How to track referrals?

[LIN]

I'm trying to find a script that would track the clicks to my website on links that I provide w/ a special code. I.e. http://www.mywebsite.com/...unique code...

I'm not an expert, but I have a partner who has some experience with PHP, hence the post here.

Basically, the idea is that I give out URLs with codes to different people, for them to post. Then when the URLs are clicked on, I know immediately who referred that click to me.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? Does anyone write scripts such as these (albeit cheaply!).

Thanks,
- L.

[Pig]

Very easy.

Create a database with 2 tables. One has your referring people, each with his own unique code (though you could just use their id/primary key as the code), plus any other information you want (name, business name, business website, etc)

Second table has 4 fields: id, date, url, referrer

Referrer's add their code to the urls as variable in the query string:
http://www.domain.com/page.php?ref=4d99ad3
where 4d99ad3 is their special code.

Then you can either include as a seperate page, or include as a function, something along the lines below:

check to see if $GET['ref'] is set. If it is, then insert a row into the database with the current unix timestamp, their code, and the url ($SERVER['PHP_SELF']).