Affiliate Link Manager – URL Redirect Tool

This week I coded a custom affiliate redirect link manger tool.

• The client wanted an easy to remember, vanity url to be able to use instead of the longer affiliate url  link.
• A custom 404 page was created to check a database table to see if the url contained the affiliate vanity url. If it did, code  then checked if it was active and the expire data had not passed. If the expire date passed, it would send them to a default page. If the affiliate link had not yet expired, it would track the click in the database and then send the user to the affiliate page.
• A back end password protected online tool to was created to create, edit and delete affiliate links. You can activate or inactivate a url at any time, along with setting an date for the link to automatically expire.