AFL UTM Tracker Documentation

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HTTP and HTTPS Issue

Our AFL UTM Tracker plugin requires that your WordPress website is in the HTTPS mode, otherwise the UTM parameters will not be captured or reported.

What is the HTTPS mode?

HTTPS mode is when the browser visitor’s internet connection to your WordPress server is secured by a SSL certificate. This prevents man-in-the-middle attack to capture or modify your visitor’s private data.

Starting from the year 2010, website owners are taking security seriously. By 2015, almost all websites are already equipped with HTTPS mode.

HTTPS mode (secure):

https://www.example.com

Non-HTTPS mode (not secure):

http://www.example.com

Why have we made HTTPS mode mandatory?

  • Simply because our plugin involves with the visitor’s tracking data.
  • Web browsers does not pass the HTTP referrer data when the visitor navigates from the HTTP mode to the HTTPS mode. You will lose out on an important attribution signal.

Possible Issues

When you noticed that your UTM report is empty without any attribution data, it means one of the following:

  1. Your website is still supporting the non-secure mode (HTTP).
    Solution: Your web server should be configured to redirect all HTTP request to the HTTPS request (including all query parameters). Check with your web developer on how to best implement this.
  2. Your website is redirecting HTTP to HTTPS without the UTM parameters.
    Solution: Make sure that your web server is configured to also pass along the UTM parameters when the redirection happens.