10-24-2000, 04:35 PM
Been here long enough for it to be time to make something :) I am learning php as we speak and this is my way to try and tie something together.
The hack is all about members that register. It is about collecting data about where your registrations come from and also about increasing registrations. I think that getting a registration on your board is very useful it servers a number of purposes:
1) You get their email and can send a newsletter. Instant ability to get people to come back
2) Once registered they are more likely to post whereas before they might not bother to go regiter to post
3) Having 15 users online looks better than 7 users and 7 guests
4) More registered members may give you more sway in advertising agreements.
5) It is the best method to track your advertising (leads based)
So what is my hack?
-----------------
Is has two parts:
1) General registration tracking
2) Affiliate Program/Promotion tracking.
For part 1: The information i want to know is:
For each visitor
-- Where they came from
-- How long it took them to register
-- Which entry page did they come into
-- How many times have they visited the site before registering
-- Possibly the amount of forum pages they viewed before registering
-- Possibly the previous page they were on before registering
-- if registered after visiting from search engine, the words used to search
General Statastics:
Based on refer settings:
-- Amount of clicks from that page
-- Amount of clicks from that domain (ie geocities/user1/blad.html as opposed to geocities.com
-- Level 1 registrations/level2/level3/level4 (explain in a sec)
-- Search engine terms
In.php
In.php will be used like http://www.domain.com/in.php?refer=goto&term=freeforum
-- This is an advertising check and will be tracked as well but independantly so you can see exactly how your various advertising effors are going. Other options like /in.php?refer=valueclick&banner=6 are possible. The idea is of course not just to track the click, you can get that from your web stats but to track the amount of registrations that banner 6 at valuclick causes.
----
Explain multi level thing:
Don't want to just know about registrations but more than that.
Say 100 posts, 250 posts, 1000 posts etc. These will be tracked as well.
When someone registers they get a unieque id number. This will be in the stats so when they hit 1000 posts a flag in the stats database will notify this. You can then see not only which advertiser gives you the most clicks, registrations but also good registrations. Making sense?
------
Affiliate Program
Want to pay people to send you registrations/give banner impressions/run a contest etc. Can do that:
http://www.domain.com/refer.php?id=546&url=4&banner=3
explain
id=affiliate id
url=the url to redirect after hitting refer.php
banner=the method to send traffic. Again be tracked for effectivness.
Will then have a stats area for each affiliate. They will get variable payouts.
Per Click (maybe, not sure if i can code the necessary click protection for this and i do not want it myself but it could be added)
Per Registration
Bonus 1 (when user hits 25 posts)
Bonus 2 (when user hits x posts)
etc, all customizable of course.
Refer.php will also have a section in the general stats of course.
So there are really 2 maybe 3 parts to the program:
You will have 2 admin panels:
1)
-This is for the general stats, kind websites that link to you, search engines that link to you, hits you get from emails etc blah de blah.
- For in.php for customized links. You can give these to partners to track them better or for advertising campaigns.
- Refer.php for paying individual affiliates.
2) Refer Manager
- For managing affilates, sending emails, checking they are valid (ip logging etc blah de blah), paying them etc.
=========
Well that is about it. I have a 5 page plan here of what i am going to try and do and have a structure (sort of!) of how it is going to work. Still trying to work a few things out like where to store certain bits of data, in a cookie, in the stats table or in the user profile. In the end it will require a bit of both i think but i would prefere not to add anything to the user profile if possible (easier to add). Other things like cookies i nead to learn about more, i want to be able to use this across multiple domains, for example i use http://www.talkstargate.com as a registration page for my forums which are more general. Need to work out how to get cookies to work across these.
I am new to php but it seems a nice project. I will not actually start per se until the next release in case there is some more statistics thing avaliable but i doubt there will be an affiliate part so will work on that.
I am posting this really to get any ideas things i shoudl think about, suggestions on registration stats that you want. It makes it a lot easier to know exactly where i am heading from the start.
Hope you like the idea.
oh p.s. the plan is that you can easily use part 1 ie the general tracking of leads and stuff without the affiliate program bit. That is more like a plugin of sorts.
