Nats Question
 

I keep hearing brief snippets of conversation regarding an option in nats to toggle between encrypeted & unencrypted link codes.
Can somebody please explain this to me?

Would love to but I don't know wtf you're talking about. :D

This is an unencoded link to sexymomsonline.com http://free.sexymomsonline.com/track...exyMomsOnline/

This is Nats default encoded link to the same site: http://free.sexymomsonline.com/track/MjkwOjI6Mw/

Using the Nats interface, most sponsors allow you to toggle between encoded and unencoded.

Within the affiliate admin theres a link in several places that allows you to switch the affiliate ID and options portion of URL's from encoded to unencoded.

examples:
http://www.sammysmack.com/track/NTc4OjU6NA/
http://www.sammysmack.com/track/578:Referral:WEBREF/

thanks guys!

Any thoughts on which is better to use?

I've been mostly using the unencoded option since that just seems more logical to me and some of the hosted stuff wants you unencoded user name.

Does anybody know if this is a plugin? I have a friend setting up nats for his program, and he cannot find anyplace to set up the option

As far as I know it's the default setup for the current version of NATS. It's not listed among the add-on modules on their web site.

We offer both options to our affiliates. One free hosted gallery site that is listing our galleries had to use the unencoded link code because of the way their software handled presenting the urls to participating webmasters.

And I think Chop at hfslinks.com is using our undencoded links to the hosted free sites.

I think some affiliates are more comfortable with the unencoded because it shows the user name they specified when they set up their account. I have done a lot of testing to make sure that those dificult to understand encoded ones work properly and they are all recording accurately.

Emma in the Ad Tools section there is a link Mode: Encoded [Switch] the affiliate can chose which they prefer to use. They can change it back and forth as they wish.