[nass]

Maybe I'm imagining it, but I could have sworn that sometimes sig signatures seem to be in the form of a standardised redirect to the url via something locally and sometimes they seem to be a direct link to the site. Am I imagining things, or...? I was considering buying a subscription but was hoping for some clarification on this and any other plans there are to change or effect what you can have in your sig?

Cheers

[nass]

Think I've sussed it. Is it just the private forums section which has that redirect on it?

[Chubster]

So what would be the reasoning behind that

[Indizine]

Im not sure what you mean exactly so maybe the more technical admin mods can answer that one.

BTW at present, all new members can have a signature.

[nass]

Generally that sort of pattern is used for measurement purposes. For example that technique is often used to measure affiliate links. Indi, it's this: If you look at the form the footer links take on this thread they're not regular anchors going straight to the link but instead this pattern, going via the forums:

/forum/redirect-to/?redirect=http%3A%2F%2F URL

Not sure if I'm making a great deal of sense but have a look through the source of that thread and you'll see what I'm blethering on about. Basically there's then also something behind the scenes which makes that URL to redirect to actually go to the URL. But the advantage here for the webmaster is that it makes it measurable. It is generally difficult to measure exits out from a website otherwise. And it's the same in all the private forum posts - done programatically. Ie something like "if post is in form x then change footer links into this forum". It's also a perfectly ok thing to do - those private forums are excluded from robots anyway

[nass]

^^ this makes no sense because the redirect was written out when I posted.

test:

/redirect-to/?redirect=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dotwhack.co.uk

update

amended the post above

[Jeewhizz]

It's redirected in private forums, so that the forum / thread title doesn't appear in the referrer logs

[nass]

Bear with me, I'm trying to understand in case it's a technique I need to plagiarise

Bottom line, it's there so that when billy posts a link in that forum drawing attention to sally (in the content of the post), sally can't look in her logs and work out the referrer. Ie so that nobody knows the private ones even exist. The fact that it also affects the footers is just part of the script?

[Jeewhizz]

Originally Posted by nass

Bear with me, I'm trying to understand in case it's a technique I need to plagiarise

Bottom line, it's there so that when billy posts a link in that forum drawing attention to sally (in the content of the post), sally can't look in her logs and work out the referrer. Ie so that nobody knows the private ones even exist. The fact that it also affects the footers is just part of the script?

Yup

[nass]

okies, got it cheers