Comments on: How To Start Shrinking Links On Your Domain Name in 5 minutes: Pretty Link Introduction Video

By: cartpauj

cartpauj — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:24:43 +0000

You can use pretty link to mask the affiliate link by just modifying the code they gave you. This should allow you to use PL to track the affiliate link while at the same time leaving pixel part of the code in tact. You should be able to do both just fine.

By: Ron

Ron — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 01:51:58 +0000

OK, I'll just use my cj link and just bypass the pretty link. I wanted to use pretty link for the tracking. I have the pixel on site A but I wasn't sure if it would fire on site C after being redirected. Thanks

By: cartpauj

cartpauj — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 01:18:41 +0000

within the same pretty link, no. But why can't you just leave the tracking pixel as is?

By: cartpauj

cartpauj — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 01:16:46 +0000

if you’re cloaking the entire affiliate link (including you id) then you can just leave it at standard. Custom is for more advanced capabilities.

By: Ron

Ron — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 22:54:59 +0000

Fantastic plugin! I'm unsure how I can utilize 3rd party pixels. Here's the scenario: Site A links to my pretty link on site B then redirects to site C for the sales page. The pretty link is a Commission Junction aff link that requires a pixel image to track sales. Is there a way to use CJ's pixel images within pretty link? Mahalo

By: Gordon

Gordon — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 02:48:36 +0000

When I use prettylink to cloak an affiliate link do I need to select the ‘Standard Parameter Forwarding’ button to ensure that my affiliate id is correctly forwarded and tracked by the affiliate company that I am working with?

Thanks for your help.

By: Charlene

Charlene — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 19:11:15 +0000

ummm thanks. I use Hostmonster, but it may be a similar issue. I’ll contact them…

Thanks

By: cartpauj

cartpauj — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 04:34:46 +0000

Charlene, sounds like you're hosted with hostgator? If so you'll need to contact them directly and ask them to un-block Pretty Link from their new security feature.

By: Charlene

Charlene — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 14:34:30 +0000

First thanks for the great plugin, terrific implementation.

I’m having one problem. My pretty bar doesn’t show. All the boxes are checked, I can’t find anything in the options that would repress it. Any thing you could think that I am overlooking??

Thanks.

By: Iris

Iris — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 04:29:10 +0000

I've been using Pretty Link since an IM coach told me about it. It really helps with redirecting affiliate links via my own domains and gives good tracking data besides. A great tool. Does this use a php script, iframe, or what to accomplish the job? Thanks for creating this!

By: nitoy

nitoy — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 07:47:54 +0000

hi! i like very much this plugin and i wonder how to insert my affiliate link to the target url witch will replace the “http://” of the target url.

example:

Original target url
http://www.google.com

This is what i want to be the target url
http://affiliatelinkhere/www.google.com

i hope you understand what i want to achive.
i have this idea but i don’t know to code it

By: cartpauj

cartpauj — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 19:15:14 +0000

what are your permalink settings set to?

By: John Cowburn

John Cowburn — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 09:43:00 +0000

Hi Blair

I activated the plugin and created my first link OK. I then tried to create a new link doing exactly the same as with the first one and got this message:

ERROR: Link URL must be a correctly formatted url

No matter what I put in, I get the same message? I even deactivated the plugin and deleted it and rthen reinstalled it but still get the same error. It’s driving me nuts – Help!

By: Neil

Neil — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 02:25:05 +0000

OK I’ve got it… I followed your advice, but was replacing the whole url, I guess with a banner add you just replace your affiliate link and leave the rest of the code intact, or your banner goes poof !!
Very cool, I love it !!!
Thanks
Neil

By: Neil

Neil — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:56:28 +0000

Hi cartpauj,
Thanks for the response.
I tried to copy/paste the url from the add into the Target URL field, and it says that it’s successful, but when I go back to the page and hover over the add I can still see my affiliate link.

Sorry, I must be missing something.

By: cartpauj

cartpauj — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 23:45:00 +0000

Neil you need to replace the hostgater URL with your pretty link in the ad itself.

By: Neil

Neil — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 01:34:40 +0000

Hey, Noob alert !!
I just installed and shortened an affiliate link from Hostgator. When I hover over the Hostgator add the url at the bottom of my page is unchanged.
I cut and pasted part of the link from my widgets >text box.
Am I using the wrong code ? Is there anywhere else I can find “just” my link ?
I have a banner add and used “http://secure.hostgator.com/~affiliat/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.blah,blah,blah-” ……without the quotations.
Your help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Neil

By: Terence

Terence — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 12:11:07 +0000

Francine – first thing you need to do is get passed “I don’t understand it, therefore I don’t need it”. You do need it. You just don’t understand WHY you need it. OK? You know the answer is actually quite simple. When people (and I am really referring to Affiliates, here, but it could be any site owner), create links on their blogs/sites to the stuff they want to sell on other people’s sites, they tend to use a third-party link shortener like http://bit.ly or http://tinyurl.com to cover their tracks. This then gives them a link that looks something like this “http://tinyurl.com/2dpdq4y”. The problem that Pretty Link overcomes is that it doesn’t give you a link that refers away from your blog; it cleverly gives you a link that refers to directly to your blog, and so with Pretty Link, you get a link that looks like this “http://virtualcrowds.org/WP3-Launch”. And this is a link which, when the search engines pick it up, gives your site the additional SEO value of some “link love”, and doesn’t give it to somebody else’s site. Get it? So when somebody clicks one of your “pretty links,” wherever you have placed the link, they are immediately brought to your site and instantly referred to site the link was designed to send them to. Is that any clearer? By the way, if any of the terminology I have used is confusing, Google’s your friend, or you can always ask me here or at Virtual Crowds.

