Short URL site that blanks referrers

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fatboy

New member
Oct 5, 2008
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cheaplinkbuilding.org
Hey guys.

Not sure if this is of any use to people but I have been practicing my PHP today and came up with DMUrl.info

Its a URL shortening script that also does away with the referrers - perhaps its handy for some marketing :)

Anyway, feel free to try it out - the main bones of the site is there, just tarting it up (well, as much as you can to a free template!)

Any bug reports or suggestions most welcome :)

FB
 


How successful is it at scrubbing out the referrer? I know those bastards tend to leak sometimes.

And you guys shouldn't be so hard on him. It's a free tool. No one is forcing you to use it. Dang.
 
LOL, knew I would get some shit back, so here goes:

1. To be honest I have a dabble in IM here and there, but main money is from my 9-5 job so what your landing pages etc are don't realy concern me. There is no tracking of short URLs at the moment so I couldn't really check where your traffic etc comes from unless I want to sit and dig through apache logs. I do however have a life, kids and a wonderful wife so a toss up between having fun with them or digging through logs your precious traffic stats are safe ;)

2. This isn't a 2 month wonder, I enjoy messing with coding - I am trying to get a grip on PHP. I am mainly a Perl coder (yep, there are some of us left) so PHP is a bit new, although quite similar.

As kingofsp said, I am not begging you to use it, just thought it would be interesting for people who want to get rid of the referrer. What other services do you use in your IM daily work - do you trust your host who has full access to all your stuff, how about tinyurl? Anyway, up to you :)

Kingofsp - in my tests, and those of a coulple of other people, the ref gets scrubbed quite well. However, if you (or anyone) finds a problem with it I will crack on and solve them - like I said above, this isn't a 2 month wonder - it will be developed further, some of the things on the horizon include:

- Membership (still free), with the ability to delete links or bulk add links.
- Stats: how many clicks each link has had

There will probably be more but those 2 will be first :)
 
Hey Fatboy,

How do you strip out the referrer information? Reason I ask is because I'd like to know. I know a double-meta refresh is the most popular way, but are their better ways to do it?

Btw... props on the tool! Thanks
 
even I want to know if there are any methods apart from DMR to blank the referrers with 100% accuracy as I know it is not possible with DMR.
 
I'm thinking the best way to do it is host all your redirects on a tracking domain (like Prosper), so worst case scenario the referrer shoes up on something other than your lp.
 
kingofsp said:
And you guys shouldn't be so hard on him. It's a free tool. No one is forcing you to use it. Dang.
Click to expand...

It's not about that, it's about saying "here's a free tool" without also saying "oh yea, all your data are belong to me sucka!"

I guess I'm being an ass for giving a shit that there may be some newbs here that don't realize what a bad idea it would be to use this, especially for ppc campains.

fatboy said:
LOL, knew I would get some shit back, so here goes:

1. To be honest I have a dabble in IM here and there, but main money is from my 9-5 job so what your landing pages etc are don't realy concern me. There is no tracking of short URLs at the moment so I couldn't really check where your traffic etc comes from unless I want to sit and dig through apache logs. I do however have a life, kids and a wonderful wife so a toss up between having fun with them or digging through logs your precious traffic stats are safe ;)
Click to expand...

I was going to tell you about this cool software called awstats that helps you "dig" through those nasty apache logs but I saw where you said "My background is in hosting, server admin and programming (mainly PHP and Perl) so hopefully they will come in handy." so I'd think that you already know it's not hard to "dig" through those apache logs.

What's this? --> "Just started making my own redirection domains, some of the things you can do with them are quite good, especially recording stats. Shows up how much the affiliate networks / PPC sites are stiffing you for "

So you use tracking on your jump sites which is basically what this site is, but you don't use any tracking on this one? Ok ...

fatboy said:
2. This isn't a 2 month wonder, I enjoy messing with coding - I am trying to get a grip on PHP. I am mainly a Perl coder (yep, there are some of us left) so PHP is a bit new, although quite similar.
Click to expand...

Hmm, a Perl coder that says it's too much trouble to "dig" through apache logs? Shouldn't take a Perl coder more than 5 minutes to write a perl program that spits out all kind of neat data from those apache logs. But what do I know, I've only been using it for about 12 years now.

And, Perl is "quite similar" to PHP as a Lambo is quite similar to a Yugo :error:

fatboy said:
As kingofsp said, I am not begging you to use it, just thought it would be interesting for people who want to get rid of the referrer.
Click to expand...

Then why not release the code as open source and let them self-host it?

fatboy said:
What other services do you use in your IM daily work - do you trust your host who has full access to all your stuff, how about tinyurl? Anyway, up to you :)
Click to expand...

I don't need to use many services, I roll my own or have it custom made if I'm too busy.

Sure my hosts have access to a lot of sensitive data but their business depends on keeping it safe, your some random guy on a forum, that's not a fair comparison.

And no, I don't fully trust my hosts. That's why I seed all sensitive data such as email lists and other member data with my own tracked email addys and phone numbers.

TinyURL? LOL, anybody who would use tinyurl for anything related to making money is clueless.

Ok, I'll quit bustin' your balls. I'm sure you spell it out in your terms or disclaimer that you pinky swear not to store or use all the sweet data that the nebws will be handing you on a silver platter and that you won't "accidentally" replace any affiliate IDs with your own before forwarding.

Your not an ex Google employee by chance are you?
 
You may also want to let the newbs know that they may not get paid for some or all of the traffic they send through your service. I imagine after the black hats get done raping your service, no networks or merchants will accept traffic from it.

What's next, an SMTP open relay service for spammers?
 
Mate, not sure what your beef is and I am not going to argue the toss about what the script does or doesn't do.

The DMUrl script does not record anything extra on top of the apache logs - yes, awstats will give you pretty pictures and tell you things but to be perfectly honest, I wouln't want to dig through them (with or without the use of scripts which, yes as you say, is easy enough)

Its there, use it or don't use it - I am offering people the chance and on the forums I have half-assedly (if thats a word) promoted it on a few people have taken it up.

Will I release the code, probably, but at the mo I am happy enough to let the site plod along.

Yes I have made jump sites that show who is clicking what, doesn't mean I will use the code in everything I script up.

Anyway, time is short, life is short and trying to persuade a single person that the site is not malicious is just not worth it.

I do, however, value your opinion - one that is probably more valuable than mine as I don't do a lot of IM for my money! Perhaps you have been stiffed in the past by some other site like this I don't know, but you can't tar every site with the same brush.

Anyway, I will leave it at that - last comments being I am not big brother who will go scouring through anything anyone puts in the site, I am just too lazy to be arsed.

:)

//EDIT: Forgot to say if I was an ex Google employee I wouldn't be wasting me time putting together pissy little sites like I do - I would be enjoying my money somewhere or launching super dooper Web two-point-oh businesses all over the place that seems to be in fashion :D
 
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