Setting a URL variable cookie

[Spinethetic]

Hello, I have a website that sells a set of digital ebooks. To help with the marketing I setup an affiliate program so other people can sell it and earn a commission.

The problem is that their affiliate link is http://mysite.com/?ref=[e-mail]

Thus part of the payment is made to whatever email is in variable "ref"

This presents a bit of an issue because the affiliates DO NOT want their PayPal address to be seen by the people they send to me site' When they send people to my site with their affiliate link, their PayPal email is clearly visable in the Location bar.

So my question specifically is, is how can the value of variable "ref" be put in a cookie and the entire variable disappear from the users location bar when they are sent to my site, and still be able to pass that variable onto the next page since the order button is like so:

<a href="order.php?aff=[e-mail]">Order</a>

Best Regards
~Ross Vaughn 🙂

[NogDog]

I don't think you can make it "disappear." What you can do is set up a database of affiliates with a unique identifier for each (e.g. an auto-incremented primary key), and use that value in the link. Then you would grab the paypal address from the DB for the submitted ID when needed to process a request.

[Spinethetic]

Well there is some way, because the affiliate program script I am using does exactly that, albiet the variable name is "e=" and the salespage order button is

<a href="index.php?action=order">Click here to order</a>

But I changed the pageflow around so that the front page is a landing/optin page and after supplying their name and email address, they are sent to "index.php?e=[e-mail]

The landing page isnt part of the affiliate program script itself, I dident program its PHP, I purchased it for $7, And it is supposed to be that INDEX.PHP is the salespage, however I messed with the .HTACCESS file so that SQUEEZE.PHP is is configured as the index file.

Best Regards
~Ross Vaughn 🙂