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Traffic modes — TDS vs static-redirects

Pick the right CTA routing strategy for your traffic plumbing: TDS service or per-prefix _redirects.

The two CTA-routing strategies

Every brand site has dozens of CTAs pointing at the casino's affiliate URL — "Sign up", "Get bonus", "Play now", review-card buttons. How those CTAs route on the deployed bundle is a per-site decision with real SEO + analytics implications. Site Generator supports two modes.

TDS mode

CTAs in the rendered HTML look like /go/<casino-slug>?utm_source=signin — relative URLs on your own host. A traffic-distribution service (your own or a third-party like 301.st) sits in front of /go/* and handles the actual redirect to the affiliate URL, with full UTM + click logging.

Pros:

  • One central place to swap affiliate URLs, rotate offers, A/B test landings.
  • Click-stream analytics in your TDS, not the affiliate's reporting.
  • Survives affiliate-program changes — you swap the rule, not the bundle.
  • Single CF Zone Rule per attached domain covers every CTA on the entire site.

Setup:

  • Spin up a TDS (301.st has a free tier; or roll your own Worker).
  • In the cabinet's Traffic panel, pick TDS mode.
  • Enter the TDS endpoint pattern, e.g. https://my-tds.example.com/r/{{slug}}?utm={{utm_source}}.
  • The platform provisions a CF Zone URL Rewrite rule per attached domain so/go/* resolves at the edge before Pages' static routing parses the request.

Static-redirects mode

Each CTA in the HTML expands to the affiliate URL directly via a per-prefix _redirects file. No TDS needed — but no central rotation either.

Pros:

  • Zero external infrastructure. The bundle is a self-contained unit.
  • Slightly faster — one fewer hop at click time.
  • Works on Netlify, plain nginx, or any static host with _redirects semantics (or equivalent).

Cons:

  • Changing the affiliate URL means a full re-deploy.
  • No click analytics — you're reliant on the affiliate's tracking.
  • UTM parameters are static (baked into _redirects at build time).

Which to pick

  • Running multiple brands? TDS — one swap rotates URLs across every site you deploy.
  • Single-brand affiliate? Static-redirects is fine; the operational simplicity wins.
  • Want click analytics? TDS.
  • No appetite for extra infra? Static-redirects.
Can I switch modes later?

Yes — change the setting in the cabinet, redeploy. Existing URLs stay valid because/go/<slug> resolves either way; only the routing rule changes.

What's the free-tier TDS recommendation?

301.st has a usable free tier for low-volume tenants. The cabinet's traffic hint links to it directly.

Does TDS mode need Cloudflare DNS?

Yes — the Zone Rule provisioning needs the domain to be on Cloudflare. If your DNS is elsewhere, you'd need to set up the URL rewrite in your own infrastructure. Static-redirects mode has no such requirement.