Rename tracking pages and pixel pages

Starting with version 5.0, CPV Lab Pro (opens new window) introduced the option to use custom names for the tracking pages (base pages) and pixel pages.

• This is useful if you want to have nicer links instead of the regular tracking links and may also be helpful in order to avoid getting clicks blocked by AdBlocker tools.
• You will be able to add any name you want to the base.php, base2.php and base3.php tracking links in order to blend with your websites and hide the real page names from your visitors.

The following pages can be renamed:

Default page name	Description
base.php	The Campaign URL page, it is the page that you submit to the Traffic Source
base2.php	Tracking page that redirects from Landing Page to Offer page or from one Level to another in a Landing Page Sequence Campaign
base3.php	Tracking page that redirected to the Offer page in a Landing Page Sequence Campaign
adclick.php	Tracking Pixel and Postback URL page
adclickf.php	Tracking Pixel used in the iframe pixels
adclicks.php	Tracking Pixel used in the script pixels
adsub.php	Tracking Pixel for Subscribers / Leads
baseredirect.php	Page used for redirects with the Double Meta Refresh method
baseloopredirect.php	Page used for redirects with the Redirect Loop method

The preferred way of accomplishing this is by using rewrite rules in the .htaccess file placed in the root of you CPV Lab Pro instance.

• The process is pretty simple, but you need to have a little server knowledge in order to change the .htaccess file.

TIP

Note: In order to use rewriting with .htaccess your server must have the mod_rewrite module installed and enabled.

Steps:

1. Login to your server, either with an FTP client, either with the File Manager utility from cPanel.

• (optional) if using the File Manager utility from cPanel, you need to open the Settings window (link in the top-right corner) and select the option to ‘Show Hidden Files (dotfiles)’.

  

2. Locate the .htaccess file from the root of your CPV Lab Pro install. If the file doesn’t exist, then you should create it.
3. Edit this .htaccess file and define the rewrite rules that you want to use.
4. Save the modified .htaccess file
5. Define the new page names in CPV Lab Pro

How to define rewrite rules?

• For each page that you want to rename, define a rewrite rule with this format:

RewriteRule new-page-name.php old-page-name.php [L,QSA]

• Then write the generated rules in the .htaccess file.
  • Make sure that your .htaccess file includes the following line before any rewrite rule line: RewriteEngine on
• These new lines should be appended to the .htaccess file.
  • Don’t remove the lines that already existed in the .htaccess file because doing that may lead to errors in the application!

How to define the new page names in CPV Lab Pro?

• In your CPV Lab Pro instance, go to Settings->Configuration Editor Page
• Edit the Page Name Settings and enter the new page names in the corresponding fields.

Example:

• Let’s say that we want to rename the pages as follows:

Old Name	New Name
base.php	start-page.php
base2.php	more-details.php
adclick.php	notify.php
adclickf.php	check.php

• Then the .htaccess file will look like this:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule start-page.php base.php [L,QSA] 
RewriteRule more-details.php base2.php [L,QSA]
RewriteRule notify.php adclick.php [L,QSA]
RewriteRule check.php adclickf.php [L,QSA]

• And the values entered on the Configuration Editor Page should be like in the image below:

DANGER

Important!

This is the preferred method of changing page names because the real page names won’t be changed and so a future CPV Lab Pro upgrade will also upgrade the pages.

Additionally you can perform a physical rename of the pages instead of creating the rewrite rules in .htaccess, but on a future CPV Lab Pro upgrade you need to make sure that you will rename the pages again.