Varnish blocking

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by

dk

I found this topic discussed once, where itthinx offered a solution – it doesn`t work for me. W use Cloudways for hosting. They use Varnish. We are able to exclude specific cookie from being blocked – we did that, even with the help of Cloudways engineers by excluding wp_affiliates cookie, but it doesn`t work. The Affiliates Pro seems to work only when Varnish is turned off.

Any other suggestions, besides excluding the wp_affiliates cookie to make this work?

Thank you.

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3 responses to “Varnish blocking”

  1. George Avatar
    George

    Hey Dusan,

    You’re welcome and many thanks for sharing your findings with us.
    Since this works when excluding the cookie in Uppercase then it is either a specialised implementation of Varnish cache being used by Cloudways or the cache engine itself has be modified. Either case we need to further check this and also update our documentation accordingly.

    The plugin functionality depends on the browser-stored cookie. If the user chooses to block tracking on his browser and cookies are rejected then there will be an intervention in the normal flow which the plugin cannot affect, since the browser lives locally on each user’s computer system or other similar device.

    Kind regards,
    George

  2. George Avatar
    George

    Hi Dusan,

    Welcome to our support forum for itthinx plugins, we appreciate your choice of buying Affiliates Pro for managing your affiliate marketing program.

    Assuming that you followed the guide provided in our documentation regarding Varnish cache
    – http://docs.itthinx.com/document/affiliates-pro/troubleshooting/varnish-cache/

    it should be enough if the cookie is not blocked at the moment, unless something has changed regarding how Varnish cache is blocking cookies. When the cookie is properly stored on the browser, then the plugin is capable of handling a potential referral.

    It would also be useful if you enable WP debugging in case there is an issue that remains unnoticed at the moment. The most important factor though is whether the cookie is stored when Varnish cache is enabled and the affiliate cookie is excluded, which you can check on your browser if you visit an affiliate link and then open the developer tools, go to Application tab and check the cookies for your website in the left column under Storage section.

    Can you please provide a valid affiliate link to your site?

    Kind regards,
    George

    1. Dusan Kuzma Avatar
      Dusan Kuzma

      Thank you, George, for a swift response. I think I made it work. Below are a few observations.
      1. Cloudways Varnish cookie exclusion. Excluding cookie “wp_affiliates” didn`t work and cookie didn`t get excluded. However, excluding cookie “WP_AFFILIATES” worked and cookie was excluded in all browsers. Very odd, but worked.

      2. The referrals tracking in chrome and explorer works without issues. In opera and firefox, all referrals get attributed to “direct”. I guess this has something to do with how opera and firefox blocks trackers? I turned off trackers blocking in opera, but no help. I guess there is nothing that can be done with referrals tracking in opera and firefox. Is this a correct assumption?

      Thank you.

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