Chris
The hack is all about members that register. It is about collecting data about where your registrations come from and also about increasing registrations. I think that getting a registration on your board is very useful it servers a number of purposes:
1) You get their email and can send a newsletter. Instant ability to get people to come back
2) Once registered they are more likely to post whereas before they might not bother to go regiter to post
3) Having 15 users online looks better than 7 users and 7 guests
4) More registered members may give you more sway in advertising agreements.
5) It is the best method to track your advertising (leads based)
So what is my hack?
-----------------
Is has two parts:
1) General registration tracking
2) Affiliate Program/Promotion tracking.
For part 1: The information i want to know is:
For each visitor
-- Where they came from
-- How long it took them to register
-- Which entry page did they come into
-- How many times have they visited the site before registering
-- Possibly the amount of forum pages they viewed before registering
-- Possibly the previous page they were on before registering
-- if registered after visiting from search engine, the words used to search
General Statastics:
Based on refer settings:
-- Amount of clicks from that page
-- Amount of clicks from that domain (ie geocities/user1/blad.html as opposed to geocities.com
-- Level 1 registrations/level2/level3/level4 (explain in a sec)
-- Search engine terms
In.php
In.php will be used like http://www.domain.com/in.php?refer=goto&term=freeforum
-- This is an advertising check and will be tracked as well but independantly so you can see exactly how your various advertising effors are going. Other options like /in.php?refer=valueclick&banner=6 are possible. The idea is of course not just to track the click, you can get that from your web stats but to track the amount of registrations that banner 6 at valuclick causes.
----
Explain multi level thing:
Don't want to just know about registrations but more than that.
Say 100 posts, 250 posts, 1000 posts etc. These will be tracked as well.
When someone registers they get a unieque id number. This will be in the stats so when they hit 1000 posts a flag in the stats database will notify this. You can then see not only which advertiser gives you the most clicks, registrations but also good registrations. Making sense?
------
Affiliate Program
Want to pay people to send you registrations/give banner impressions/run a contest etc. Can do that:
http://www.domain.com/refer.php?id=546&url=4&banner=3
explain
id=affiliate id
url=the url to redirect after hitting refer.php
banner=the method to send traffic. Again be tracked for effectivness.
Will then have a stats area for each affiliate. They will get variable payouts.
Per Click (maybe, not sure if i can code the necessary click protection for this and i do not want it myself but it could be added)
Per Registration
Bonus 1 (when user hits 25 posts)
Bonus 2 (when user hits x posts)
etc, all customizable of course.
Refer.php will also have a section in the general stats of course.
So there are really 2 maybe 3 parts to the program:
You will have 2 admin panels:
1)
-This is for the general stats, kind websites that link to you, search engines that link to you, hits you get from emails etc blah de blah.
- For in.php for customized links. You can give these to partners to track them better or for advertising campaigns.
- Refer.php for paying individual affiliates.
2) Refer Manager
- For managing affilates, sending emails, checking they are valid (ip logging etc blah de blah), paying them etc.
=========
Well that is about it. I have a 5 page plan here of what i am going to try and do and have a structure (sort of!) of how it is going to work. Still trying to work a few things out like where to store certain bits of data, in a cookie, in the stats table or in the user profile. In the end it will require a bit of both i think but i would prefere not to add anything to the user profile if possible (easier to add). Other things like cookies i nead to learn about more, i want to be able to use this across multiple domains, for example i use http://www.talkstargate.com as a registration page for my forums which are more general. Need to work out how to get cookies to work across these.
I am new to php but it seems a nice project. I will not actually start per se until the next release in case there is some more statistics thing avaliable but i doubt there will be an affiliate part so will work on that.
I am posting this really to get any ideas things i shoudl think about, suggestions on registration stats that you want. It makes it a lot easier to know exactly where i am heading from the start.
Hope you like the idea.
oh p.s. the plan is that you can easily use part 1 ie the general tracking of leads and stuff without the affiliate program bit. That is more like a plugin of sorts.
Chris