Knowledge Base

Use Track Proxy to avoid tracking redirects

It can be useful to have tracking links register in Fortifi but without doing a redirect on to your site as happens with standard tracking.

In order to do this you can set up a Track Proxy which will allow you to have campaign links going straight to your site, but forwarding on to Fortifi silently.


Step1: Install Track-Proxy
 

Run track-proxy image in a docker container, please check with your cloud provider on how best to do this. Track-Proxy image is publicly available on docker hub at https://hub.docker.com/r/fortifi/trackproxy. It is recommended to always use the latest version.

Track Proxy runs on port 8191, but you can map this to a different external port that suits your needs. In this guide we will assume that host port is the same as the container port

 

Once you have Track Proxy running, then you need to setup an nginx proxy to forward requests to Track-Proxy based on the default path prefix which is /_f_/. 
 

Step 2: Configure Nginx

 

Add the following to your nginx configuration for your web server

location /_f_/ {
           proxy_set_header Host $host;
           proxy_pass https://TRACK_PROXY_HOST:8191;
}

Replace TRACK_PROXY_HOST with the host or IP address of where your instance of track proxy is running. Also change the port, if you have mapped your docker container to a different host port.

Reload the nginx service for your changes to take effect.


Step 3: Modify Tracking URLs

 

You should then change your tracking urls to look like this:

https://brand.domain/_f_/#CAMP#/click/#SID1/#SID2# 

Notice the path prefix in the new url. This will transparently forward your request to https://url.brand.domain/campid/click/sid1/sid2 and inject all necessary cookies without any visible redirects.