I’ve been using WordPress for about 15 years. It’s come a long way. It made creating small and large websites a whole lot easier than coding from scratch. As more and more developers adapted to the technology so did a lot of users. The exponential growth of this system is huge and it should remain the biggest for some time.
Content Management System (CMS)
There are a lot of websites breaking down some of the figures of which sites use what system. We found this site to be pretty informative when it comes to these numbers. 27% of all sites online use WordPress. This is a significant number. I’m proud to say I was probably one of the first couple of percentages to adapt to this technology. If you are new to creating websites you’ll learn how much easier it is to create with WordPress. There are tons of videos showing you how to build a site in under 10 minutes.
Why the Redirection Plugin?
You can learn all about what the redirection plugin does here but I want to share why I use it.
There are 100’s of plugins and this is one I use regularly. For the most part, I only use a small percentage of what the plugin does. It simplifies what I’m trying to do for my site without having to spend money. I do purchase plugins and donate to developers. There are some really good ones for free.
The main reason I use this plugin is to redirect my outbound affiliate links. This allows me to change all my links in one location. Should I have 30 links on the site and need to refresh the outbound link, I would only need to do this once. This saves me a lot of time. Imagine having to go page by page deciphering each link that needs to be changed.
The permalink of the redirection plugin allows me to create what looks terrible and may deter a click-through into something much better looking.
Here is an example. If I’m working on a site and it has a link that points to StubHub, I would have to use something like, https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?s=2222503&v=7219&q=308718&r=457535. This is what my affiliate network provides me for tracking purposes.
This can look a little scary to those not aware. With the redirection plugin, I can turn this into almost anything I want. The link above will still be the target. I can now make it look better.
I can easily turn the link above into something like this. https://www.afternoongrind.com/go/stubhub/
This link tells the user I’m sending them to StubHub. Being an honest developer I’m not going to mask a link that will take them to a place that isn’t safe. This is frowned upon and is not ethical. Providing a good user experience is critical to your success.
There are many methods of changing links like this, however, over the years, I found this one to be the cleanest.
Redirection Facts
The redirection plugin is constantly updated for bug fixes and things that will make it better. It also stays in line with the current version of WordPress. Since WP gets updated all the time it’s important for these plugin developers to make sure they are updating as well.
Security is always a big factor when it comes to plugins. There have been tons of hacks to websites due to poor coding and many other reasons. If you check the developer’s page on the WP site it will tell you if it has been tested for the current version of WordPress. This is something to always keep an eye out for when selecting Add-ons.
There are definitely other plugins that function in a similar fashion to the Redirection. I’ve always trusted this one to make sure my users go to the right place. I plan to continue to use this on all my sites and hope John Godley continues to keep it updated and secure.
If you are looking for this type of plugin and need help getting it set up I can try and help you out. It’s not that difficult.
Good Luck Developing!
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