Laravel Referral Rewriter Tag Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Affiliate/referral monetization strategy. The package centralizes how outbound referral tags are rewritten on links, which means partner attribution lives in config/referral-rewriter-tag.php instead of hard-coded URLs scattered across Blade templates and content. That turns "change the referral tag for the Instant Gaming campaign" from an engineering ticket into a config change — a direct lever on revenue attribution and campaign reporting.
• Per-campaign attribution (new in v1.0.6). The added optional instantgaming.subtag key lets marketing append a subtag to Instant Gaming links without a deploy. This supports decisions like: which placements/channels get distinct subtags, whether to A/B affiliate placements, and how granular outbound-link reporting needs to be.
• Build vs. buy for link rewriting. The alternative is a custom middleware/helper plus a config file — roughly a day of work, but ongoing maintenance of edge cases (existing query strings, fragments, redirects, excluded domains). This package is a candidate to avoid that bespoke code, subject to the bus-factor caveat below.
• Platform upgrade sequencing. v1.0.6 pins the maintenance baseline to Laravel 12 via Testbench 10 and requires PHP 8.2+ for dev/CI. Adoption is therefore coupled to your Laravel 12 upgrade roadmap — a useful forcing function or a blocker, depending on where you are.
• Roadmap input for monetized surfaces. If you run deal/coupon/comparison pages, a merchant-agnostic referral rewriter is infrastructure you will keep needing; whether to extend it beyond Instant Gaming (further config blocks, more merchants) is a roadmap question this release makes cheaper to answer.

When to Consider This Package

Adopt when:

• You monetize outbound links and need consistent, configurable referral/subtag attribution rather than hand-edited URLs.
• You are on, or migrating to, Laravel 12 and PHP 8.2+ — the new baseline targets Testbench 10 and the CI toolchain is Pest 3 / Larastan 3 / PHPStan 2 / Rector 2.
• Your needs are simple and single-merchant-ish: rewrite outbound links to a known partner and stamp a configurable tag/subtag.
• You want a small surface area you could reasonably vendor or fork if upstream goes quiet.

Look elsewhere when:

• You need server-side click tracking, conversion postbacks, or affiliate-network API integration — this is a link rewriter, not an affiliate platform.
• You need multi-tenant or per-user campaign management, dynamic commission logic, or a reporting UI.
• You are below PHP 8.2 / Laravel 12 and cannot upgrade; pin v1.0.5 or wait, and verify the runtime constraint (the notes say "local development and CI", so confirm what the package itself actually enforces at install time).
• You require a commercial SLA or vendor support. This reads as a small-team/single-maintainer package with a modest release cadence — assess bus factor and pin versions.
• You rely on the repository's GitHub workflows as a template. The standalone phpstan.yml was removed; static analysis now runs inside run-tests.yml. If you forked those workflows, port the change.

Upgrade notes for v1.0.6: maintenance-only, no public API breakage. composer update, merge the new optional instantgaming.subtag key into your published config, and bump local/CI PHP to 8.2+.

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

For executives: This is a small, focused package that keeps our outbound affiliate links correctly tagged, so partner revenue is credited to us rather than lost to untagged links. The v1.0.6 release is a maintenance release — no breaking changes — and its most useful addition is a configurable Instant Gaming subtag, which lets marketing run distinct tracked campaigns without engineering work. It also brings the project onto the Laravel 12 / PHP 8.2 baseline, so it won't become an upgrade liability. Risk is low and contained: it is a link-rewriting utility, not a system of record, and easily replaced. Recommendation: proceed on the Laravel 12 timeline, keep it config-driven, and monitor upstream activity given the small maintainer base.

For engineering: v1.0.6 is a stabilization release. Runtime behavior is unchanged; the only functional delta is an optional instantgaming.subtag config key with fallback defaults now covered by tests. Dev/CI requirements move to PHP 8.2+, with the toolchain aligned to Testbench 10, Pest 3, Larastan 3, PHPStan 2, Rector 2, and Collision 8. The fragile multi-OS/Code Climate setup was replaced by a single pull_request gate (Composer validation, tests, static analysis), a real package boot smoke test was added, and Dependabot now covers Composer with tightened auto-merge for non-major bumps. Upgrade path: composer update, publish/merge the config key, and note that standalone phpstan.yml is gone — static analysis lives in run-tests.yml if you mirrored those workflows. Small, auditable codebase; low integration risk.