View Online & Redirect Links

[User]

First: The plugin is great!

Second: The currently only thing I find less professional is the view online and redirect links, as they’re exposing the usage and location of WordPress (folders and files).

Besides the problem of exposing WordPress folders (sometimes named in one specific language) and files, it would also look nicer and more professional if the redirect and view online etc. links were somehow based on the defined newsletter page (in the respective language, if more languages are used).

Examples:

domain.xy/en/newsletter/view/idxyz
domain.xy/de/newsletter/redirect/linkidxyz

Hope you find my idea useful, and that this is somehow technically possibble!

[Michael]

Hello,

we do not have such a feature at the moment, anyway, our links follows WordPress logic.

Michael

[User]

Well, that’s why I made the input 😉 😉 😉

A logical and friendly answer would have been something like:

“Thanks for the feedback, but I don’t like your idea!”

Hope this helps.

[Michael]

Hey, I didn’t mean I don’t like your idea, and sorry if you felt like I was being unfriendly, that was not the case!

If WordPress itself isn’t configured to obfuscate default folder structure, it means that they are discoverable anyways by bots and automatic scans. So that wouldn’t resolve the issue at its core. If we’re talking about a more professional look, yeah, you’re right, however it’s not simple as it may look. We’ll talk about this in our next internal meeting.

We really do thank you for your precious feedback.

Michael

[User]

Thanks for your friendly and thoughtful response. It makes me view the plugin and it’s team more positively again!

As mentioned, I’d find the use of “pretty” urls much more professional (and maybe also more secure).

I’m running quite huge sites with many plugins, and most public plugins don’t expose WordPress folder structures or the use of WordPress at all.

Wordpress security plugins mostly even have an option to hide the use of WordPress as website “generator” in the html code.

I’m also convinced that this change would make the appearance of your great plugin even more professional.

Thanks again, and looking forward to any improvements!

[User]

Yeah I’d like to second the idea of some sort of way to “pretty” up links as well. I just sent my first test newsletter and was surprised to see wp-admin in the url path when clicking any view online links.

I did find a forum post here for an unrelated issue that mentioned switching the action links setting to Standard. I know there’s potential issues with keeping it like that, but I prefer it just being a random looking string of characters to the viewer.

Is there maybe a way to hook that link to use the designated newsletter page instead? Like how the manage subscription and unsubscribe links do?

Or (I haven’t dug too deeply into the documentation yet, so forgive me if it’s mentioned there) with it linking to a archived version of the newsletter on our websites? Something that ends up looking like “maindomain\newsletter-archive\query parameters for that specific newsletter”.

[User]

Oh, that’s a good idea with the “Standard” tracking and action links, thanks! I wonder why the support didn’t mention it, but I’ll give it a try! For other users: it can be found in settings > general > advanced. Documentation can be found here: https://www.thenewsletterplugin.com/documentation/installation/newsletter-configuration/#tracking

And easy way to try if those “Standard” links work seems to be this: go to subscribers > click on a subscriber > on the advanced tab you’ll find links, e.g. to the profile url of this user. This way you can see how those links look like and if they work on your site (despite caching or the like). As many searches use such parameters (domain.xy?search=searchterm), I think caching should be configured in a way those links work, anyway!

[User]

No problem! And just for reference, here’s the forum post I found before: https://www.thenewsletterplugin.com/forums/topic/wrong-url

Stefano mentioned there that the “Standard” setting could cause issues from caching and (if I’m understanding correctly) delivery networks like Cloudflare, AWS, etc. So you might run into problems if your site or application is run through one of those? If that’s the case, I totally get recommending users to do the “Alternate” setting instead. I just wish it didn’t result in displaying the wp-admin directory or at the very least obscured it in some way.

[Author]

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