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Tracking Referer

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Tracking Referer
Hi-

Does anyone know if it's possible to record the refering URL of the user who enters my web site and then if the user submits a form to me from my site, the email that is sent from the form would also include the original refering URL that brought the user to my site? So the email sent to me through the form would look something like:

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Email from: John Smith

Message: Message contents would be here.

Referred to Site from: http://www.yahoo.com

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Is this possible with PERL or PHP and MySQL? I use Links SQL, but I don't know much about sessions and how they work.

Basically, I would like to keep track of those visitors who come to my site and then actually contact me through an email form, so that I know which referring sites are producing results for me.

If anyone can let me know if this is even possible, and point me in the right direction that would be great...

-Frank
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Re: [FrankM] Tracking Referer In reply to
Hi,

You should be able to use something like:
($ENV{"HTTP_REFERER"}) in Links

Klaus

http://www.ameinfo.com
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Re: [klauslovgreen] Tracking Referer In reply to
Thanks very much Klaus. I wonder, though, how to retain the original referring site information. In other words, if the person comes to my site from another site, and then browses through several pages on my site, and then goes to the email form, I still want to retain the referer that originally led them into my site (as opposed to the page on my site that refers them to the email form). Is that possible somehow?

--Frank
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Re: [FrankM] Tracking Referer In reply to
Not sure Frank... perhaps you should consider writing it to a cookie when people first enter your site?

Klaus

http://www.ameinfo.com
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Re: [klauslovgreen] Tracking Referer In reply to
Thanks Klaus. Yes, I think it would need to be done in this way somehow. I'll check with a programmer to see how they can do it. I appreciate your help.

--Frank
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Re: [FrankM] Tracking Referer In reply to
You could also use a tracking script, called through a 1x1 transparent gif, which tracks progress through the site by IP address and a timestamp. If you also kept track of referring information, it would be fairly easy to see who came from where and what they ended up doing.

There are some decent free scripts available that do this, or it would be relatively easy to write a new one.

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