Changing Affiliate ID does not affect redirection properly

  • Resolved Math Vault

    (@mathvault)


    8 years, 11 months ago

    After some recent changes in US and CA affiliate id, I am having problems redirecting the links on this book page to the new affiliate IDs for US and Canada (which are mathvault0e-20 and mathvault05-20, respectively).

    The way I understand it, all the original book links on that page went to their corresponding Amazon US page with no tag attached. If the redirection was done on the top of that, then it seems that the redirected links have become permanent since then. Indeed, I’ve tried disabling/enabling the “honor existing tag” option, a(
    nd it doesn’t seem to matter – as the links would redirect to the old tags either way.

    (As a side note, the charity links were redirected to dead link – if that helps.)

    Actually, I’ve also tried de-activating BestAzon as well, and the old re-directed links didn’t disappear. Clearing the caches from cache plugin and Cloudflare didn’t change that either.

    So as per recommended in an earlier thread, I tried deactivating the themes and plugins altogether, but either way the old redirection links remain there, as if the book links were permanently changed. To be sure, the previous thrave mentioned that there were some compatibility issue with Discus comment, but that’s not the case here as there’s no Discus or any other 3rd-party commenting plugin to begin with.

    Yeah, so I’m contemplating on manually redoing all the links, any advice before going that route would be wonderful though.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Author awesomeaffiliateplugins

    (@awesomeaffiliateplugins)

    8 years, 11 months ago

    Hi @mathvault

    Happy to help.

    We are not clear on this statement “If the redirection was done on the top of that, then it seems that the redirected links have become permanent since then.”. What do you mean? Can you provide an example of page and link where this happens?

    Actually, I just saw website and I believe I see the issue. This is unlikely to happen due to the plugin, and most likely there is some caching utility caching the specific link generated irrespective of the country. Can you uninstall all other plugins and reactivate them one by one to see if that helps?

    On another note, we are absolutely sure that BestAzon does not make any permanent changes to your website. All it does is to add a small javascript to your pages. Once you delete the plugin, that javascript will go away. If you have deactivated BestAzon, all the effects of the plugin should go away immediately – so the behavior you are seeing are likely because of caching (browser, or server or cloudflare). We recommend waiting for a few hours and trying from another machine to confirm that.

    I will strongly recommend against manually redoing the links. As I said, the plugin does not change anything on your website database. All it does it to add a javascript to process the links. So any changes in your underlying links is definitely not due to the plugin and there must be another explanation. Happy to troubleshoot this with you if you;d like.

    Thread Starter Math Vault

    (@mathvault)

    8 years, 11 months ago

    Thanks for the quick heads-up. Definitely aware of the possibility of caching issue getting in the way. To be sure, I only discovered the issue yesterday, but have since then tried changing the browser, purging the cache from plugins and Cloudflare. Also tried the elimination method by disabling the theme and plugins one by one. The link redirection seems unaffected though (and this even when BestAzom is disabled).

    Actually, I’ve made some progress along the way, and here’s the backstory: I usually edit a page through Thrive Visual Editor, and I would link a book to its untagged Amazon US product page. With the page saved this way, when BestAzon is off the book will link to the original untagged Amazon page, and when BestAzon is on it would be redirected to Amazon’s tagged page (depending on the BestAzon setting being used). I actually just tested it and it shows that BestAzon is functionally properly.

    Interestingly, I just discovered that the reason why the links on the book page became uncorrectable was because I edited the page in Thrive Visual Editor while BestAzon was activated, so that when the page is saved, all the books are now officially linked to something starting with http://lnks.io (i.e., the redirection is now hard-baked into the page itself). Once that happens, it seems that no amount of honoring existing tag or deactivable BestAzon would recover the link back to its original state.

    So I guess the lesson here is to always deactivate BestAzon before editing any page with Amazon links. Yeah, sounds like a chore I know, but is well worth the effort especially for folks with hundreds of Amazon links on their site.

    Thanks for the help!

    • This reply was modified 8 years, 11 months ago by Math Vault.
    • This reply was modified 8 years, 11 months ago by Math Vault.
    • This reply was modified 8 years, 11 months ago by Math Vault.
    Plugin Author awesomeaffiliateplugins

    (@awesomeaffiliateplugins)

    8 years, 11 months ago

    Thanks for the forensics!

    We are bit aware of the thrive visual editor plugin, but from your description it seems like that work on the pages after JavaScript has run on the page. And thus it seems to store the global link instead of the original link.

    We will add this to known conflicts with bestazon plugin. Hopefully you only changed a few pages with thrive plugin and they probably need to be done manually.

    R

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

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