User referral tracker

[sybakaos]

Hi,

I have this idea, a hack that counts how many visitors a user has referred to a forum. The user is given an own private URL in which he adds the URL of a thread of the forum he's a member of. Example:

www.forum.com/hack.php?id=user1&url=www.forum.com/showthread.php?id=3255
www.forum.com/hack.php?id=user1&url=www.forum.com/showthread.php?id=3536
www.forum.com/hack.php?id=user1&url=www.forum.com/showthread.php?id=4212

www.forum.com/hack.php?id=user2&url=www.forum.com/showthread.php?id=6613
www.forum.com/hack.php?id=user2&url=www.forum.com/showthread.php?id=8655
www.forum.com/hack.php?id=user2&url=www.forum.com/showthread.php?id=3634

When someone from a newssite for example clicks such a link, that visitor is referred to the thread in the URL awarding 1 point to member whose referral link it is.

Users can post those links on various related websites and eventually a list appears showing who is the best in terms of sending traffic to the forum. This can be seen as a form of a competition, just like in a contest: "Who can send the most unique visitors to ForumX!" for example.

Possible additions could be:
1) make it a unique visitor counter instead of hit counter.
2) show websites the user has posted on (referrers).

I would have much use for such a hack!

Greets,
SybaKaos.