It is important to verify that your install and setup of wpCloaker is working. This set of instructions will work for both the Wordpress and non-Wordpress Scripts.


Start with Best Practices


A common issue we see with setups is that people new to cloaking think too much :) They come up with cloaking and traffic scenarios that don't necessarily represent reality or reflect 15+ years in cloaking paid and organic traffic.


Start with the simplest settings in our Cloaking Scenarios guide


  • Set the detection method to "IP List" -- which really just means "use the cloaking servers"
  • Set the delivery method to redirect
  • Set a default landing page to something like http://huffpo.com or http://msn.com (NOT Google)
  • Make sure that "Do not cloak proxy traffic" (under Filters) is NOT CHECKED


Test Basic Cloaking


With the basic setup in place you are likely good for 99% of the common cloaking scenarios professionals use. The only exception would be to not use the default landing page but to use custom landing page rules. This is something you can do later. For now, test the site.


In your browser, navigate to page in the normal site. If your normal site is http://normalsite.com then it could be your homepage or any interior page like http://normalsite.com/diabetes-cure.php. With the default settings in place you should redirect to HuffPo or whatever the default landing page is.


If the redirect did not happen, there is a problem. Open a support ticket at https://wpcloaker.freshdesk.com or look for these common issues:

- Using a caching plugin with Wordpress

- Using a caching reverse proxy like Cloudflare or Varnish or an NGINX frontend
- Problem with the install - most likely not setting the permissions on the database file to '666' in the non-Wordpress script

- Not following directions and "tweaking" the install or setup in some way and missing something


Pretend to be a Spider


OK, you are successfully cloak visitor traffic. Now pretend to be a spider:


1. Get the IP address of the machine your browser is on. This is easiest done using https://whatismyip.com or a related program. You want your PUBLIC IPV4 ADDRESS


2. Go to the Super Ninja Options in your wpCloaker control panel and scroll to the "Custom Spider List" Add your IP address to that list (which is most likely empty) and save settings.


3. In your browser, visit a page in your normal site. Again it could be your homepage (http://normalsite.com) or an interior page (http://normalsite.com/diabetes-cure) etc.


The page should be loaded and displayed. No redirect. No funny business. That's because you are pretending to be a spider and spiders, bots, reviewers, and partners are always shown the normal page.


If everything went well REMOVE your IP address from the Custom Spider List and save settings. You are done!


If you were redirected instead, then there is a problem. This is usually caused by some form of caching happening at the web server or with a reverse proxy like Cloudflare. If you don't know anything about this or can't find how to turn this off open a ticket at https://wpcloaker.freshdesk.com.


Summary

That's it. These simple 3 steps will let you test your setup. Again, open a ticket at https://wpcloaker.freshdesk.com if you have any questions.