Outlinks Overview

The Outlinks add-on gives any reference in your episodes a tracked link on your own site, such as yoursite.com/go/lean-startup. Every click is counted and credited to the episode it came from, then the visitor goes on to the reference’s URL — or to an affiliate URL, a country’s own address, or a fallback once an offer ends. Outlinks also adds an affiliate disclosure to episodes that need one, and Link Health checks your links and images for you.

Outlinks works on every Benecaster plan, Launch included. Buy it from its shop page, install it like any other add-on (see Installing Add-ons), and switch it on for the shows you want under Benecaster → Settings → Add-ons → the Outlinks card → Active on.

Before You Start

/go/ addresses need pretty permalinks. Under WordPress’s Plain permalink setting (Settings → Permalinks in WordPress), episode pages link tracked references as yoursite.com/?benecaster_outlinks_go=lean-startup&ep=123 instead, which works without them, but a /go/ address you paste anywhere else will not. Any other permalink setting is fine.

Tracking a Reference

1. Open the episode in Benecaster → Episodes and go to its References tab.
2. On the reference’s card, click → Track.
3. Check the Link name. It is suggested from the reference’s label, and you can change it. Use letters, numbers and hyphens. The address it makes is shown beside it as …/go/{name}.
4. Click Create link.

The button then shows the link’s click count, such as 47 clicks. Clicking the count opens the link’s settings.

A few things to know:

• Save first. A reference you have just added shows → Track greyed out with Save the episode to track this link. Save the episode and the button comes alive without a reload.
• The reference needs a web address. Only a URL starting with http:// or https:// can be tracked.
• Link names are unique across your whole site, not just the show. If a name is taken, Outlinks says so and offers a free one to use instead, such as lean-startup-2.
• One tracked link per reference per show. Every episode that cites the same reference shares the link, and each episode’s clicks are counted separately.
• The reference itself does not change. Its URL stays exactly as you typed it in the editor. Outlinks only changes how the episode page links to it.
• No → Track button? Outlinks is switched off for that episode’s show.

How Tracked Links Appear

On a published episode’s page, a tracked reference links to its /go/ address with the episode added, for example yoursite.com/go/lean-startup?ep=123. That is how each click is credited to the right episode. References you haven’t tracked link straight to their own URL.

You can paste the plain /go/ address anywhere else: an episode description, a newsletter, a social post. Those clicks are counted too, and appear in the report as Not from an episode page.

The Link’s Settings

Click a tracked reference’s click count in the episode editor to open its settings:

Click Save settings when you’re done. The settings belong to the link, so they apply on every episode that cites the reference.

Changing Where a Link Goes

A tracked link always goes to its reference’s current URL. To change it, edit the reference’s URL in any episode’s References tab. The URL belongs to the reference in your show’s library, so the change applies to every episode that cites it, and the /go/ link follows straight away. Old episodes, newsletters and social posts all go to the new address without being touched.

If you change the URL to something that isn’t an http:// or https:// address, or empty it, the link keeps going to its last good address. Changing a reference’s label doesn’t affect the link.

To change the affiliate address, edit the Affiliate URL in the link’s settings.

Removing a reference from an episode, or deleting a show, keeps the tracked link and its click history. The link keeps going to the last address it had.

Link Expiry

Use an expiry date for a seasonal sponsorship, a time-limited offer or a course enrolment that closes.

• The expiry date itself is the last live day. From the next day, by your site’s own calendar (Settings → General → Timezone in WordPress), every visitor goes to the Fallback URL.
• With no fallback, or one that isn’t an http:// or https:// address, visitors go to the reference’s URL.
• Expiry comes first. An expired link goes to its fallback even where an affiliate URL or a country rule would otherwise apply.
• Clicks on an expired link are still counted.

Passing On URL Parameters

Anything you add to a /go/ address after a ?, such as ?utm_source=newsletter, is passed on to wherever the visitor ends up: the reference’s URL, the affiliate URL, a country’s address or the fallback. Some affiliate networks need this.

The stored address always wins a clash. If your affiliate URL already has ?tag=yourtag, a visitor cannot replace it from the address bar. The ep parameter that credits an episode is never passed on.

Counting Clicks

Outlinks counts people and leaves out machines. Search-engine crawlers, the previews chat and social apps make when someone shares a link, monitoring services and scripts are still sent on to the destination, but they are counted separately as Filtered. A request with no browser identification at all counts as filtered too.

That includes command-line tools. If you test your own link with curl or wget, you’ll see a filtered click, not a person. Open it in a browser instead.

Each click records the link, the episode it came from, the time, whether it came from a page on your own site, the visitor’s country when GeoIP is switched on, and whether it was filtered. The visitor’s IP address, browser details and the page they came from are not stored.

The Outlinks Tab

Each show’s report is at Benecaster → Shows → open the show → Settings → Outlinks. The tab appears only on shows Outlinks is switched on for.

