The link data model
Each link in GT Link Manager has the following fields.
Name — A display label used in the admin. Not visible to visitors. Required.
Slug — The URL-safe identifier that appears in the branded URL after the prefix (for standard mode), or the full path (for direct mode), or a regex pattern (for regex mode). Must be unique across all links regardless of mode. Required. Automatically generated from the name if left blank on creation (standard mode only).
Destination URL — The URL the visitor is redirected to. Required. Must be a valid URL. For regex links, you can include capture group references like $1, $2 in the URL for dynamic substitution.
Redirect Type — The HTTP status code for the redirect. Allowed values are 301, 302, and 307.
Link Mode — Determines how the link is matched against incoming requests. Three modes are available:
standard— Prefix-based matching atyoursite.com/prefix/slug. Default mode.direct— Prefix-free matching atyoursite.com/slug. The slug is the full path.regex— Pattern-based matching. The slug is a regular expression matched against the request path.
Direct and regex modes are only available when Advanced Redirects is enabled in Settings.
Regex Replacement — Only applicable to regex mode links. A preg_replace-style replacement string used to construct the target URL from the matched path. If set, this takes precedence over simple $1/$2 substitution in the destination URL. Example: if the pattern is old-blog/(.*) and the replacement is https://newsite.com/$1, a request to /old-blog/my-post redirects to https://newsite.com/my-post.
Priority — Only applicable to regex mode links. An integer that controls the order in which regex rules are evaluated. Lower numbers are checked first. Default is 10. When multiple regex patterns could match a request, the one with the lowest priority number wins.
Rel — Relationship attributes sent in the response Link header. You can enable any combination of nofollow, sponsored, and ugc. These do not appear in HTML — they are HTTP headers on the redirect response.
Noindex — When enabled, the redirect response includes an X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow header. Search engines that respect this header will not index the branded URL.
Category — An optional category assignment. One link belongs to zero or one category.
Tags — A comma-separated text field for free-form labels. Tags are stored as plain text on the link record.
Notes — A private textarea for internal notes. Not visible to visitors. Useful for storing affiliate program context, expiry dates, or other internal reference information.
Creating links
Go to GT Links → Add New. All required fields are marked. The slug field shows a live branded URL preview that updates as you type. If you clear the slug field after having manually set it, it reverts to auto-generating from the name.
When Advanced Redirects is enabled, a Link Mode selector appears with three radio buttons: Standard, Direct, and Regex. The form adapts based on the selected mode — standard mode shows the prefix-based URL preview, direct mode shows the full path preview without prefix, and regex mode reveals the regex replacement and priority fields.
For direct mode links, the slug should be the exact path you want to redirect from (without leading slash). For example, old-page would match yoursite.com/old-page. Reserved WordPress paths like wp-admin, wp-content, wp-includes, wp-login.php, wp-json, xmlrpc.php, feed, and comments are blocked to prevent breaking your site.
For regex mode links, the slug is a regular expression pattern (without delimiters). For example, products/(\d+) would match yoursite.com/products/123. The pattern is validated on save — if the regex is invalid, the link won’t be saved and you’ll see an error notice.
The Save & Add Another button saves the current link and immediately reloads the blank add form, useful for creating multiple links in a session.
Editing links
From GT Links → All Links, click the link name or the Edit row action to open the full edit form. All fields are available for editing. The slug can be changed at any time — just be aware that changing a slug invalidates any existing references to the old branded URL.
Quick Edit
Quick Edit is available without leaving the All Links screen. Hover over a link row to reveal the row actions, then click Quick Edit. An inline panel opens below the row showing the destination URL and redirect type fields. Make your changes and click Update. The row refreshes in place.
Quick Edit does not expose all fields. For full editing including link mode, rel attributes, noindex, category, tags, and notes, use the full edit form.
Soft delete and trash
GT Link Manager uses soft delete. When you click Trash in the row actions, the link is not permanently deleted — its trashed_at timestamp is set, and it moves to the Trash view. Trashed links do not resolve redirects.
From the Trash view, you can Restore a link (clears the trashed_at timestamp) or Delete Permanently to remove it from the database entirely.
Toggling active status
Each link has an is_active flag. You can toggle a link between active and inactive states without trashing it. Inactive links remain in the All Links list but do not resolve redirects. This is useful for temporarily disabling a redirect without losing the configuration.
Bulk actions
Select links using the checkboxes in the first column. The checkbox in the header row selects all visible links on the current page. With links selected, choose an action from the bulk action dropdown at the top or bottom of the list.
Delete — Permanently removes all selected links.
Set Redirect Type — Changes all selected links to 301, 302, or 307. Useful when you’ve imported links and need to standardize redirect codes.
Set Rel — Applies a rel attribute (nofollow, sponsored, or ugc) to all selected links.
Set Category — Assigns all selected links to a category. You can also move links between categories this way.
Searching links
The search box on the All Links screen searches across all three text fields: name, slug, and destination URL. So searching for amazon will find links named Amazon Associates, links with the slug amazon-aff, and links whose destination URL contains amazon.com.
Searches are case-insensitive.
Filtering links
The filter bar above the link list lets you narrow results by category, redirect type, rel attribute, and link mode. Filters are applied together — selecting a category and a redirect type shows only links matching both criteria.
The Link Mode filter dropdown lets you quickly see all standard, direct, or regex links separately.
To clear a filter, select the blank/default option in the dropdown and apply.
Sorting links
Click any column header to sort the list by that column. Clicking the same header again reverses the sort direction. The link mode column is sortable, making it easy to group links by their redirect type.