Tracking

Available in: Post Affiliate Pro , Post Affiliate Pro Ultimate , Post Affiliate Network

Post Affiliate Pro implements advanced types of tracking to create accurate tracking results.

Tracking methods are evaluated in the following order

• Browser cookie tracking – First-party and third-party cookies
• HTML5 cookie tracking – Local storage created and accessible by the web page
• IP address tracking – Information gathered through the computer’s IP address
• User Agent and IP address tracking – Track referrals by exact User Agent and IP address

Cookie tracking

A cookie is a small text file or data that a website stores on your computer. We distinguish between first-party cookies (which store information about the customer on the website the customer is browsing) and third-party cookies (also called tracking cookies).

As far as tracking is concerned, Post Affiliate Pro creates multiple cookies. The most important one is the PAPVisitorID, which stores the ID of the website’s visitor. In order to ensure this tracking ID isn’t lost, the browser creates 3 different records: a first-party cookie, a third-party cookie, and an HTML 5 local storage object.

Third-party cookies are incredibly important in affiliate marketing; thanks to them, you can tie conversions back to your affiliates. In order to compensate your affiliate fairly, using the data collected by 3rd party cookies is a necessity.

Tracking referrals by IP

This method is only used when the browser cookies can’t be found. Even though these events are rare, Post Affiliate Pro is prepared for them.

During the sale tracking process, we search for the last known click from the visitor’s IP. If we find it, then the affiliate and campaign ID from this click are used, and a sales commission can be created.

Extended tracking methods

Besides the standard tracking methods (IP tracking, browser cookies) and advanced tracking methods (Flash cookies), there are other ways to track your affiliates. Post Affiliate Pro has a number of extended tracking methods.

Impression tracking

Lot of customers find the report of impressions useful. Impression refers to an action of a potential customer seeing a banner without clicking on it. Post Affiliate Pro allows you to see these statistics for each banner/link.

Imagine you have an affiliate who has thousands of visits per day, but based on impression statistics you can see that just a few people really clicked your ad. With this information, you can find out why customers don‘t click. There can be various reasons, such as a wrongly placed banner on the website, irrelevant product promotion, or the banner not being interesting enough. You can easily use the customer potential from this website if you aim it correctly and turn traffic into sales. Impression tracking can help you with this.

Lifetime commissions

The most reliable way to track proper affiliates is to use this tracking method. When an affiliate refers a customer to your shop and the customer registers or purchases something, Post Affiliate Pro will tie this customer with the affiliate internally. Next time when the customer shops with you, they don’t even have to use the same computer; they can log in from a completely different country but the commission will still be tracked correctly. It is up to you what data will be used to tie affiliates with customers, like their email or a unique customer ID from the shop you use.

Action tracking

With action tracking, you can track essentially anything – if a video was seen and watched by a customer, if they clicked a special one-time offer, if they came from an email, or if somebody clicked a button for a free newsletter. You can even track all the steps the customer is taking on your website – clicking the introduction, ‘more info’ page, testimonials, then the order page, and finally, the thank you page. With action tracking, there are no limits.

Per product tracking

In case you have more campaigns with different commission levels, you need to use per-product tracking. This method enables you to track each product separately to avoid wrongly computed commissions for products that do not belong to a specific campaign. The easy-to-use setup gives you the option to specify if it is per product, or per category, or even per shop (in case you operate more shops).

Offline tracking (coupons)

Nowadays people use offline tracking more than they used to. There are hundreds of websites that offer discounts for food, vacations, and other products – and they use coupon codes. The offline tracking is based on coupons . Each affiliate has their own coupon(s) which customers can use. If such a coupon is used, Post Affiliate Pro will track the sale even if the coupon was used from printed media. Thanks to this, your affiliates can promote you in a local newspaper or distribute leaflets on the street.

S2S Tracking

S2S tracking is a conversion method of tracking where the tracking request is executed only on the server. This tracking method doesn’t use 3rd party cookies or HTML 5 local storage, and as such can’t be blocked.

