HouseOfRock

On my new site (to be unvieled next month) I am implementing a User System, which is a totally new coding experience for me. I am coding the whole thing in PHP/MySQL from scratch. One thing I would like to do in the future with it is to allow people to reffer new users and get credit for it. Does anyone have any suggestions as to the best way to track refferals of this sort? I would be interested in methods or ready made scripts that I could rework, but I'm not really interested in buying anything.


Thanks for your suggestions.

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Daniel Malone

There are many options. You could simply track clicks by the refferer and just credit the refferer if they have set up an account. The refferer can be easily faked, I could set up a PHP script that would get you traffic from CNN.com! It's easy! Another way would be the more widely-used method of just linking to a particular query (www.domain.com/?id=1234). The bad thing about this is it's not very SEO friendly.

You'll have to monitor click fraud very carefully if you're going to credit people for clicks.

I would probably go with the second option I mentioned, although do whatever you feel comfortable with.

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HouseOfRock

I'm not interested in clicks, just in actual sign-ups. And I won't be paying cash to the referrers, they get a site currency (like iPoints).

Thanks for the ideas though.

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