Limiting page views

mindctrl

I need to limit the number of times a person can view a specific web page. Is there a way to do that in PHP? Possibly using cookies to count views on the page or something?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

drew010

cookies work however its very easy for a person to delete a cookie set by your domain, therefore they will be able to return again.
you might try to log their ip in a database in combination with a cookie and keep track of what pages they view and how many they view, and when they view a certain amount, you can display a default page or message.
of course its not so hard to change the ip either, on dialup all you have to do is sign off and then come back on.
the only foolproof way is to make the person register a username on your site and that way it doesnt matter what their ip is or what cookies they have, you can just track them by what they are logged in as.

mindctrl

Thanks for the reply. The page I'm trying to limit views on doesn't really need a lot of security. It's mainly being put in place to actually assist customers at finding the information they're seeking. So, basically after 3 views of this page, which is dynamic based on info contained in the URL after the pagename.php, it would redirect them to another page with additional information. If they felt the need, and actually possessed the knowledge, to delete their cookies it really wouldn't matter.

drew010

in that case the cookie idea should work fine. on every page load you can increment the value of the cookie and check what number it is and forward them as needed.

mindctrl

Thanks for the help drew. I just wanted to make sure it was a possibility before banging my head against the wall for nothing. I'm learning more about PHP daily... but I'm still too new.

Again, thanks for the help! If you know of any really good PHP sites that someone like me just can't live without, please feel free to share them. 🆒

drew010

as always the php manual is one of the ultimate resources, as the user comments on all the functions are very helpful and the manual gives examples for almost every function.

here is info on setting cookies: [man]setcookie[/man]

celibate54

if you have their user information stored into a database you could always use 'tickers' in a column to track which pages he/she has visited..

so if they see help.php once
it stores 1 in the helpVisited
then 2 for 2nd time
etc

then at the top of helpVisisted, just query to see and make sure the person viewing has only viewed <= max # of times

not sure if this is the most 'efficient' but that's what I would do since I try to avoid cookies all the time =)