Who has a problem with the way that NATS codes are output?

[xxxjay]

Who has a problem with the way that NATS codes are output?

I am trying to collect some information. Who would like to send traffic a NATS program (sites like Rabbit’s Reviews is a good example), but because of the complex output of the NATS coding:

http://secure.18interracial.com/track/NTY2OjQ6NA/

I know, because the is no static variable to replace to credit an affiliate that these longer code strings become a problem, therefore NATS programs can’t be promoted via their services.

I know that there are a few different traffic sources that we have not been able to do business with, whom we would like to.

Do you or do you know somebody that has issues with this?

[dareutwo]

Me - lol
I reverted to hosting sites myself.
Not to mention Campaigns.

Looks like they have some work to do, all the while, they need to remember Legacy systems. (ie... old link codes)
Back to the blackboard, and get it right!

[Ramster]

I'm not sure I follow you.

[Greenguy]

Aren't the 1st 4 or 5 letters/numbers the same in each link code for a particular webmaster?

Like in your example:
NTY2

I've had to search for a few sponsors in my admin to pull or edit links that use NATS & that's the only way I could find them all.

To me, that's the stupidest fucking system every - almost like someone blindly hit a keyboard for the account info.

rfezd5fslsl

And why we're on it - doesn't NATS use CCBill? Why can't these fucking programs that change from CCBill to NATS keep the fucking old info? 4 programs in the last month I've had to fucking search & replace - I said "Fuck It" with the last one.

(sorry - a bit off topic & really has nothing to do with OC Cash - LOL)

[xxxjay]

Originally Posted by Greenguy

Aren't the 1st 4 or 5 letters/numbers the same in each link code for a particular webmaster?

Like in your example:
NTY2

I've had to search for a few sponsors in my admin to pull or edit links that use NATS & that's the only way I could find them all.

To me, that's the stupidest fucking system every - almost like someone blindly hit a keyboard for the account info.

rfezd5fslsl

And why we're on it - doesn't NATS use CCBill? Why can't these fucking programs that change from CCBill to NATS keep the fucking old info? 4 programs in the last month I've had to fucking search & replace - I said "Fuck It" with the last one.

(sorry - a bit off topic & really has nothing to do with OC Cash - LOL)

Yes, the way the code is output does leave something to be desired. We are trying to see if it would be worth our time to write a workaround for our affiliates to deal with this. So far the answer has been a resounding "yes".

For question #2: Programs switching from CCBill to NATS don't *have to* close their CCBill programs. Our old CCBill accout is still open and processing sales. To use NATS after switching to CCBill you just need to add in new CCBill subaccount for NATS and leave your old account open (there is a little more to it than that), so if you have buried CCBill links to OCCash -- they still work. We still run a decent bit of traffic in the old CCBill account.

If a program tells you they must close out CCBill -- it is beacsue they have been too lazy to look into the options, like we did.

[b1ng0]

Do you or do you know somebody that has issues with this?

You are not alone in this. There was a thread at another board where people from nats responded basically saying they planned on allowing un-encoded url's very soon.. sounds like they haven't gotten it done yet though .

1) The reason we encode the codes is because they are SE friendlier this way and do not open them up to direct tampering.
Like John said, we are looking into adding unencoded versions to the systems too.

....

BTW, also today, with our encoded codes, it is actually very easy for you to build codes for each reseller. Simply setup a reference code for each site in your system, and when someone comes to you and wants to use you for that particular site they just have to lookup the campaignid (which right now, I know is a bit of a pain to actually do) they want to use. Then you decode your reference, change the first number in the code (142:3:1 is the code in your example) and then simply reencode the result.

BTW, the code is simply base64 encoded and the (sometimes resulting) = at the end removed.

Its really not that hard to do.

...

We encoded them to make them cleaner and alpha-numeric only. Thats the one and only reason.

[Greenguy]

Originally Posted by xxxjay

If a program tells you they must close out CCBill -- it is beacsue they have been too lazy to look into the options, like we did.

Yeah - it seems that there'd be a way for me to get a new account, & just plug in my old CCBill info & life would be good

So you guys are looking into correcting NATS & putting out a 3rd set of link codes?

[xxxjay]

Originally Posted by Greenguy

Yeah - it seems that there'd be a way for me to get a new account, & just plug in my old CCBill info & life would be good

So you guys are looking into correcting NATS & putting out a 3rd set of link codes?

Comment #1: Yes, that is the way to handle it. There are some complexities about parsing the CCBill database, so there's more to it than just adding another account. You can switch to NATS and keep your CCBill program open at the same time - OCCash is proof of this. We allow you to promote through CCBill only now, for the stalwarts that just love CCBill.

Question #2: No, the link code we generated are more aimed at remote thumbs, rabbit's reviews, and adultreviews.net, but we could make them available to webmasters if they wanted them, but why the hell would you want to switch your codes?

LOL

[Chop Smith]

Jay, you might want to also look into having the 'work around' available for services like freehostedgalleries.com

[xxxjay]

Originally Posted by Chop Smith

Jay, you might want to also look into having the 'work around' available for services like freehostedgalleries.com

Yes, another good example.

[RawAlex]

I personally think this is something that NATS as a system needs to look into - they are obviously limiting the potential of their affiliates here - I am not sure why they would build a system that would have such an obvious "defect" in it, unless it also makes it harder to spam or something.

