Link Manager

• Your Aha Studio accountLinks live on your account. Visitors see a read-only example on the Link Manager page, marked as an example.
• The destinationThe address the link should go to: an affiliate link, an offer, a booking page, a sign-up page. For a rotator, two to five of your own pages.

1. 1Open Link ManagerAt linkmanager.ahastudio.net, or Account, Links: both show the same list.
2. 2Press Add a linkAt the top of the page or above your list. The form opens at the top of the list. Give it a Name you will recognise (only you see it) and Where it goes: a tick shows when it looks like a full address. Your address shows the short address; its end follows the name until you type your own. Notes are for you. Press Save link.
3. 3Copy its addressEach row shows its short address, like ahastudio.net/go/your-code/your-slug, with Copy, and where it goes. Paste the address into your page, post, email or bio instead of the destination.
4. 4Watch the clicksThe clicks card at the top counts all time and this week, with Live, Broken and Replaced tiles that filter the list. Each row shows its clicks; open a row for Clicks by day over the last 30 days, with the referring sites and countries.
5. 5Find a linkSort Your links by Most clicks, Newest or A to Z, filter by status, or type in Search links.
6. 6Tidy the list: tick and archiveTick the links you no longer need to see, or press Select all shown to tick every link your filters show, then press Archive. Archived links leave the list but keep redirecting and counting every click, so no page that carries them breaks. Open Archived to see them, tick any and press Unarchive to bring them back. Syndication links are archived by themselves after 90 days; one you bring back stays in your list.
7. 7Replace the destination when an offer endsOpen the row and press Edit or replace beside where it goes, give the new destination and Save. The address stays the same, so every page that carries it follows at the next click. Nothing to republish.

A link can hold up to 5 destinations with weights. Each click picks one: a weight of 3 against 1 is three clicks in four, over time.

1. 1Press Rotate between two or more destinationsIn the link form, under the first destination. Add each page and its weight with Add another destination.
2. 2Use it for your own pagesTwo offers, an A and a B page, two booking pages. Never to send people somewhere they did not expect.

Your WordPress site can answer your links itself, as yoursite.com/go/your-slug. No DNS record and no subdomain: WordPress already serves your domain. It needs the free Aha Studio Connector plugin 1.6.0 or later, and the Aha Studio address of every link keeps working either way.

1. 1Connect the siteUnder Account, Publishing, connect your WordPress site with an Administrator account and install the Aha Studio Connector plugin (Download plugin, then in WordPress Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin).
2. 2Press Use this siteUnder Your domains, in Use my WordPress site. Aha Studio checks the plugin on your site first: older than 1.6.0, it says Update the plugin to use this.
3. 3Your links show the new addressEvery link that showed the Aha Studio address now shows yoursite.com/go/its-slug, with Copy. Address on changes it per link.
4. 4What a visitor getsA 302 to the same destination as the Aha Studio address, for people and search engines alike, never cached or indexed. The click is counted the same way: the referring site's name and the country, nothing personal. Only your own links answer on your site; any other address under /go/ is a plain not found page.
5. 5If Aha Studio cannot be reachedYour site keeps each answer for 5 minutes and remembers the last destination of every link, so links keep working. A link it has never seen shows a plain "This link is not available right now" page until Aha Studio answers again.
6. 6StopStop turns the /go/ addresses off on that site. Links that showed it go back to the Aha Studio address.

Show your links on a domain of yours, like go.yoursite.com/your-slug (or go.yoursite.com/go/your-slug), instead of the Aha Studio address. The Aha Studio address of every link keeps working either way. If the card says custom domains switch on once Aha Studio finishes the setup, subdomains are not switched on yet; your WordPress site works already.

1. 1Press Add a domainUnder Your domains, type a subdomain you own, like go.yoursite.com or links.yoursite.com. Up to 5 domains, each on one account only.
2. 2Add the CNAME recordWhere the DNS for your domain is managed, add the CNAME record the card shows, set to DNS only (not proxied). Copy copies its value. Step by step for Cloudflare, GoDaddy, Namecheap, Hostinger and Squarespace: Add the record at your DNS provider.
3. 3Press CheckThe status moves from Waiting for DNS to Verifying while the certificate is issued, then Live. A Problem says why, for example a record that points somewhere else. DNS changes can take a few minutes, sometimes a few hours, and are checked on their own too.
4. 4Pick it on a linkOpen a link: under Where it shows, Address on picks your domain; the row and Copy then show the address on it. If the record is ever removed, the domain serves nothing and you get one email, while the Aha Studio address keeps working.

One CNAME record does it. First find where your DNS is managed: it is whoever your domain's nameservers point at, which is not always where you bought the domain. A domain bought at GoDaddy but using Cloudflare nameservers gets its record in Cloudflare. Your registrar shows the nameservers on the domain's page. In every panel, the name (or host) is only the part before your domain: for go.yoursite.com type go, not the whole address, or many panels turn it into go.yoursite.com.yoursite.com. The target (or value, or points to) is the one Copy copies on your domain card.

1. 1Open the DNS records Sign in at dash.cloudflare.com, pick your domain, then DNS > Records.
2. 2Press Add record Type CNAME, Name go (your subdomain), Target the value you copied.
3. 3Turn the proxy off Click the orange cloud so it turns grey and reads DNS only. A proxied record stops the certificate from being issued and the domain stays at Verifying.
4. 4Press Save Then press Check on your domain card in Link Manager.

Some workers can write a managed link into what they make instead of the raw destination. The row appears in your list, and you replace it here later.