Then, it's a pain in the arse to go back and change every single text link and banner link you've ever created. The solution to this problem is simple. Create a redirect page in php format for each of your poker rooms. Then, when you setup your poker links and banners, link to the redirect page instead.

Eample: I have a folder called "Redirects" which contains a php file called "pokerstars.php". That file contains a redirect to the pokerstarts page, using my affiliate code.

On my site, I create a pokerstarts banner but modify the default linking text by removing the affiliate link and pointing to mysite/redirects/pokerstars.php. I repeat the process for all my pokerstars links. Should pokerstar ever decide to change their link format (like UB and PA recently did), then I simply need to edit my pokerstars.php and every single pokerstars link is automatically updated. This takes 2 minutes instead of hours and hours of extremely boring work.

Just quick tip if anyone is interested.

Here is how the php file should be written. Just stick this in notepad, update the link and save as yourpokerroomname.php:

<?php
header("Location: http://youraffiliatelinkgoeshere");
?>

[addaminsane]

i just looked at an ap link on your ap page and it wasn't using redirect. Isn't a con to this the simple fact that it extremely slows down the time of getting to the room page?

[mypokercorner]

Yeah, that link doesn't use the php file. I'm still in the process of updating them. If you look at my online poker rooms page, you will see good examples. Just hover any of the 120x60 images of a room and look at the URL on the bottom of your browser. Then click it and see how it redirects transparently.

There is no delay with the PHP redirect. This method does not slow down anything because the redirect is instantanious. If you experience a delay, that is actually caused by the poker room URL itself which is loging the click (and many of them have redirects of their own).

[TheShortStack]

I've just implemented this too - I also get the script to send me an email when a link gets clicked on.

You could also record the click in the database if you wanted to ...

[mypokercorner]

Originally Posted by TheShortStack

You could also record the click in the database if you wanted to ...

Instructions please!

[TheShortStack]

Depends how you want to go about it. If all you want to do is just record how many clicks each of your links are getting you could insert something like this into your php script

PHP Code:

$update = mysql_query("UPDATE clicks SET 'count'='count'+1 WHERE ref='chan'"); 


You'd need a table called clicks set up in your database. That table would need two fields in it called 'count' and 'ref' (containing the list of poker rooms you're promoting).

Then, the only thing you'd need to change then is the bit in red above. The example code would be good if you were looking to record clicks for chan poker ... but if you wanted to record clicks for Bodog, then the bit in red would need to change to match whatever you've entered into the "ref" field for the Bodog Poker Room.

So the code may look something like this:

PHP Code:

$update = mysql_query("UPDATE poker_room SET 'count'='count'+1 WHERE ref='bodog'"); 


That's probably the simplest way of keeping a track of how many clicks each of your poker rooms are getting. Give me a shout if I haven't explained it very well though!

[Jeremy]

This is the best way to link out aff. links on a big site. Thanks for posting this mypokercorner.

Even if you're not familiar with php. This is so simple to do. Just put the code in text file and save as partypoker.php for example. Then place the new php file in a folder in your ftp and your good to go.

For example yoursite.com/out/partypoker.php.

To take it a step further with this method, you can also add a no follow tag so that you are not giving up link juice.

[TheShortStack]

Originally Posted by Jeremy

To take it a step further with this method, you can also add a no follow tag so that you are not giving up link juice.

Yeah, totally agree with this. If you're going to start keeping track of clicks, then you're going to get much more accurate records if you stick a no follow tag on the folder containing your links

[mypokercorner]

Perfect, that's easy enough to setup. Thanks for the info shortstack.

Now I have a question. Instead of using your method above where you increase a counter, if I wanted to create a new record each time an affiliate is clicked and wanted to track which php file was clicked and from which of my webpage it was clicked I assume I would use something like:

$update = mysql_query("INSERT INTO clicks (date, page_url, room) VALUES ( getdate(), 'variable to pick up my page URL','variable to track which poker_room.php file was used'");

Now, how can I define the "page_url" variable and the "room" variable?

The reason I woudl want to do this is that I could then build a pivot table in Excel and measure which of my pages performs better for each poker room. Thanks!

[mypokercorner]

Originally Posted by Jeremy

To take it a step further with this method, you can also add a no follow tag so that you are not giving up link juice.

Would you add the no follow tag when linking to your php redirect file, or within the php redirect file. Or does it matter?