Alex

[Sammy4u-Brett]

Sorry guys but could you please elaborate more on why this link structure is bad? I'm not sure I follow what you guys are having problems with. Is it the way the links import into your scripts or something else here? Please be specific. Thanks:-)

[xxxjay]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

I personally think this is something that NATS as a system needs to look into - they are obviously limiting the potential of their affiliates here - I am not sure why they would build a system that would have such an obvious "defect" in it, unless it also makes it harder to spam or something.

Alex

We made a workaround - it wasn't that tough to do, really. Nats supposedly has one in the pipe.

Sammy - the problem is more with traffic sources that require a contant variable to easily be found and replaced. For individual webmasters it really doesn't matter that much.

[Chop Smith]

xxxjay has exceeded their stored private messages quota and can not accept further messages until they clear some space.

I think I might have the code thing figured out

[Sammy4u-Brett]

So then Link List owners shouldn't have a problem using them? What do you mean by traffic sources then? Sorry just trying to figure this out because we use NATS and Chop was the first to let us know he had a problem with our code structure.

[Useless]

I wish someone would clairfy how or why the link structure is limiting. I'm horribly confused. Maybe some examples of where or when it can't be used.

[Greenguy]

Can't use NATS on Chop's new project:
http://www.hfslinks.com/

[Chop Smith]

Originally Posted by Sammy4u-Brett

So then Link List owners shouldn't have a problem using them? What do you mean by traffic sources then? Sorry just trying to figure this out because we use NATS and Chop was the first to let us know he had a problem with our code structure.

Brett, there is not a problem with NAT's code structure and link lists will not incur any problems with linking to your sites. The LL owner must get your links directly from inside your webmater area.

The reason that I did not include yours, OC Cash and now Danza in the database for HFSlinks.com is because it is difficult to understand what the affiliate code is in the NATS structure. I certainly do not want to assist someone in not getting paid.

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

I wish someone would clairfy how or why the link structure is limiting. I'm horribly confused. Maybe some examples of where or when it can't be used.

As an example: If Sammy4u used ccbill my linking code would look something like this
http://sammy4u.com/tgp/new/freesites...dex.php?628344
With NAT it is like this
http://sammy4u.com/tgp/new/freesites...ats=NjU5OjM6MQ
Okay you sign up with HFS Links and start inserting your linking codes. When you come to Sammy and Brett's site, what will you enter? NjU5OjM6MQ, right? Well that would be wrong because the affiliate code is NjU5OjM6. The MQ is what I believe to be a site id. So I tell my script to replace %affcode%MQ and you enter the wrong affiliate ID, then the code I generate in HFS Links would be http://sammy4u.com/tgp/new/freesites...ndex.php?nats=NjU5OjM6MQMQ.
For about three months, I considered several options but never came up with a real way to prevent someone from entering the entire NAT code. Therefore, I chose the easy way out and included: "We are aware of two sponsors that offer hosted free sites and their coding of affiliate codes are is not compatible with our system. You can click on the links below to visit their sites." In no way was this an implication that something was wrong with the NAT's system. The reason that I emailed Sammy & Brett and Jay was because I feel like, as GG&J board members, that they are friends of mine and I wanted them to know that I had attempted to include them in HFS Links.

[Useless]

Oh. That's not good. Thanks Chop. Exactly the type of explanation I needed. I've luckily never had to look at it that way before.

[Sammy4u-Brett]

Thanks for the great explanation Chop, I understand completely now. I will forward your problem and possible fix you wrote to us to NATS this afternoon.

[Chop Smith]

Jay I don't mean to hijack your thread and I trust no one will consider me spamming here.

From the number of signups so far it looks like HFSLinks.com could be successful and I want to make the database as complete as possible. Therefore, I am considering doing a popup for sponsors using NATs. The final decision will be determined from what Brett finds out from NATs. Is this simple to understand? "Only enter the first eight characters of your NATs code. As an example if your NAT code is NjU5OjM6MQ, only enter NjU5OjM6. Do not include the last two characters of your NAT code."

[kaktusan]

Yeah and thats why i don't love nats, too!
Myself i am coder and when for the first time i encountered nats links, i noticed that the username string looks like base64 encoded, so when i needed to play around it with i decoded it, and saw some numbers, tellling me nothing famialiar, then i just left away...

ok, someone in here explained that this NjU5OjM6MQ is base64 encoded string. Okay, i decode it and get the result - 659:3:1 Now in order to change that with someone elses code i need to replace 659 with other affiliate number. Now can someone tell from where one affiliate to a sponsor with nats can get his numeric id, which seems to be his real one?

When you signup for the sponsor you choose your own username, when you get your linking codes, your username looks completely different, and at last but not least none of these is your real username, and finally you don't know from where to get your real numeric id Funny isn't, or consufing isn't it

Not blaming the nats staff, but for sure you people must make it easy for your endusers

So can someone finally explain how the easiest way we can change the webmaster id from a nats linking code?

[cd34]

you could have the person paste a nats link and do the decoding yourself.

[kaktusan]

Yeah and i just came with that idea: so i shall make them paste their example nats code, i decode, grab only the first numbers before the first ":" and then just put the extracted numbers in the code where i want to put the username, and encode.

Will this work for sure?

[Chop Smith]

Entirely to many fucking variables - payment type, consoles?, etc. in the code. May a bird of paradise fly up their noses.