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How to cloak links is the status bar?

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Feb 07.2010

Hey guys, I’m basically trying to find a way to control what appears in status bar when you hover, click, clicked a link.
Here’s an example:
I have a client with a marketing website, when you visit their site and click any given advertisment it usually takes you from the affiliates site to the products site and there is a very long url that includes the affiliates id number along with other information. Is there a way to manipulate the text shown in the status bar after the consumer has left the affiliates site and entered the products site? Is there a way to use the affiliates dedicated server to proxy the consumer to the product website so then you can control the information shown in the status bar? My client has unlimited bandwidth on a dedicated server so traffic is not really an issue if they have to proxy their cosumers to the products website. They want to control the info in the status bar for a number of reasons also, i.e. they don’t want the consumer to see a very long url with id numbers which makes their site look unprofessional and makes the site look like a marketing site to consumers because of the huge url with id embedded in it, and also because of link hi-jacking which has been a problem with my client site before. I just wanted to let you guys know why they want to control the status bar info and it’s not for some unscrupulous reason.

The link cloaking and status bar manipulation is easy enough with php and mysql and I know how to do that but I’m trying to find a way to still manipulate the status bar after the consumer has left the affiliates website and entered the products website. The only way that I can think of would be to proxy the consumer through the affilates website to the products site through use a some sort of frames, is this possible? If this is possible than any help on how to do it would be much appreciated(I’m still pretty new to php so still learning) or if there’s another approach to get the same outcome then it would be very helpful to know. Any help on the issue would be great and I look forward to hearing back from you!

Thanks guys, David

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PHP

3 Comments(s) ↴

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@stuarttoddFeb 07.2010 — Hey,

If you don't want the visitor to know where the link has gone then perhaps you could use the similar method that Microsoft use.

For example, having a MySQL database of links/locations and using a forwarder script. It'll keep the location hidden and if your doing any kind of click recording then you could do that in the forwarder script too, before sending the visitor on their merry way.

Sorry if I'm not making myself clear, but I've just had a realllllly long day and I'm not sure if I've actually answered you properly :/ oh well!

Stuart
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@JunkDrawStuffFeb 07.2010 — You can do this in javascript, you apply an onmouseover and onmouseout event to change the status display.

If your looking for something that is a little more flexible, a link manager may help in the above description although for a small site this is easily maintaned as a txt file on the server (aka flat file)

Again, javascript can do the leg work and fetch the data needed as either a whole file fetch or use a server side to poll the flat file for information and then return the link required and then javascript again forwards the user to that location.

So you options are not just limited to using PHP and MySQL databases, this can be done with AJAX and a flat file. If you have thousands of links, this would be best done in a database, mainly for speed.

An alternative to MySQL would be to use SQLite (with php5) and do this as a database file, An SQlite database is good for a couple of terabytes.
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@stuarttoddFeb 07.2010 — A flat file system would work - of course depending on the site.

Although, even for a smaller site (if you envisage growth, or your client does) then a database would work alot better in the long run as you can use it for reporting tools, link management and various other elements that your client may/could want.

JavaScript can hide the destination of the URL by using onClick methods as opposed to using the HREF. You could point your user to their destination while they will always see "javascript:void(0);" in the status bar.

A mixture of the two would probably sort you out.
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