I just released a new version of the hidden affiliate links plugin.
The previous version had a problem with the keyword replacement code.
This is fixed now so go ahead and download the update form the plugin page
I also updated the plugin page to list the requirements for this plugin to work.
This version was tested on WordPress 3.2.1
Finally after a long time, The Hidden Affiliate Links plugin for WordPress 3.0.1 is here.
The previous version stopped working a long time ago when wordpress 2.5 was released ( yes it's really that long ago ).
I tested the current version on WordPress 3.0.1. It might work on older versions but I don't plan to support them.
The download, install and usage instructions are on the plugin's page.
I tried to host this plugin on the official wordpress plugins repository so you could see update notifications right in wordpres admin but apparently someone there doesn't like the fact that this plugin hides links so it was not accepted.
I think this is wrong because there are other plugins there that can somehow hide links ( like the redirection plugin ) and even without a plugin if someone wants to hide a link they can still do it easily by using any url shortner.
Anyway the idea is if you want to be notified about updates make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed.
Feel free to ask any questions about this plugin in the comments.
After the first release of the Hidden affiliate Links plugin some bloggers wanted to know if this plugin would be able to automatically replace some keywords in posts and turn them into affiliate links.
John Chow bought a plugin for wordpress that does something like that from DealDotCom (yes it's an afiliate link and it was created automatically ) but I know it wouldn't be that hard to add such a functionality to my plugin. So here's the real deal they should put on DealDotCom:
Now my plugin will let you define keywords and it will replace those keywords (when you save/update a post) with a new link you can specify. And it will still work for adding such links manually as the first version does (just don't put anything into keywords or Link fields ) .
The keywords field is actually a field where you can specify a regular expression ( so make sure you escape special characters like - or . (dot ) by placing a \ ( backslash ) in front of them.
Let's say you write a post and you want this plugin to replace both the keywords/phrases DealDotCom and "Deal Dot Com" then the content of the keywords column should look like DealDotCom|Deal Dot Com . The "Match slug" field can be go/dealdotcom and the "New link" should be something like "/go/dealdotcom" or "http://patchlog.com/go/dealdotcom" ( without the quotes ) - this is what it looks like on your blog.
Hidden Affiliate Links v0.2 zip file / tar.gz file
If you have already installed version 0.1 you will have to deactivate from wp-admin -> Plugins and delete the table wp_hal_links then just install the new plugin like any other plugin.
Because the plugin allows you to specify regular expression for the " Match Slug" field you will have to escape some special characters like . (dot ) , _ , - and / by placing a backslash in front of them . I could make the plugin so that this will not be necessary but that would make it lose the great flexibility that regular expression matching can offer.