hi people,

i am having real trouble finding a simple solution to track outgoing links - all i want to do is get a statistic of how many people clicked on certain adverts so i can send that statistic to the advertiser.

i can find plenty of people who offer complex programs with a wealth of information but not what i need, or people who offer a 'redirection' option but is there no simple hidden way i can do this in dreamweaver?

is the redirect option the only way? i understand people don't like this as they are weary of being redirected via somewhere else

any advice appreciated

Hi Giancarlo,

Instead redirect, you can use javascript to record the clicks on your outgoing links.

1. For example:
<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=1 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>&lt;a href="outside-site.com" onClick='somefunction(link_name)'&gt;Outsidelink&lt;/a&gt;
In somefunction() you need to a call an image , like:
&lt;img src="counter.php?link=link_name"&gt;
So you can count that way all users which click the link (if they have javascript enabled, of course), also their vbulletin_user_id you need to get it from session, in counter.php file.<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>
For more information check the following forum:
forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=55625

2. If you do not want to develop your own server-side page for link counting, you can use Google Analytics.
There is an article which explains how you can track down outgoing links with Google Analytics:
www.technicallyeasy.net/2008/04/how-to-track-outgoing-links-with-google.html

The drawback of this approach is that if the users are disabled the JavaScript on their browsers the link clicks will not be recorded.

Anyway, I hope this gives you another option for consideration.

Best regards,


Georgi Kralev

Homepage: gdkralev.googlepages.com