2 Questions. URL-Encoding ebay landing page, Do I have to?? And also...

[ghoulardi]

I have two questions.
1. Do URLs for the landing page have to be url encoded like the flex tool does to them? (%20 for a space, %2E for a comma, etc., etc.)
2. Also, Will links with & instead of & be tracked correctly?

The reason I ask is, I have quite a few links that I manualy made into tracking links. Nothing in the link is URL encoded.
For the ampersand, I used & instead of the URLEncoded value for ampersand which is %26.
Now if I copy and paste my version of the link it will take me to the correct page but Im not sure if these are being tracked correctly.

examples:
=================================================================
original link...
http://antiques.ebay.com/

My version (I changed & to & but not encoded, Will this be tracked?)...
http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/705-10061-5969-5/1?AID=5463217&PID=xxxxxxx&mpre=http://antiques.ebay.com/

eBay Flex tool version (the link is URL encoded)...
http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-1751-2978-71/1?AID=5463217&PID=xxxxxxx&mpre=http%3A%2F%2Fantiques.ebay.com%2F
=================================================================

If you read at the bottom of this article (http://www.tprweb.com/guides/ebay/aff_migration/) there is an email from ebay about the rover change over back in 2006. It reads that "landing page where user will be directed must be URL-encoded". So is this true???



Thanks for any help with this.

[MrX]

the only thing u should be urlencoding is what the mpre equals , nothing else. and don't replace ampersands with & , that's only for inside html, not urls.

so you want $url = 'http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-1751-2978-71/1?AID=5463217&PID=xxxxxxx&mpre='.urlencode('http://antiques.ebay.com');

good luck.

[ghoulardi]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I'm actualy writing a software program and I cannot use ampersands anywhere.
so If I shouldnt use & which works in my program but I wasnt sure if it would track,
can I instead use %26 in this part of the link... (5463217&PID) making it (5463217%26PID) ?

the only thing u should be urlencoding is what the mpre equals , nothing else. and don't replace ampersands with & , that's only for inside html, not urls.

so you want $url = 'http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-1751-2978-71/1?AID=5463217&PID=xxxxxxx&mpre='.urlencode('http://antiques.ebay.com');

good luck.

[MrX]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I'm actualy writing a software program and I cannot use ampersands anywhere.
so If I shouldnt use & which works in my program but I wasnt sure if it would track,
can I instead use %26 in this part of the link... (5463217&PID) making it (5463217%26PID) ?

y cant u use ampersands?? what language is it?