By: Francine

Francine — Wed, 19 May 2010 01:06:33 +0000

Thanks for taking the time to explain things…thought I knew a bit, but….

“link shrinker webservice like bit.ly or goog.le or j.mp and you have your own WordPress blog it would be wiser to use Pretty Links”
I do have my own Word press blog but to be quite honest I don’t know what the rest of those things mentioned are
So does it show up on WordPress by itself? Perhaps I don’t need it if it’s not that useful to me.

By: Lawrence Rolograaf

Lawrence Rolograaf — Tue, 18 May 2010 20:28:09 +0000

If you were thinking about using a link shrinker webservice like bit.ly or goog.le or j.mp and you have your own Wordpress blog it would be wiser to use Pretty Links. Otherwise you don't see any "pretty" things happening to your blog. You just replace the address were you would be linking to in your blogpost with another address generated by Pretty Link. Does that make it any clearer?

By: Francine

Francine — Tue, 18 May 2010 10:11:26 +0000

Thanks for your reply…but I’m still lost. My questions weren’t really answered. Please just a very basic elementary answer.

By: cartpauj

cartpauj — Tue, 18 May 2010 02:44:08 +0000

Francine,
Pretty Link creates what I’m going to call “Fake” links. For example, let’s say you wanted to send your users to http://google.com without them knowing that’s where they’re going. Well PL lets you do that! You can create a Pretty Link that points to google but looks like http://yoursite.com/tgp. Pretty Links can be very useful for Search Engine Optimization practices and also for tracking how many times a link is clicked. Plus with the Pro version you can do even more cool things. Hope that helps!

By: Francine

Francine — Sun, 16 May 2010 22:50:16 +0000

I am very new at this blogging stuff and at the risk of looking pretty dumb, I don’t understand how it works. Is the link supposed to show up in my blog sidebar? nothing shows up at all.
I’ve put a link in so where is it? It’s installed and activated etc.

By: cartpauj

cartpauj — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 04:20:50 +0000

Dick, it depends on your web browser. Most browsers will open a new tab by pressing CTRL + T

By: Dick

Dick — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 00:25:18 +0000

At 4:06of the first video you show how you copy the link and move it to a new tab. The window image is one I don’t recognize, probably because you use a MAC.
I don’t understand where you are pasting the link. You said to open a new tab. Where is that tab?

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:01:25 +0000

I downloaded, installed, setup, and created my first pretty links within about 20 minutes. What a great plugin. You have really done a great job. Thanks for the free stuff. I will probably convert to pro in a short while. This is the best. I was using Tiny Url and I never liked the way my links looked. This way my links look like my own. How cool is that? Thanks again

Paul Palumbo

By: cartpauj

cartpauj — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 02:36:22 +0000

You’ll have the most flexibility using Pretty Links Pro. Have you been to prettylinkpro.com and viewed the info over there?

By: Wize Time

Wize Time — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:19:13 +0000

Where I can learn more about Pretty Links? There's only one video that I can see I have access to. Does Pretty Link cloak links eg affiliate links? Can I use Pretty Links off site eg Squidoo, HubPages, etc.?

By: cartpauj

cartpauj — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:20:52 +0000

Pretty link is most beneficial to have links that point to your site that actually redirect the users somewhere other than your site when they click the link. It's purpose isn't to be overly beneficial for your own pages/posts but yes it can be very useful for tracking link clicks and conversions....especially with Pro version.

By: Donna

Donna — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:40:54 +0000

Hi,
Could someone please share with me why it is beneficial to use a Pretty Link for my internal pages? Why wouldn’t I just edit the permalink to “Beyonce” or whatever my desired name is? Hang on… Is it for tracking purposes?
If so, I guess I’d better watch the tracking video next! )

Thanks in advance!

By: cartpauj

cartpauj — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 17:43:28 +0000

What parts are confusing you?

By: puyo

puyo — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 01:52:42 +0000

i get confused to use this plugin. someone, help me

By: cartpauj

cartpauj — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:30:53 +0000

After reading some of the problems you’ve been having it seems more likely to me that you’ve got a plugin that’s not working very well with WordPress. Try disabling all your plugins and see if this error goes away. If so, re-enable your plugins one by one until you find which one is the culprit.

By: cartpauj

cartpauj — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:27:09 +0000

Daryl, It’s always a good idea to stay up to date with the latest version of WP. Before updating WP it’s always a good idea to make sure your plugins will still be compatible. But lets address your issue at hand. I would recommend temporarily de-activating all your plugins and then try the update again. If you still have the error let us know.

