Links and domains

Three kinds of domain can carry your program, and each has one job:

• a short-link domain, for shorter partner links
• a portal domain, where partners sign in
• a tracker host, which serves the tracking script from your own name

A hostname can do only one of those jobs. The dashboard checks that before it asks you to touch DNS. DNS is the address book of the internet: the records that say where each name points.

Partner links

Out of the box, a partner's link is your site with their handle on it: yoursite.com/?ref=alice.

To set where links land:

1. Open Settings, Program.
2. Fill in Referral links send people to. It applies to everyone. It's your homepage by default, or your app's signup page if that's where people buy.

A group can point somewhere else. Custom links go to any page when you allow them. The parameter name (ref above) is yours to change under Settings, Attribution.

Partners can also create custom links, with their own values for campaign tracking, unless you switch that off. Coupon-only programs can hide links in the portal entirely.

Need one partner's link? Open Partners, click their name, and press Copy their link under their handle: it's the same address they see in their own portal, so you can read it out on a call, paste it into a brief or check a partner's own copy of it against yours and know the three agree. Changing that handle breaks every link already published with the old one.

Counts stay with each link. The default link shows its own clicks and converted customers. Archiving a custom link removes it from the partner's link list, but it keeps its attribution history. The old URL still works, and later clicks stay with that archived link in Reports.

Short-link domains

A short-link domain gives every partner a shorter, branded link. For example, add refer.yourdomain.com and every partner also gets refer.yourdomain.com/alice. It's clean in a bio or a podcast read.

1. Open Settings, Domains, Short-link domains.
2. Add your domain.
3. Follow the verification steps at the bottom of this page.

Both forms of link track the same way. The short link records the click on our server, then forwards to your site with the referral attached.

A short link never breaks. An unknown handle or a paused partner still forwards to your site. That click isn't tracked.

Short links have a speed limit, the same one as the tracking script. If one address or one program sends clicks faster than that, the extra visitors still reach your site. They just aren't tracked. Clicks from the same browser on the same day count as one visit.

You can add several short-link domains. Each partner link shows every form, with a copy button.

The portal on your own domain

Your portal starts at yourprogram.affiliaterail.io, and it keeps working there forever. Adding affiliates.yourdomain.com puts the same portal on your own name.

1. Open Settings, Domains, Portal domain.
2. Pick a name nothing else uses today. If app.yourdomain.com is where your product lives, don't use it here.
3. Paste the address however you have it. With or without https://, a path or a port is fine. The box cleans it up.
4. Add one record at the place you bought your domain.
5. The dashboard walks you through the verification.

You can't use your root domain, such as yourdomain.com on its own. Pointing it at us would take your own site down.

A tracker host of your own

A tracker host serves the tracking script and its click address from a name of your own, like go.yourdomain.com. Add one from Reports, Attribution, Your own tracker host, or from Settings, Domains, Tracker domain.

Two things improve:

• Nothing about tracking is third-party any more, so content blockers have nothing to match.
• Our server sets the referral cookie in the click response, instead of a script writing it. That takes it out of Safari's seven-day cap on cookies set by script.

What the second point doesn't buy you on Safari. The record we issue is a CNAME. A CNAME is a DNS record that points one name at another name. Safari's browser engine, WebKit, has a defence against "CNAME cloaking": it treats a subdomain of yours whose CNAME points outside your own domain as a third party in disguise, and caps cookies set in that response at seven days as well.

On Safari, a tracker host of your own gets past content blockers. The window stays at seven days. What carries a sale past every one of these caps is the billing reference. It rides on the payment itself, so it doesn't depend on anything being stored in the browser. How that works.

Once the host is verified, the install snippet in the dashboard switches to it automatically, and you update the tag on your site whenever it suits you.

Verification, step by step

Every domain goes through the same three steps. The badge on its row says exactly where it stands:

1. Needs verification: prove the name is yours, with a TXT record. A TXT record is a DNS record that holds a line of text we can check.
2. Waiting for DNS: point the name at us, with a CNAME.
3. Waiting for the certificate: this happens automatically once DNS resolves. The certificate is what puts the padlock on https://.

Then the badge says Live.

The records to add are shown in a table you can copy from. If your DNS is on Cloudflare, set the record to DNS only (the grey cloud, proxy off). A proxied record hides where the name points, so the certificate can't be issued.