The server to server tracking method is secure, has excellent fraud prevention, and is one of the most accurate tracking methods due to not being affected by users clearing their caches (deleting cookies).

Pixel tracking

Pixel tracking is often used simultaneously with cookies to track users’ activity and collect data. This tracking method is most often implemented when javascript tracking is not available. As far as cookies are concerned, pixel tracking is less efficient. HTML 5 local storage cannot be used at the same time as 1st and 3rd-party cookies. It is necessary to use either third-party or first-party cookies. In order to track affiliates accurately, you’ll need to set up third-party cookies on your Post Affiliate Pro domain. It is important to keep in mind that some browsers block their creation.

In addition to affiliate links, ads, sales conversions, website visits, and any other type of web activity, tracking pixels also provide information about affiliate links and ad impressions.

Pixel tracking is easy to set up and can help optimize your campaigns and make your websites more user friendly. With the information gathered from pixel tracking, you can better decide how to optimize your expenses in order to focus on places that bring in the most traffic and sales.

Plugins

Plugins are an excellent way to expand the functionality of a program by adding new features and customizations. Post Affiliate Pro uses two main types of plugins – Integration plugins (which work closely with e-shops, mailing lists, etc.) and Customization plugins (these offer customizations to your setup, such as customization to your merchant panel, an option to hide IP due to GDPR laws, and many more).

Plugins bring many benefits to your Post Affiliate Pro account. From WordPress integrations to online payment processing integrations, there are plenty to choose from.

We recommend you use only the plugins you need and know how they work, as they may change how the software behaves.

Track your affiliates even better with Post Affiliate Pro .

Advanced Tracking Functionality

Post Affiliate Pro provides sophisticated tracking capabilities under the hood to ensure accurate affiliate attribution. This section covers the technical details of the tracking system.

Visitor Affiliate Recognition Methods

When a sale or action is tracked, Post Affiliate Pro uses multiple methods to identify which affiliate should receive credit for the conversion. These recognition methods are evaluated in a specific order:

Recognition from Visitor ID (Cookie-based)

This is the primary recognition method. When a visitor clicks an affiliate link, a unique Visitor ID is stored. During sale tracking, the system looks up this Visitor ID to find the associated affiliate. The tracking method is set as “cookie tracking” when this method succeeds.

The Visitor ID is stored in three places for redundancy:

• First-party HTTP cookie (PAPVisitorId)
• Third-party HTTP cookie (when applicable)
• HTML5 Local Storage (PAPVisitorId)

Recognition from IP Address

When cookie-based recognition fails, the system can fall back to IP address tracking. This method:

• Searches for the most recent visitor affiliate record matching the visitor’s IP address
• Validates that the click occurred within the configured IP validity period
• Supports configurable validity periods in days, hours, or minutes
• Sets the tracking method as “IP address” when used

This fallback is controlled by the “Track by IP” setting in the tracking configuration.

Recognition from User Agent and IP Address

For even more precise fallback tracking, Post Affiliate Pro can combine the visitor’s User Agent (browser fingerprint) with their IP address. This method:

• Requires both the User Agent ID and IP address to match a previous click
• Provides more accurate attribution than IP-only tracking in shared IP environments
• Sets the tracking method as “User Agent and IP” when used

This feature is controlled by the “Track by User Agent + IP” setting.

JavaScript Tracking Details

Post Affiliate Pro uses a sophisticated JavaScript tracking library that handles click tracking, sale tracking, and cookie management on the client side.

