Simple email tracking in PHP
Tracking Click-Throughs: The Email HTML
<a href="http://mydomain.com/landing.php?e=email@address.com">Click here</a> for more information!Tracking Click-Throughs: The PHP
// (inside "landing.php")
if(isset($_GET['e']))
{
//validate and record click-through here
}Tracking click-throughs was the easy part. All you do is attach a $_GET variable to the link and listen for that variable on the website. Simple!
Tracking Opens: The HTML
<div style="display: none;"><img src="http://mydomain.com/emails/record.php?e=email@address.com" alt="Tracker" /></div>Tracking Opens: The PHP
// (inside "record.php")
header('Content-Type: image/gif');
if(isset($_GET['e'])){
//validate and record click-through here
}
//push out image
if(ini_get('zlib.output_compression')) {
ini_set('zlib.output_compression', 'Off');
}
header('Pragma: public');
// required
header('Expires: 0');
// no cache
header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
header('Cache-Control: private',false);
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="blank.gif"');
header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
header('Content-Length: '.filesize('blank.gif'));
// provide file size
readfile('blank.gif');
// push it out
exit();This involves a bit more. You need to first tell the PHP file that it should be served as an image. Then, you read the $_GET variable value and record that the user had requested the file. Lastly, you push out the actual image.