Tracking a user clicking an ad in Joomla

[Trek15]

TradeDoubler ads have this feature called EPI, Enchaned Publisher Integration, which is an optional way of adding more information to a click/purchase on a banner in a manner of keeping track of which user on your website that actually made the click/purchase. Considering it apparently doesn't need to be that complex, i would like to ask if anyone here would know what Joomla's version would be for the EPI code.

 

This is apparently how it works:

 

EPI requires one parameter, which you append to the TradeDoubler tracking URL.

EPI is the parameter, which distinguishes the visitor. The logic behind EPI supposes that

you know who the visitor is when he/she clicks on the tracker link. Normally you would

have some kind of script that inserts the EPI value, depending on the identity of the

visitor, into the tracker link.

 

The EPI parameter does not need to be registered, or created in the TradeDoubler

system prior to you appending the EPI parameter to a TradeDoubler tracking URL.

TradeDoubler tracking technology will automatically record any EPI parameter you

have appended to a tracking URL or banner, however avoid using spaces and

punctuation marks in the EPI code.

 

The simple solution is to make a small form of your tracker link. Because the

links look something like "http://clk.tradedoubler.com/click?p=XXXX&a=XXXX&g=XXXX"

you can also make a form containing all values in the link. These values are sent with

METHOD=GET to http://clk.tradedoubler.com. For example:

 

<form method="get" action="http://clk.tradedoubler.com">

<input type="hidden" name="p" value="XXXX">

<input type="hidden" name="a" value="XXXX">

<input type="hidden" name="g" value="XXXX">

</form>

 

If you for example let your visitors type in their e-mail address you can add this to the form:

<input type="text" name="epi">

 

A more interesting part is however this:

 

If you instead want to create an automatic system you can let the visitors log in on your site and let code add EPI values to each ad-link that way. By adding &epi=username for example.

 

This is obviously the Joomla-specific code that i'm looking for.

 

Here is a sample ad-link:

 

<a href=”http://clkuk.tradedoubler.com/click?p(702)a(407311)g(15036)
epi(myEpiCode)”>Click here for great offers</a>

The "myEpiCode" is obviously where the Joomla-specific code should go.

 

Anyone wanna give it a shot? I'd try your suggestions on my site to see if it gets sent properly to the reports in my TD account.

[Trek15]

I'll try this again.

 

How do you pull the username from the currently logged in user in Joomla 1.7? I believe this is called a "hook" among you coder folk.

 

Kind of embarassing that i have to ask this here since nobody can answer it even in the official Joomla forum. The devs for that software really need to slow down a bit and start finishing up on the documentation before they add even more to Joomla.