This chapter walks you through creating your first link and understanding the core workflow. By the end, you’ll have a working branded redirect URL and a mental model of how the plugin operates.
Creating your first link
Go to GT Links → Add New in the WordPress admin.
Link Name is the human-readable label for the link. It appears in your admin list and helps you identify the link later. Enter something descriptive, like HubSpot Free CRM or Kinsta Affiliate.
Destination URL is where visitors end up after clicking the link. Paste the full URL including https://. This can be any URL — an affiliate link, an internal page, an external tool, a landing page.
Slug is the last part of your branded URL. If you leave this blank, the plugin auto-generates a slug from the link name by converting it to lowercase and replacing spaces with hyphens. You can also type your own slug. Slugs must be URL-safe: lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens only.
As you type the slug, the Branded URL Preview field updates in real time to show you what the final URL will look like — something like https://yoursite.com/go/hubspot-free-crm.
Redirect Type controls the HTTP status code used for the redirect. Leave it at 301 for affiliate links and most outbound links. Use 302 if you’re directing to a seasonal promotion that you plan to change. 307 preserves the HTTP method on the redirect, which matters for non-GET requests.
The rest of the fields are optional for now. Click Save Link when ready.
The branded URL
After saving, find your new link in GT Links → All Links. In the URL column, you’ll see the branded redirect URL. Click the copy icon next to it to copy the URL to your clipboard.
Test the link by pasting it into a browser tab. You should be immediately redirected to the destination URL. If the redirect doesn’t work, see the Troubleshooting chapter — the most common cause is un-flushed rewrite rules.
The All Links screen
GT Links → All Links is your central management view. It behaves like other WordPress list tables — sortable columns, pagination, search, and bulk actions.
Search — the search box at the top right matches against link name, slug, and destination URL simultaneously.
Filters — above the list, you can filter by category, redirect type, and rel attribute. Filters stack, so you can combine them.
Sorting — click any column header to sort. Click again to reverse the sort direction.
Quick Edit — hover over any link row to see the row actions. Click Quick Edit to update the destination URL and redirect type inline without leaving the page.
Copy URL — the copy icon in each row copies the branded link to your clipboard.
Bulk actions — select multiple links using the checkboxes, then use the bulk action dropdown to delete them, change their redirect type, assign a rel attribute, or move them to a category.
Understanding the redirect flow
When a visitor hits one of your branded links, WordPress routes the request to GT Link Manager. The plugin reads the slug from the URL, looks it up in the database, reads the destination URL and redirect settings, and issues an HTTP redirect response.
The entire redirect happens in PHP with no page rendering. The visitor never sees a WordPress page. The redirect response includes cache-control headers that prevent browsers and proxies from caching the redirect, ensuring you can update the destination at any time and have the change take effect immediately.
Organizing links
If you plan to manage more than a handful of links, setting up categories before you create a lot of links will save you work later. Go to GT Links → Categories and create the categories that match your organizational needs — by type (affiliate, internal, social), by topic (tools, hosting, design), or whatever makes sense for your site.
When adding or editing a link, select a category from the dropdown. Categories support a parent/child hierarchy, so you can nest subcategories under parent categories if your organizational needs are complex.
Tags are also available. They’re a free-form comma-separated field on each link, useful for labeling links in ways that don’t fit the category hierarchy. Tags are stored as text and are searchable from the All Links screen.
Setting defaults
If most of your links will share certain attributes — for example, you always want nofollow and sponsored on affiliate links — configure these as defaults in GT Links → Settings. Default values apply to new links only. Existing links are not affected when you change defaults.