GoCodes: URL Redirection Plugin for WordPress

by Daniel Scocco

People tend to redirect URLs for several reasons. Sometimes you need to have a short and user friendly URL to pass to your friends over IM or to use it on your podcast. Other times you might want to create a redirection to hide your affiliate links (notice that I don’t encourage this practice, but many affiliate marketers do it).

Regardless of why you are doing it, though, there is a WordPress plugin that can transform your blog into a URL redirection central. GoCodes enables you to create custom URLs inside your domain that will redirect the user to any website or page on the Internet.

Suppose you are a podcaster and you want to point your listeners to some cool pictures on the Internet. Unfortunate the URL for the pictures is something long and complex, say http://www.domain.com/folder/zr/?pic&3.html. Instead of using that URL, therefore, you could use the plugin to create a redirection on your blog, say http://www.myblog.com/go/pictures/.

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27 Responses to “GoCodes: URL Redirection Plugin for WordPress”

Marketing Blog on February 22nd, 2008 4:32 am

Looks like an intersting plugin and one i might have to try out.
Ben on February 22nd, 2008 4:50 am

This would be good for affiliate links as well. I like – thanks for the tip
Daniel on February 22nd, 2008 5:18 am

Yeah I think most people will use it for that purpose in fact.
redwall_hp on February 22nd, 2008 6:06 am

Thanks for covering my plugin, Daniel.
David Bradley on February 22nd, 2008 7:35 am

Interesting plugin. Simpler than messing around with .htaccess too.

I wrote about how to hack your own site for simpler searches recently, I’ll have to investigate whether or not this plugin allows you to do things like that too.

db
Erin on February 22nd, 2008 8:53 am

This is a great tool — I was just looking for something like this. Thanks a lot for the heads’ up!
Jordan on February 22nd, 2008 10:58 am

Does this work differently than the Redirection plugin from Urban Giraffe?
Missy on February 22nd, 2008 7:15 pm

I’ve been looking for a free WP affiliate plugin, let’s see if this is it. Thanxs for the heads up on it.
bhavesh on February 22nd, 2008 9:59 pm

wow, its great plugin, we can use it when we need to delete old post and redirect old URL to any new related post. Thanks Daniel for this plugin.
TheBloggerTips on February 23rd, 2008 9:13 am

Great plugin, Thanks!
Emma on February 23rd, 2008 9:01 pm

Thanks, I’m glad I’m subscribed to this blog. I almost paid 97$ for a program that did this plus some other features. Thanks for the tip.
Bored King on February 24th, 2008 2:00 am

I use php redirection for my affiliates. I think is better.
Michael Aulia on February 24th, 2008 3:52 pm

I’ve been using a plugin called “Hidden Affiliate Links”..it doesn’t really work sometimes, so I’ll give this a go
Erin on February 25th, 2008 10:34 am

When I try to submit a link for redirection, I get a “cannot load gocodes.php” – any idea why this is happening?

Thanks!
redwall_hp on February 25th, 2008 10:45 am

Erin, you didn’t rename the plugin file did you? This tends to cause problems with a lot of plugins…including GoCodes. Also, check to make sure that it’s in the /wp-content/plugins/ directory, and not in a subdirectory like /wp-content/plugins/gocodes/.
palpalani on March 21st, 2008 5:16 am

Very interesting plug in! Let me try it today!
Susan on August 3rd, 2008 12:54 am

This is an AWESOME plugin – I don’t know what I what do without it…well, actually I was usually php redirect, but this plugin is actually a little easier on my database.
Rick Lim on August 23rd, 2008 12:18 pm

Thanks for this wonderful plugin for wordpress. I had been searching this for age!
Brad Blogging.com - Personal Blog Tips And Blog Help on August 27th, 2008 12:48 pm

I’m looking through my .htaccess file and do not see the #Start Wordpress..

Any help?
Tanvir Morshed on November 28th, 2008 4:36 am

Thanks for the information.
I will use it in my web site, which I’m currently working on. The site will list tutorials from other web sites. So a redirect plugin would be a must for me.

Thanks again
Armand on February 19th, 2009 6:17 pm

I’m looking for a similar plug-in for my blog. I’m not sure which one to pick up, but thanks for the information.
Naruto Bay on April 25th, 2009 1:30 pm

Thanks a lot for this plugin. I searched in Google for wordpress url redirect and found this It’s better than editing .htaccess to redirect an url to another one
over_cloud9 on December 3rd, 2009 4:32 pm

I’d been hunting for a good redirection plugin and my serach ends here.However when I try to add a redirect,it says “you don’t have sufficient permissions to use this”.please help me fix it.
Jay on December 28th, 2009 5:07 am

This looks like its exactly what I need but I am having some problems.

Everything seems to be set up okay and the redirects are even showing up as I would expect in the “Manage Gocodes” table with the URL I am redirecting on the left and the URL of the site I want to go to on the right. I am trying standard sites like google for the purpose of testing.

When I visit my URL shown on the left of the table I am taken to a standard 404 page.

The plugin is definitely active too.

Can anyone give me any guidance on this?
Jay on December 28th, 2009 5:08 am

Sorry to double post but over_cloud9, in answer to your quesetion I think you need to just copy the gocodes directory into your plugins folder, do not do any renaming or complicating the dir structure and you will be fine – I had the same problem
Andrew on January 12th, 2010 12:31 pm

I have installed the GoCodes plugin but am now confused over using it.

Is the KEY field what I want to call the link and is the URL field the affiliate link I have been given?

Thanks for any assistance in this matter.