We're having a very difficult time figuring out where our actual customers (note that we did not say actual visitors) are coming from. Yes we're well aware of log analyzers etc. The problem we have us that our visitors jump from page to page and then go to our order form and it's really hard to track them like that.

We spoke to Matt Wright (the guy who created formmail) and he told us that we needed a script that would set a cookie on the user's browser with their referring host on our main page, and then read that in on the order form to see what page they originally came from.

If any of you have a script like this or any suggestion I'd love to hear from you. I'm definitely willing to pay someone to develop this script.

Successful, there is no need to pay for this as it would be so simple, let us know what language you use as in php asp and I'm sure someone if not me could whip something up for you.

Why not simply have a menu or text field on your order form that gives the customer a chance to tell you where they came from? Nothing like getting it straight from the horses mouth... so to speak. ;)

Best Regards,
Matt Lightner
mlightner@site5.com

pretty clever matt ;-)

Put this at the top of every page on your site:

<?php

If ( !isset($referrer) {

SetCookie("referrer", $HTTP_REFERRER, 0, $DOCUMENT_ROOT, $HTTP_Host, 0);

}
?>

Then add a hidden input field on your order form where the value="<?php echo "$referrer"; ?>" Like this

<input type="hidden" name="referrer" value="<?php echo "$referrer"; ?>" >

Of course your order form will have to have a .php extension and so will every page that you post that setcookie code into. Or you could use .htaccess to have apache parse .htm or .html files as php.

Why not grep for their IP address? Unless they're behind an anonymizer or coming from AOL (AOL uses a cluster of proxies) that will give you a complete list of all the pages they visited... and at the top will be the first request, showing where they came from.

Originally posted by Marty
Put this at the top of every page on your site:

<?php

If ( !isset($referrer) {

SetCookie("referrer", $HTTP_REFERRER, 0, $DOCUMENT_ROOT, $HTTP_Host, 0);

?>

Then add a hidden input field on your order form where the value="<?php echo "$referrer"; ?>" Like this

<input type="hidden" name="referrer" value="<?php echo "$referrer"; ?>" >

Of course your order form will have to have a .php extension and so will every page that you post that setcookie code into. Or you could use .htaccess to have apache parse .htm or .html files as php.

Is there a way for us to set this up so that the results are posted to a local database and viewed online broken down into the the top X referreres. Would you be willing to write that ?

Originally posted by madmatty
Successful, there is no need to pay for this as it would be so simple, let us know what language you use as in php asp and I'm sure someone if not me could whip something up for you.
Our entire site is written in PHP3.

Originally posted by successful


Is there a way for us to set this up so that the results are posted to a local database and viewed online broken down into the the top X referreres. Would you be willing to write that ?

Absolutely, email me at mghoskins@tlcwe.com

Marty hasn't gotten back to me so if any of you are interested.....

Alabanza now allows hosts to customize the default order confirmation page. The page is not written in php so I'm not really sure how we'd set up a tracking system like that. If any of you are willing to write a script with an admin gui I'd be willing to pay you for your time..... just email me at alex@successfulhosting.com .