Under the heading, a summary line counts what Link Health has found broken across your whole site, such as 3 broken links or images site-wide, with a → Link Health link to the full list. It reads the same on every show’s tab.

The table lists the show’s tracked links:

The table opens with the most-clicked links first. Click the Last clicked header to sort by most recent activity, or Status to put the links that need attention first.

Click Show clicks by episode under a link to see how many people came from each episode, most first. Clicks from outside an episode page are grouped as Not from an episode page, and clicks credited to an episode you have since deleted show as Deleted episode #ID.

A link dismissed in Link Health still shows its real status here.

Affiliate Disclosure

When any tracked reference in an episode has an affiliate URL — on the link itself or on one of its country rules — the episode’s page shows this line just above its References section:

This episode contains affiliate links — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

It appears once per episode, and only on episodes with affiliate links. It’s on for every show from the start, so you disclose without setting anything up. An expired link with an affiliate URL still counts.

To change it, go to Settings → Outlinks for the show, then Affiliate disclosure below the links table:

• Show a disclosure on episodes with affiliate links — untick to switch the line off for this show.
• Disclosure text — your own wording, as one line of plain text, up to 300 characters. Longer text is refused, not cut short. Leave it empty to use the default wording shown.

Click Save disclosure.

If you use a custom theme. The line is printed from Benecaster’s episode references template. A theme that overrides benecaster/episode/references.php must keep its do_action( 'benecaster_before_episode_references', … ) line, or the disclosure won’t show and nothing will warn you. Theme authors: keep that hook in your copy. See Template Overrides.

Exporting Your Link Data

Outlinks adds two sheets to Benecaster → Settings → Your Data. That screen exports every show at once, so each sheet has a Show column. Shows where Outlinks is switched off are left out.

• Outlinks Link Registry — one row per tracked link: Link name, Show, Destination, Affiliate URL, Clicks (people), Episodes clicked from (how many different episodes sent a person) and Link Health status. It covers all time, whatever date range you choose. The status is a short code: healthy, broken, expired, unchecked or excluded.
• Outlinks Click Log — one row per click by a person in the date range: Link name, Episode, Show, Clicked at (your site’s time), Referrer and Country. Episode is blank for a click that didn’t come from an episode page. Referrer reads page for a click from your own site and other for anything else.

See Exporting Your Data.

Moving an Episode to Another Show

When you move an episode to another show, its tracked links come with it. In the new show, each tracked reference gets a link with the same affiliate URL, country rules, expiry date and fallback.

Link names are unique across your site, so the new link gets a new name, usually the old one with -2 added, such as /go/lean-startup-2. If the reference is already tracked in the new show, that link is used as it is.

The new link starts with no clicks, and its Link Health status is Unchecked until the next check. The old link stays in the old show with its settings and its click history, and old addresses keep working.

When Outlinks Is Switched Off or Your License Lapses

Your /go/ links never break. If Outlinks is switched off for a show, your license lapses, or your site hasn’t reached Benecaster’s license server for 30 days, that show’s /go/ links keep sending visitors to the reference’s URL. While that lasts:

• Clicks aren’t counted, and affiliate URLs, country rules, expiry and passed-on parameters don’t apply.
• Episode pages link references straight to their own URL, and no disclosure line shows.
• Edits to a reference’s URL are still followed, and moved episodes still bring their links with them.

Switch Outlinks back on, or renew, and everything picks up where you left it.

Deleting Outlinks

Deactivating Outlinks keeps everything, but its /go/ links stop working: they live in the add-on, so while it’s deactivated or deleted they lead to a “page not found” error.

What happens to your link data when you delete Outlinks from WordPress’s Plugins screen depends on Benecaster’s Settings → Tools → Danger Zone → Delete all data on uninstall switch:

• Off (the default): your tracked links, their settings and their click history are kept. Reinstall Outlinks and every /go/ link and its history comes back.
• On: all of Outlinks’ data is removed.

Either way, Benecaster’s own data, including your references and reference library, is untouched.

The Outlinks Tour

The Outlinks Tour shows you the → Track button, the click report on the Outlinks tab and the Link Health summary. Open it from the Tours catalog (the Tours link in the Benecaster admin footer). It’s listed while Outlinks is switched on for at least one show. See Getting to Know Benecaster — Tours.

For Developers

• benecaster_outlinks_before_redirect — runs just before a tracked click is sent on
• benecaster_outlinks_click_logged — runs after a click is recorded, filtered clicks included
• benecaster_outlinks_bot_ua_list — replaces the list of browser identifications counted as filtered
• benecaster_outlinks_disclosure_text — changes or removes the disclosure line
• benecaster_outlinks_redirect_destination_sync_before / _after — around a link following its reference’s new URL
• benecaster_outlinks_redirect_detach_before / _after — around a link being kept when its reference is deleted
• benecaster_outlinks_redirect_move_copy_before / _after — around each link copied to a moved episode’s new show

Link Health’s hooks are listed on Link Health. Code examples are in the recipe library.