Counting hits on a link??

[Anon]

If I have a link on a page, that either goes to an article on my site, or to an external article in a new window..

How can I then count how many peoples that press this link and goes to the given location? I probably have to insert into a field in my db, but.. not completely sure how to do it.. because, if it is to an external article, the user shouldn't be directed to another location on my site.. only if it goes to and article on my site...

Hope someone understand what I mean, and might be able to explain this to me..?

[jcleary]

You need to write a hit counting script, called count.php for example, and redired all links to there. Heres how it might work

redirect your pages, so previously your link was

href="read_article?article_id=1"

now reads

href="count.php?url=read_article?article_id=1"

Then the count.php does some sql to insert or update an entry with the count + 1. and finally does this

header("Location: $url");

The important thinkg to remember is that you have to urlencode() the target url, so actually you links would look more like this

href="count.php?url=<?=urlencode("read_article?article_id=1")?>"

I'm not sure if you'll need to urldecode it afterwards before you can redirect, but you'll soon see when you give it a go.