One of the many great new features in Thesis versions 1.7 and up is the ability to easily use 301 redirects throughout your website. Redirects allow you to make a specific link on your site point somewhere else. There are several benefits to using redirects but the two we’re going to be talking about in this tutorial are:

• Cleaner and Masked Affiliate Links
• More Efficient Link Management

Cleaner and Masked Affiliate Links

If you promote products on your site through Affiliate Marketing, you’ve probably noticed that the affiliate links can be pretty ugly. For example, if you’re promoting Thesis on your site, your affiliate link looks something like this:

http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=210935&u=402954&m=24570&urllink=&afftrack=

Using a 301 Redirect, the result can be a much cleaner looking link for your visitors and as an added bonus, your link is masked, so it is not a dead giveaway that the link is an affiliate link. It’s also muh easier to remember so you won’t have to copy paste the long cryptic link every time your want to use it. For example, your new Thesis affiliate link using the 301 Redirect feature, could be something like this:

http://www.yoursite.com/thesis

More Efficient Link Management

The other nice thing about using 301 Redirects for your affiliate links is that is gives you better management over your affiliate links. Every time you place a link to a product using your new redirect link, the page that creates the 301 redirect is the only page you’ll ever need to mange if you ever need to change that affiliate link. This comes in especially handy if the product you are promoting ever changes their affiliate program like DIYThemes recently did when they switched from an in-house program to the Share A Sale platform.

If you’re not using redirects, you’ll have to go through and manually change the old affiliate links to the new ones. If you’ve posted your affiliate links in multiple posts and pages or in your sidebars or footer, it can be a tedious process. However, if you’re using redirects, you’ll only need to edit the page where you setup your 301 Redirect with the new link.

All in all, the new 301 Redirect is a great new feature for anyone who uses affiliate marketing to monetize their site. DIYThemes has even put together a great video tutorial illustrating how to setup a 301 redirect on your Thesis site. Check it out below and I think you’ll see what all the excitements about!

Remember you can view the video in full screen mode using the toggle switch in video controls.

Several of my Thesis Skins have included an area in the header for adding banner ads, social media icons, and other content. Here’s a quick video tutorial on how you can add a header widget to your Thesis Themed site that will allow you to add content to your header directly from the widgets panel.

The code used in the video can be found below the video and can be copied and pasted into your custom_functions.php and custom.css files.

Code for your custom_functions.php file

/*Build Header Widget*/
register_sidebars(1,
    array(
        'name' => 'Header Widget',
        'before_widget' => '<li class="widget %2$s" id="%1$s">',
        'after_widget' => '</li>',
        'before_title' => '<h3>',
        'after_title' => '</h3>'
    )
);
function header_widget() { ?>
	<div id="header_widget_1" class="sidebar">
		<ul class="sidebar_list">
			<?php if (!function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('Header Widget') ){	?>
						<li class="widget"><h3><?php _e('Header Widget', 'thesis'); ?></h3>You can edit the content that appears here by visiting your Widgets panel and modifying the <em>current widgets</em> there.</li><?php } ?>
		</ul>
	</div>
<?php }
add_action('thesis_hook_header', 'header_widget', '1');

This code builds a 3rd widget titled HeaderAd to your widgets panel and ‘hooks’ it into the header. You’ll need to add the code below to your custom.css file to position the new widget properly.

Code for your custom.css file

.custom .sidebar ul.sidebar_list {position: relative;}
.custom #header_widget_1 ul.sidebar_list li.widget {position: absolute; display: block; top:0px; left:477px; width:468px; }

You’ll most likely need to adjust the left and top attributes to appropriately position the banner based on your column and width settings. In the tutorial, I used the page framework and the two column layout with a main column with of 600px and a sidebar column width of 300px.

I also used a 468×60 banner in the tutorial so if your using banners of different sizes or multiple social media icons, the width attribute may also need to be adjusted.

Hope you enjoy the tutorial and please feel free to leave a comment with any questions or feedback you may have!