HopWise – Link shortener, redirects & click tracking

Turn any long URL into a clean, branded short link and see exactly who clicks it.

HopWise lets you create pretty, memorable links on your own domain (e.g. yoursite.com/go/offer) that redirect visitors to any destination, while tracking every click straight from your WordPress dashboard. It’s built for affiliate marketers, bloggers and anyone who wants clean outbound links without hardcoding raw URLs everywhere.

Major Features

• Create short, branded links on your own domain
• Choose your redirect type per link: 301 (permanent), 302 or 307 (temporary)
• Track every click, with referrer and timestamp logged per link
• Export a link’s click history to CSV
• Optional link cloaking — show the destination in an iframe instead of redirecting
• Control rel attributes (nofollow, sponsored, noopener) on links inserted via shortcode or block
• Forward visitor URL parameters to the destination, with or without overriding existing ones
• Insert tracked links anywhere with the [hopwise] shortcode or the HopWise block
• Dashboard widget showing your top 10 links by clicks, plus 7/30-day totals
• Sortable, filterable admin list of all your links, searchable by destination URL too
• Customizable link prefix (defaults to /go/)
• A full Stats page with a clicks-per-day chart, top links, top referrers and device breakdown
• QR code for every link, generated locally and downloadable as a PNG
• Bulk actions: cloak/uncloak, change redirect type, or check for broken links across many at once
• An hourly broken-link check that flags destinations that stopped responding
• Bulk CSV import to create many links at once
• Mobile-specific destination URLs (device targeting)
• A/B test multiple destination URLs on one link, split by weight
• Link expiration: send visitors to a fallback URL after a chosen date
• Optional webhook on every click (site-wide default or per-link), for n8n/Zapier/Slack-style automations
• A REST API (/wp-json/hopwise/v1/) for managing links and reading stats programmatically
• Multisite-aware activation, with dedicated capabilities so link management doesn’t require full edit_posts access

How it Works

HopWise adds a “HopWise” menu to your WordPress admin. Create a new link, set its destination URL, pick a redirect type, and publish. WordPress handles the rest — the link’s permalink becomes your short link, ready to share or insert with [hopwise id="123"].

Contributions

Pull requests and issue reports are welcome.

External services

HopWise does not connect to any third-party service, and it does not send your data anywhere. It has no account, no API key and no phone-home. QR codes are drawn in your own browser, and the date picker is a library bundled inside the plugin. Nothing is loaded from a CDN and no image is sent to a QR service.

The plugin makes outbound HTTP requests in only two cases, both driven by URLs you enter yourself:

1. Broken-link checking. Once a day, and whenever you run the “Check for broken links” bulk action, HopWise requests the destination URL of your own links to see whether they still respond. It sends only the request itself (no personal data) and stores only whether the response was reachable, plus the time of the check. This contacts whichever site your link points to — it is not a service operated by us — so that site’s own terms and privacy policy apply.

2. Click webhook (optional, off by default). If, and only if, you enter a webhook URL in HopWise > Settings or on an individual link, HopWise sends a JSON POST to that address each time the link is clicked. The payload contains the link ID, title, permalink, resolved destination, the visitor’s referrer, whether the device was mobile or desktop, the click timestamp and the running click total. You choose the receiving endpoint (for example your own n8n, Zapier or Slack workflow), so that provider’s terms and privacy policy apply. Leaving the field blank disables this entirely.