Hide Affiliate-Links?

Discussion in 'Programming' started by Dantes, Oct 2, 2006.

  1. #1
    Hi,

    I know there are many ways to "mask" an ugly affiliate-link, but I would like to know how something works that I noticed many times:

    When you move your mouse over a link, you can see the link in the lower status-bar of the browser (IE and FF). I noticed that this is not the case with some special affiliate-links. Or even better, it shows some fake-links (the link without the affiliate part in it).

    How can I create this effect? It must be a script or something.

    Thx
    Dantes
     
    Dantes, Oct 2, 2006 IP
  2. BurgerKing

    BurgerKing Active Member

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    #2
    Use the onMouseOver and onMouseOut events to manually set the status bar.

    Eg:
    <a onMouseOver='window.status="Go to Google";return true' onMouseOut='window.status="";return true' href='http://yahoo.com'>Link to Google</a>

    You can set the status bar to anything. In the example, I have set it to 'Go to Google', but you could also set it to something more 'natural' (like http://google.com) if you want to fool your visitors.

    Cheers.
     
    BurgerKing, Oct 2, 2006 IP
  3. gigapromoters

    gigapromoters Peon

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    #3
    This doesn't work in most of the browsers. You could use a PHP redirection script to hide the affiliate links.
     
    gigapromoters, Oct 2, 2006 IP
  4. BurgerKing

    BurgerKing Active Member

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    #4
    Well, I just tested it in IE 6.0, Firefox 1.5.0.7 and Netscape 7.2 and it worked in all of those. That'll do me.

    A server-side redirection will work as well - horses for courses. (of course, then the status bar will show your redirection URL, which you might not want).

    Cheers.
     
    BurgerKing, Oct 3, 2006 IP
  5. trojan

    trojan Peon

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    #5
    There is a way to mask your link by converting the text to ascii codes. I know there are programs out there you can download to do this for you. However this only mask it. A person determined to know your affiliate ID can still unmasked it. Hope that helps.

    cheers
     
    trojan, Oct 4, 2006 IP