Programmers or people who have converted to NATS

[RyanLanane]

Here is my problem. I have an old affiliate system running off the base domain that is tracking sales I want to leave in place for the affiliates currently sending traffic through that program - assuring they have no downtime or lost sales.

I however feel it is essential that a new click through program is installed which has much better stats - I took a look at NATS and it seems like it would work well and provide webmasters with all the proper stats they need to promote the program effectively. So we will be installing NATS (hopefully) very soon.

The problem is if I install NATS in the base directory of the site being promotes (as the other program is) then all the people who come through links on the old system would not have their sales tracked as when something is purchased it would be with the nats join links not the old programs.

The first thought that came to mind was a very simple fix - installing the NATS program to run through to a subdirectory or a subdomain... i.e.

http://nats.domainname.com or http://www.domainname.com/nats

I think the subdomain would obviously appear much more professional if I had to go this route, but I would prefer avoiding if at all possible. Is there anyone here who went through a similar transition ? Anyone have any other suggestions that could be implemented?

I also thought about the possibility of redirecting traffic from the old link codes to go an account on the nats system which we would generate ourself with the same pay to info as the old account but this could be confusing for some webmasters and that is the last thing that is needed right now.

If anyone has any ideas, post away ...

Thanks,
Ryan

[*KK*]

I sent a link to the NATS guys, they should be able to help you out.

[RyanLanane]

Thanks K.K. I think we are just going to go with the sub domain route... :)

[nathan]

RyanLanane,

in your case, a sub domain is probably the best idea. If you were using a program like MPA right now and wanted to switch to NATS we could easily import all the info from your old MPA system into NATS and thus you could disable MPA totally.

In your case, because its your own system, it will be difficult for us to import everything, making it always nessacary to keep your old stats up for rebills and such.

One suggestion I do have though, you could move the OLD system to a sub domain, and setup a redirect for the old linking codes so they go to the old system, and thus have NATS under the full domain name.

[RyanLanane]

"One suggestion I do have though, you could move the OLD system to a sub domain, and setup a redirect for the old linking codes so they go to the old system, and thus have NATS under the full domain name."

Well he is going to have me handling everything including the installation of NATS to track properly (which can't be that tough by the documentation I read under his other NATS program). But I wouldn't know where to start writing code to redirect the old program's link codes to the subdomain. So we are pry best going that route :)

Of course I could always go read a programming book etc.. LOL But i think he wants to get all this stuff out of the way quickly and let me get to the marketing aspect of my job :)

[sarettah]

It shouldn't be all that difficult to migrate the data from your old system to the Nats system if the Nats people cooperated and you got a good solid database guy on your side... :okthumb: