ThirstyAffiliates is a good Plugin to manage your affiliate links as it offers a lot of useful features such as shorting the long, meaning-less affiliate link to be short, and easy to remember for example instead of using this affiliate link: http://www.example.com/product123456/product-name.html?referrer=wp-me.com you can shorten it to be like this: https://wp-me.com/go/xxx another very useful feature in the plugin is that you can change the long link any time you want without changing the short link as well as providing statistics and a lot of other useful features.
But, after installing the plugin your may find Links not redirecting which shows a “404 error” page while opining any referral link. This problem is a common issue usually caused by another WordPress plugin or theme not flushing redirect rules correctly after setting up another custom post type. In this post you will learn how to fix Links not redirecting problem.
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Fixing Links not redirecting 404 error in Thirsty Affiliates plugin
To fix this problem follow these steps:
- Go to your WordPress Admin dashboard, then go to Plugins page.
- Select ThirstyAffiliates plugin and deactivate it. *don’t worry about your shortened links they are safely stored in your site database.
- After deactivating ThirstyAffiliates, Reactivate it again.
- Visit the Settings-> Permalinks page and click save without changing any thing
- Go back to ThirstyAffiliates-> All Affiliate Links, then choose any affiliate link and view it , Now it should be redirecting properly to your original affiliate link.
What if Thirsty Affiliates links still not redirecting properly
If it’s still happening, check your link is setup properly and has a destination URL and that destination URL starts with http:// or https://
I’ve done all of the above, but links still not redirecting!
If you done all the above and the links still not redirecting and displaying 404 error. Then the cause of the problem may be another plugin that conflicts with Thirsty Affiliate plugin. In order to solve this problem you need to deactivate all your site plugins and reactivate them again one by one. Once you reactivate a certain plugin and you find that the problem appears again then try to contact the plugin developer and till him about the problem to solve it or simply don’t use it or use another alternative for the plugin that causes the problem.
If you have any problem add it to a comment and it will be answered!
Thank you, i was worried about what am I missing or doing wrong, until I found this solution. 🙂 Thank you.
hi there.
i know this is really old but i am still having an issue after following your instructions.
i’ve followed every instruction on every blog that says that same thing.
i’ve even deactivated all the plugins except the ThirstyAffiliates one.
and the problem still persists.
i’m using a shared link from google drive.
i enter the destination URL and then when i go to the “affiliate links” section and click “view”
it tells me that it can’t be found.
i though i initially fixed the problem with the permalinks settings but it came back and the permalink settings are still the same as it was when i though i fixed it.
this thing has got me pulling my hair out.
please help.
Hey Shannon,
Thanks for your comment.
I’d recommend contacting ThirstyAffiliates support.
Also, the problem might be with your web hosting provider, try contacting them to check if there is a problem with the database or file permissions.
ok.
thank you.
i contacted the host provider and got things working.
thank you very much for your help 🙂
Hey Shannon,
Glad to hear that you could fix it.
Have a good day.
Great post Ahmed! Tried it and it works. Now I wonder though whether you’re not better off using just naked affiliate links instead of redirected ones through a plugin. Something may go wrong and your affiliate links may give 404 for a long time, before you notice it, losing a lot of potential clicks and sales. It’s nice to have a clean and short URL, but having problems like this makes me think whether using this kind of plugin is worth it.
Thanks for stopping by Michiel!
There is no doubt that cloaked affiliate links are much better than naked ones. Cloaked links are shorter, easy-to-remember, more attractive, you can track clicks, and the most important feature for me is you can update your affiliate link anytime without affecting the cloaked link.
Actually, I didn’t face this problem before, but I don’t think that the plugin will give you an error like that as long as you set it up correctly. In order to solve this problem you can easily use a plugin for tracking 404 errors and know which link is not set properly.
I have tried the suggestion as in your article and I still get the 404 error code
Try to reactivate all the plugins and reactivate them one by one and you will discover which plugin causes the problem.
Read the last part of the post again I’ve updated it!