How To Create a Redirect Page
| by Paula Brett |
I’ve had quite a few people ask me lately how to create redirect pages for affiliate links.
It’s not a pretty sight when you have to send your customers to websites through links like this:
http://www.somesite.com/??347rygdt=asap??376dyyyd/youraffiliatelink=??4635
So, here’s a couple of simple ways to do this – in these examples we’re sending a customer to a product called Decorate an Easter Egg (keeping it topical, see 
)
1. Create a folder in your public_html and call it, say, recommends
2. Open up your favourite HTML editor and create a new page
3. In the code view, delete everything and cut and paste in the code below
<?php $URL=”http://www.youraffiliatelink.com”;
header (“Location: $URL”);
exit();
?>
4. Click File, click Save As and save the page as Decorate-an-Easter-Egg but make sure you save it as a .php file, this is very important – if you save it as an .html or .htm file it will not work)
5. Upload this new page How-to-decorate-an-Easter-Egg.php to the recommends folder you just created in your public_html folder
6. When you want to share your link with your subscribers, or add it to an email, you will simply type
http://www.yourdomainname.com/recommends/Decorate-an-Easter-Egg.php
and your customers will be redirected to the affiliate product’s sales page using your affiliate link
Alternatively, you could create a folder in your recommends folder called, say, Decorate-an-Easter-Egg
When you create your new page with the redirect code above, instead of calling it Decorate-an-Easter-Egg.php you could just call it index.html or index.htm , then upload it to the Decorate-an-Easter-Egg folder so you would send your customers to
http://www.yourdomain.com/recommends/Decorate-an-Easter-Egg
Because the only page in this folder will be an index page, directing people to the Decorate-an-Easter-Egg folder will automatically bring up the index.html redirect page
If you celebrate Easter, I hope you had a nice one!
Very best wishes
Paula
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18 Responses to “How To Create a Redirect Page”
By Pat Graham
on Mar 24, 2008 | | Reply
Nice post, Paula. I’ll be following your advice soon.
Pat
ghost-writer@charter.net
By John Szram
on Mar 24, 2008 | | Reply
Great advice Paula. I have tried many different ways of doing this but this is the same method I now use and it works a treat!
By Mark McWilliams
on Mar 25, 2008 | | Reply
Two minds think alike!
I too had noticed a few people asking about creating a redirect page. However, I was busy playing around with the Timestamp feature that I forgot about doing this!
Opps!…
Thanks
Mark
By Al (PaPaGrizz) Nelson
on Mar 25, 2008 | | Reply
Paula, You never cease to amaze me with the innovations, hints and tips to help your fellow Imer’s.
Thank You,
Al PaPaGrizz Nelson
By miltski
on Apr 10, 2008 | | Reply
Clear, Simple and Easy. You were right it’s not as hard as I was thinking.
Top Post as per usual.
Thanks Again.
Miltski
By Paula Brett
on Apr 10, 2008 | Follow me on Twitter | Reply
Glad you found it helpful, Miltski. If you need any help, you know where I am
Paula
By Nick
on Apr 11, 2008 | | Reply
Paula,
Sorry to be thick but what is a public_html & where do I find one / make one?
Nick
By Anne
on Apr 11, 2008 | | Reply
Thank you! Useful is and understatement – you could spend ages finding this out. And freely given – you are a good role model to would-be-IMers like me. Give and you shall receive. For now all I can give is thanks!
By Paula Brett
on Apr 11, 2008 | Follow me on Twitter | Reply
Anne, I’m glad that you’re enjoying my posts, thank you for taking the time to comment.
Nick, I have sent you an email to answer your question, let me know if you need any more help.
Paula
By Lee Jones
on May 30, 2008 | | Reply
Just wrote a big reply on Dan Thompson’s blog about His and your PHP Code for redirects.
Basically, by copying and pasting as you suggest will not work for everyone:
get over to Dans blog
http://www.elpassoblog.com/affiliate-link-management-made-easy/#comment-8351
for full details
Hope this helps ?
By Paula Brett
on May 31, 2008 | Follow me on Twitter | Reply
Hmm, Lee, I’m sorry you’re not having much success with it. I have to say it works fine for me and I’ve not had anyone else tell me that there’s a problem.
Are you copying the code from this, or Dan’s blog into an html editor, or are you copying into wordpad or notepad?
Sometimes the characters copied and pasted from blogs into HTML editors don’t always transfer as they should. They are much better copied to notepad or wordpad first.
You can even create your php file in wordpad or notepad, just name it blahblah.php (where blahblah is the name of your page, obviously)
By Lee Jones
on May 31, 2008 | | Reply
It’s all been sorted now Paula, Dan put me right.
He said, when you copy and paste double quotation marks from blogs, they don’t copy over correctly into notepad/wordpad, and you have to re-type them in again to get the correct one’s that work.
Never fails to amaze me, how you can continue to learn something new every single day……
Thanks Paula – and thanks for the Twitter follow, speak to you soon.
By Paula Brett
on May 31, 2008 | Follow me on Twitter | Reply
Cool, just as I thought. Yes, you really have to be careful with cutting and pasting. It happens a lot with some article submission services, some people cut from Word and their characters are not always acceptable.
Glad you’re sorted.
By
on Jun 24, 2008 | | Reply
About Redirect to other web address // html code —
http://html-lesson.blogspot.com/2008/06/redirect-to-web-addres.html
By Maurice (The CaymanHost)
on Sep 25, 2008 | | Reply
This is a good explanation even for the less technical but for speed and ease of use I began using Cloaker Buzz Elite for all my redirects some time ago and it is a great piece of software.
It cloaks securely and easily – just enter your affiliate link, the page title you want and click a button.
The software generates an html page which you then upload to your chosen directory on your server. It will hide your link and your source code and can even set a cookie if you use the advanced cloaking option.
Even better it is entirely free, no catches or later upgrade offers/requirements. I’ll leave the link for your readers, but if you want to remove it I will understand
http://www.thecaymanhost.com/cloakerbuzz/
By Paula Brett
on Sep 25, 2008 | Follow me on Twitter | Reply
Hi Maurice, thanks for stopping by – no of course I don’t mind you leaving the link – if it helps my readers that’s great – and even better, it’s free
Many thanks
By Dj
on Apr 2, 2010 | | Reply
Hi Paula
You are the greatest!
I was one of those begging for instructions…
Terrific!!!
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Dj