Eric, that's an awesome answer, and I thank you for it. It sounds like I made you a bunch of work, which I never intended, and for which I apologize.
I was going to give you a slightly-smug "I took this link from your September gallery blast" but then I was struck by a horrible sinking feeling. In fact, for complicated reasons relating to a tech deficit in my workspace -- I have tons of old computers and no new zippy ones -- I've divided up my workflow between adjacent machines on my desk. The email stayed on my oldest most sluggish machine because migrating it is a large pain and it mostly works OK if don't also have 700 browser windows open on the same box. And that means that I sometimes have to manually retype a URL to get it from my email box to my web development work screen. You know what that means: when I went back just now and checked, the September blast links were correct.
So, yes, sorry, this was a PEBKAC moment. I must have dropped the string "_link=http://www.alsangels.com" from the parameter when I was looking back and forth, and since the gallery itself loaded just fine, I took that as "proof" that I'd gotten the complicated URL transcribed correctly on the first try. And it was several tasks later when I noticed the odd tracking behavior, so I never connected the problem with my silently-borked link transcription.
I have updated the blog post where I used this bad link with the correct one, and now the click-through works as intended.
Again my apologies for putting you to extra work. At least it sounds like I may have helped you learn a useful detail for your vexingly-complicated job of supporting all the old links, which so many programs don't focus on after a merger of the complexity you guys went through. I tell you it really is appreciated that you guys are on this so thoroughly, and gives a very solid impression of the ALSCash and the MetArtMoney programs both.
I also very much appreciate the expository material on link tracking and cookie setting; despite more than a decade as a CCBill affiliate of many programs, I am still frequently confused about how tracking works on the back end, which in turn might make me unduly suspicious when I see behavior I don't understand. Your explanation helped me learn a bit more about the why and the how of it all, so thanks again.
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