Core JavaScript Components

The tracking library consists of several JavaScript modules:

PostAffTracker - The main tracking object that:

• Manages the integration with your website
• Handles click and sale tracking requests
• Manages cookie storage and retrieval
• Provides methods for writing affiliate data to form fields

PostAffCookieManager - Handles cookie operations:

• Stores visitor IDs in HTTP cookies with a 1-year expiration
• Uses HTML5 Local Storage as a backup storage mechanism
• Supports custom cookie domains for cross-subdomain tracking
• Handles secure cookie settings (SameSite attributes)

PostAffAction - Represents a sale or action to be tracked:

• Supports setting total cost, order ID, product ID
• Allows custom commission overrides
• Supports multiple data fields (data1-data5)
• Handles coupon code tracking

Tracking Methods Configuration

You can selectively enable or disable specific tracking storage methods:

• Type ‘1’ - First-party HTTP cookies
• Type ‘3’ - Third-party HTTP cookies
• Type ‘S’ - HTML5 Local Storage
• Type ‘C’ - Disable all client-side storage (for S2S tracking)

Integration Code

The tracking script is loaded from one of these endpoints:

• trackjs.php - Main JavaScript tracking library
• salejs.php - Alias for trackjs.php (legacy support)
• clickjs.php - Alias for trackjs.php (legacy support)

The track.php script processes all tracking requests, including:

• Click tracking (when URL contains affiliate parameters)
• Sale/action tracking (when sale data is submitted)
• Visitor cookie management

Advanced Tracking Scripts

track.php - The Main Tracking Endpoint

This is the primary server-side tracking script that processes all tracking requests. It handles:

Request Processing:

• Captures visitor URL and referrer information
• Records visitor IP address (with optional anonymization for GDPR compliance)
• Stores User Agent information for browser fingerprinting
• Processes sale data when submitted

Fraud Protection:

• Detects and blocks requests from known bots and crawlers
• Can optionally block clicks originating from iframes (configurable fraud protection setting)

Processing Modes:

1. Offline Processing - Visits are stored in a queue and processed by a background cron job. This is the recommended mode for high-traffic sites as it:

   • Reduces page load impact
   • Allows batch processing of visits
   • Supports Redis-based visit storage for improved performance

2. Online Processing - Visits are processed immediately during the request. This mode is used when:

   • Offline processing is disabled
   • The cron job is not running
   • Immediate sale processing is required

Single Visitor Processing: When online sale processing is enabled with offline visit processing, the system can process all pending visits for a specific visitor immediately when a sale is tracked. This ensures the sale is attributed correctly even when general visit processing is deferred.

Linking Methods

Post Affiliate Pro supports multiple linking methods for affiliate URLs:

1. Redirect (R) - Traditional redirect through click.php
2. URL Parameters (P) - Affiliate ID added as URL parameter
3. Mod Rewrite (S) - SEO-friendly URLs with affiliate ID in path
4. Direct Link (D) - Direct destination URL tracking
5. Anchor (A) - Affiliate ID added as URL anchor/hash

Click Stats Optimizer Plugin

The Click Stats Optimizer plugin is designed to optimize database performance for high-volume affiliate programs. It reduces the size of click statistics tables by selectively omitting certain data fields.

What It Does

When enabled, this plugin clears the Data1 and Data2 fields from click impression records before they are saved to the statistics tables. This results in:

• Smaller click statistics tables
• Faster database queries on click data
• Reduced storage requirements

Trade-offs

While this plugin improves performance, it has limitations:

• You cannot filter clicks by Data1 or Data2 in click statistics reports
• The Data1/Data2 values are still available in the main Clicks list grid
• Individual click records retain the data, only aggregated statistics lose it

When to Use

This plugin is recommended for:

• High-traffic affiliate programs with millions of clicks
• Situations where Data1/Data2 filtering in statistics is not required
• Database optimization when storage or query performance is a concern

Visitor Affiliate Cache

For optimal performance, Post Affiliate Pro implements a visitor affiliate caching system that:

• Caches visitor affiliate records during request processing
• Reduces database queries by storing recently accessed records in memory
• Automatically persists changes when tracking is complete
• Supports caching by visitor ID, IP address, and User Agent + IP combinations

This caching mechanism significantly improves tracking performance, especially for sales that require multiple affiliate lookups (such as split commission scenarios).