Hi All,

I'm a newbie to this forum so please forgive me if I'm posting this in the wrong place, or doing anything I shouldn't.

I have some skills with PHP but I've never built anything like I'm about to describe. I'm hoping you people can help me clean up my concept and perhaps suggest where I might find some existing code.

The idea is to create a method that allows me to pass traffic through a page, collect data and immediately redirect it to a final location. The final location people will see a referer URL. If they go to the referer URL (my spoof page) they do not redirect. Instead, they will see content and a matching link. In essenses, they will think they are looking at the original traffic source.

Here's how I plan to do this:

1. My traffic arrives on PAGE1. Page 1 will capture information from the querystring and store it in a database. Page 1 will drop a cookie (or a session variable) on the visitor. Page 1 will dynamically build a new url with new data in the querystring and redirect to Page 2.

2. Page 2 will check to see if a cookie (or session var) is on the visitor. If it sees a cookie, it will delete the cookie and redirect the visitor to a URL that was stored in the querystring (built on Page 1). If it does not see a cookie, it will display a spoof page. The content on the spoof page will include a link to the URL - so anyone visiting this page without a cookie will think the visitor clicked on a link from this page.

Note - At the final landing page, the referrer variable must show the URL for PAGE 2.

Note - At the final landing page, if the user clicks the back button, they must skip over PAGE 1 and PAGE 2 and return to the original link they clicked on.

I know how to do most of this. But I'd like to know:

1. Is there a better way to do this? Is there a better alternative than cookies or session vars, in case the user doesn't accept cookies?

2. I'm sure I'm not the first guy to do something like this. I would prefer finding a working PHP script instead of writing it from scratch. Does anyone know where I could some or all of this code?

Many Thanks,
MrShadow

Saving the user's ip to a database would be better than using cookies/session vars. That's all I can help you with.