Welcome to the URL Rotator Plugin for WordPress!
The URL Rotator plugin allows you to specify a group of target URLs you’d like to cycle through, then specify a jump key that allows you to reference this group from anywhere.
For example, let’s say I want to create a jump key to cycle through three different search engines.
I create the jump group to include:
http://www.google.com
http://www.yahoo.com
http://www.bing.com
I then create a jump key of ’searchengine’ on my site, so I can send people to the url http://jonathanboettcher.com/searchengine and it will automatically cycle through those three sites. Try it – the link is live. Each time another person clicks on the site, it chooses the next URL as the target.
The plugin also has a hit counter that you can reset – a crude but effective way of measuring overall traffic. For example, if you’re testing three offers and you send 300 clicks, you know that each offer has received 100 clicks.
In addition, the plugin was designed so that it can pass along any URL variables you send to it. So if you’re trying to do keyword tracking, you can do that. You just have to be careful you format your target URLs correctly.
Here’s a YouTube video I did which explains a bit more:
For the time being, I’m planning on keeping this plugin free, but I have a few ideas up my sleeve that are going to make this plugin far more powerful (think about tracking) and at that point I will probably start charging something for it.
To get the plugin, just enter your name and email below, so that you will be notified of updates (and there will be some cool ones coming!) and you will be automatically redirected to the download.
If you’ve got comments or suggestions for the plugin please leave a comment below!
I am so happy to be the first one to comment.
I have not tested it yet so I have no suggestions, but love the idea. I just now getting into CPA networks and love the possibilities.
Great job.
Thanks Teevee! I think it could be pretty useful to quickly test a handful of offers, and on top of that, the redirection ability alone is pretty cool, even if you only use it for single URLs (not groups).
Stay tuned – we’re working on a better version that is going to allow keyword tracking throughout wordpress so that you can easily integrate this with any tracking software, and also so that you don’t lose stats as people browse through a wordpress site and the cookie gets lost!
I found your blog via BlogEngage – I use WP extensively and love the idea of this plugin. I’ll be trying it out over next week or so and will probably recommend to our members at Blogging Beginners
I’ll let you know my thoughts in due course. Thanks. Wizzer
Thanks Wizzer – I appreciate any feedback, and very much appreciate any recommendations! Cheers.
@Jonathan: I am getting an error when trying to preserve a variable or create a jump group. The error reads, “You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page.” I am not sure how to resolve this issue. Can you assist me?
This looks like a great plugin. I have a new idea up my sleeve and I’m working on getting everything I need together before I start the project. I am planning on using this as a destination rotator for an ad, much like how you mentioned in your other post about using it to try different affiliate products. Thanks for making this free! (btw, I hope it’s ok that I used keywords in the name field. if not, i apologize and have no problem with you replacing it with my name) -Fooz
Hi Fooz, I’m glad you find it useful.
I’ve got a wordpress blog that’s based upon a template. My homepage is a static page (squeezepage with opt in) that is an external html file. Would I be able to use your plugin to rotate the homepage so I can split test it with Aweber. In other words I don’t want to have to enter a jumpkey path. Any help appreciated.
Hi Gregory – I’m not sure you’d be able to pull that off with this particular rotator. What does spring to mind though is using Google’s Website Optimizer (free) to swap pages. Basically what you’re looking for there is a split testing plugin rather than a rotator. Although, I guess if you redirected your home URL to a jumpkey path, then within the jump key you specified two different pages, then it could technically function as such. I think you could probably find a cleaner solution though by looking for some sort of split testing plugin for wordpress. I assume there must be something out there – if not let me know and maybe I’ll get one built! =)
Cheers
Excellent, I was just about to hire a programmer to build me one, then thought I would have a look around, and found your plugin, which is exactly what I needed. Cheers.
I’m getting the following when trying to install. I have checked permissions and everything looks ok.
“Unable to create directory /images/2010/01. Is its parent directory writable by the server?”
Absolutely Fabulous tool. I am using for ppc marketing co-ops and its fantastic. Wasnt sure how I would go about it until I found your brillian plugin. I love wordpress and I now love you. LOL.
Thanks
Jay Roberts
I don’t know what I am doing wrong. It just goes to page not found.
Thanks
I don’t know why it would matter, but it didn’t seem to work on a subdomain, but worked on a regular domain.
Hmm interesting observation David. I hadn’t noticed that before. Thanks.
Hey Jonathon
I have the plugin working and all is well BUT
adwords keeps disapproving it as the destination URL (of which there are 8 in rotation) does not match the display URL which if course it wouldnt as i have 8 different ones.
Any Ideas?
Jay Roberts
Hey Jay,
Yeah, if you’re trying to do a split test of the actual landing page, you would probably be better off using Google’s Website Optimizer.
The way I would use this plugin in that situation is to create a somewhat generic landing page, with a “Get More Info” or whatever link on the page… which would then be rotated.
You have to be very careful with Adwords’ TOS requirements… they’re quite picky.
Oh – just occurred to me that they don’t allow multiple destination domains in an adgroup… so if you’re redirecting to multiple domains, that’s probably your problem right there. Could try it again, but with all redirects on a single domain… or try the static LP with a rotating offer link.
Cheers
I stumbled across your pages from a comment on an aweber page, and am glad I did. You’re refreshingly different in your attitudes. I was especially glad to see the WordPress rotator. One of the things I wanted to do as a continuity offer, was rotating ads on the blog pages, for members. I wasn’t sure if it could be done, or if it was worth doing. This looks like it could work for me.
I’m trying to raise money to set up a site and start selling a book that I’ve almost finished. It’s based on Barnum’s comment about wasted advertising money. “I know of my advertising is wasted, I just don’t know which half!” My guess now, is that it’s more like 75% wasted, based on what I see being done. If you’d like to look at the almost finished work, let me know.
Hi Walter – this plugin will rotate URLs behind an ad, but it isn’t a banner rotator, which it sounds like you might be looking for… ?
This is very good. One modification is required which I am sure some will not agree.
Once a user see an offer and if they return back they should see the same offer unless they have cleared their cache. That way you will not confuse the user by showing other URL..
Hi Juni, that’s an excellent suggestion. Cheers.
[...] for a few days, which I found to be quite easy. And, it was this testing of Jonathan’s URL Rotator plug-in that provided further validation for a few additional features I thought might make this a more [...]
Are the URL rotated randomly?
If I have a 3 websites and 100 visitors,
would each website show 33 times or
it could be 20, 50, 30 ..
Hi Mark, the URLs are rotated evenly, not randomly. So out of 99 clicks, the 3 sites would each get 33 clicks…. the purpose is to evaluate the earning potential of different offers with your traffic, not to randomize the links per se.
Hey man!
Thanks for this rockin’ plugin! It’s going to be very handy for me as I need to test offers/ads and would like to keep it all “in house.” There are services that offer rotators (as you undoubtedly know), but having it all in one place makes it very helpful and convenient.
Outstanding! I look forward to trying this out.
This sounds exactly what I am looking for to promote my teams pages for our network marketing company. I’ve downloaded it and will check it out. Thank you!
Love these tips! I am going to install some today hopefully. One question – how do you feel about adding all these plugins? I don’t want to bog my site down w/ too many. Also – wondering what you think about putting a floating subscribe bar in wordpress.