By: Daryl Whicker

Daryl Whicker — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 02:21:56 +0000

When I tried to upgrade this is the error message I got:

Error 500 – Internal server error
An internal server error has occured!
Please try again later.

WordPress 2.9.2 is available! Please update now. Should I upgrade this?

Thanks
Daryl

By: Daryl Whicker

Daryl Whicker — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:47:18 +0000

When I tried downloading Pretty Link I got this error:

Installing Plugin: Pretty Link 1.4.43
Downloading install package from http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/pretty-link.1.4.43.zip.

Warning: curl_init(): Cannot initialize a new cURL handle in /homepages/34/d294047450/htdocs/wp-includes/http.php on line 1239

Warning: curl_setopt(): supplied argument is not a valid cURL handle resource in /homepages/34/d294047450/htdocs/wp-includes/http.php on line 1271

Warning: curl_setopt(): supplied argument is not a valid cURL handle resource in /homepages/34/d294047450/htdocs/wp-includes/http.php on line 1272

Warning: curl_setopt(): supplied argument is not a valid cURL handle resource in /homepages/34/d294047450/htdocs/wp-includes/http.php on line 1273

Warning: curl_setopt(): supplied argument is not a valid cURL handle resource in /homepages/34/d294047450/htdocs/wp-includes/http.php on line 1274

Warning: curl_setopt(): supplied argument is not a valid cURL handle resource in /homepages/34/d294047450/htdocs/wp-includes/http.php on line 1275

Warning: curl_setopt(): supplied argument is not a valid cURL handle resource in /homepages/34/d294047450/htdocs/wp-includes/http.php on line 1276

Warning: curl_setopt(): supplied argument is not a valid cURL handle resource in /homepages/34/d294047450/htdocs/wp-includes/http.php on line 1277

Warning: curl_setopt(): supplied argument is not a valid cURL handle resource in /homepages/34/d294047450/htdocs/wp-includes/http.php on line 1278

Warning: curl_setopt(): supplied argument is not a valid cURL handle resource in /homepages/34/d294047450/htdocs/wp-includes/http.php on line 1291

Warning: curl_setopt(): supplied argument is not a valid cURL handle resource in /homepages/34/d294047450/htdocs/wp-includes/http.php on line 1297

Warning: curl_setopt(): supplied argument is not a valid cURL handle resource in /homepages/34/d294047450/htdocs/wp-includes/http.php on line 1305

Warning: curl_setopt(): supplied argument is not a valid cURL handle resource in /homepages/34/d294047450/htdocs/wp-includes/http.php on line 1309

Warning: curl_exec(): supplied argument is not a valid cURL handle resource in /homepages/34/d294047450/htdocs/wp-includes/http.php on line 1324

Warning: curl_error(): supplied argument is not a valid cURL handle resource in /homepages/34/d294047450/htdocs/wp-includes/http.php on line 1338

Warning: curl_getinfo(): supplied argument is not a valid cURL handle resource in /homepages/34/d294047450/htdocs/wp-includes/http.php on line 1340

Warning: curl_getinfo(): supplied argument is not a valid cURL handle resource in /homepages/34/d294047450/htdocs/wp-includes/http.php on line 1348

Warning: curl_close(): supplied argument is not a valid cURL handle resource in /homepages/34/d294047450/htdocs/wp-includes/http.php on line 1351

Download failed.

Your help is greatly appreciated!
Daryl

By: Blair Williams

Blair Williams — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:58:03 +0000

Okay — I posted the mov file for this video as a download — hope it helps — it’s an HD video so it may take a few minutes to download…

The Twitter Comments, Tweet Badge and Social Buttons on my site come from the Pro version of Pretty Link:

Pretty Link Pro

I like it quite a bit …

By: Hikari

Hikari — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:59:11 +0000

I wasn’t able to download this video, could you post it as mov like the others?

And what plugin do you use for twitter comments?

By: Lisa

Lisa — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:44:22 +0000

I created a pretty link, now how to use it, I'm confused!

By: Lawrence Rolograaf

Lawrence Rolograaf — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:51:24 +0000

Renato,
I chose for position “none” and included the template tag at the exact place where I wanted it in my theme. Does that work for you?

By: Renato

Renato — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 06:28:07 +0000

Hi,

I have pro vertion, but I have a big problem.
All my posts starts with wide image, so when I chose the twitter bagde to stay in top right with text wrap, it appears in the back of the image.
Do you think you can help me fixing it?
Please write, I really need it.
I don’t use the badge because of it!
Thanks a lot!
love your plugin!

By: J Glen

J Glen — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:22:59 +0000

Thanks for the Pretty Link Plugin and the supporting videos. This is easy to follow and helpful. I am just reviewing the first video so hope you don't mind me commenting as I get to review other videos Thanks again

By: How to Get Started Using Pretty Link — Blair Williams

How to Get Started Using Pretty Link — Blair Williams — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 01:39:32 +0000

[...] Williams on May 12, 2009 · 18 comments 3 UPDATE: This video is out of date — please watch my new Pretty Link Intro Video I’ve had a ton of requests to put some tutorials up on the site — here’s the [...]