Useful referral tracking for PHP websites

[Plume_Tray]

For those using PHP & Apache you can use this code to track all user clicks from your website through to your respective referral link. With Freebiejeebies it shows only signed up referrals but what if you wanted to see all potential referrals i.e those that didn't sign up too, to enable you to see total traffic going from website to referral link and work out sign ups vs total referral traffic.

Pre-req: you need to be using "register/index.php" in place of all your href referral links. In this "register/index.php" file you need the following in the HEAD section:

<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="0; url=http://insert-your-referral-link-here">

This Pre-req was found in this thread.

The code:

Step 1: in the register/index.php, you need to put the following code inside the HEAD section and immediately before the above META tag:

<?php
$UserIP = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$File = "ref/ref_".date('Ymd_His')."_".$UserIP.".out";
$Handle = fopen($File, 'w');
$Data = "";
fwrite($Handle, $Data);
fclose($Handle);
?>

Step 2: Create the following directory: htdocs/register/ref

Thats it. So, when a user clicks on the "register/index.php" link on your website, it will create a blank file in the "htdocs/register/ref" directory on your server before sending the user to your referral site:

register/ref/ref_20120210_222620_94.168.113.109.out

This will give you a unique file for each referral click showing date, time, and the users IP address.

Hopefully, this might provide someone useful data.

Word of caution, make sure you have some sort of housekeeping in place if your site generates alot of traffic as the ref directory could become quite cumbersome.

Enjoy!

[mrplow]

also make the /ref folder writeable or it won't work

[mrplow]

sorry I forgot to thank you for the nice idea

[Plume_Tray]

Thanks mrplow - and good spot btw.

Re writeable folders - for anyone without SSH access or chmod access or less savvy at linux/unix, your FTP software can do this for you. I'm using FTP Surfer at the moment which automatically makes the folder writeable upon creation, it will also allow manual tweeks.