Issue using URL Param Passthrough and External Link Targeting simulataneously

Support
1

Hey team, thanks for the awesome tools.

There are 2 requirements for the landing page I’m building:

  1. Carry through URL params for tracking
  2. Open external links in a new tab

To achieve this, I was trying to use both External Link Targeting and Query Param Passthrough on the site.

I notice when I only use one or the other, the tool works as expected. The param passthrough works fine when I remove config.targetExternal = true, but no longer opens in a new tab. When I remove all config.passthrough settings, the new tab works but of course with no param passthrough.

Are they not meant to be compatible? Is there some issue with my config?
I am not sure if I can share the site without the owners permission but I’ll see… Thanks for any insight!

This is my site code:

<!-- Sygnal Attributes 5 | Needed for URL PARAM PASSTHROUGH --> 
<script defer src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/sygnaltech/webflow-util@5.4.25/dist/nocode/webflow-url.js"></script>

<!-- Sygnal Attributes 5 | Url External Link open in new tab | Config -->
<script>
window.sa5 = window.sa5 || [];
 window.sa5.push(['urlConfig', 
    (config) => {
      config.targetExternal = true;
      config.passthrough = true;
      config.passthroughConfig = {
         ignorePatterns: ["ignore", /_page$/],
         overwriteExisting: false,
         internalOnly: false
       };
      return config;
    }]); 
</script>
2

Hi R,

That’s interesting, I’d need to see the published site in order to determine anything, but I’ve made a guess that might work.

First, the Url querystring passthrough feature is a very outdated feature that was intended as a super crude referral-tracking feature. It’s not something we’d ever use on client sites, since there are more important considerations on referral tracking, like a 30 day attribution window.

Both of those Url features should work fine- the querystring passthough forms URLs directly rather than mucking with the HTML. It now checks for a target on the clicked link and makes an effort to recreate “open in a new tab” from JavaScript.

Keep in mind, that’s a rather browser-specific thing, so test it well to see if it meets your needs.

You’ll need to update to 5.4.29 to try to new feature.