php redirects & referring URL

[natalie]

hi guys, I have a question (who doesn't!) about php redirects. I used to use HTML redirects, but they were slow and bulky. So I switched the php ones, but now I have another issue. I need a simple redirect, but I want to hide the original url. For example:

 

www.blah.com - and then user will click a link (php redirect page www.blah.com/redirect.php) and go to www.sales.com

 

I need for my traffic to look like it's coming from www.blah.com/redirect.php. But what I'm getting is www.blah.com. With the html redirects it would just show the redirection page url. Is there something I can insert into the php redirect page to make it show THAT as the referring url?

 

Here's an example of my php direct page:

 

<?php

Header('Location: http://www.sales.com');

Exit;

?>

 

That's it. If you know what to add to that could you kinda spell it out. I'm a tad slow. =)

Thanks! ~Natalie~

[Crimpage]

I have no tested knowledge on this but this would be my theory as to why it's happening.

 

The referrer URL has to come from the client browser, otherwise how is my website going to send the new website its location? I think because PHP is processed before the page is displayed to the end user, and you are transferring them to another website before any HTML is actually sent to the browser, I would say that the last page the end user really actually sees really is the blah.com/ page. This may be why it is showing up like that.

 

Maybe a Javascript redirect might help. That way something can be displayed in the browser for 2 seconds on the redirect.php page before it bounces them over to the new website?

 

Hope that thought helps... somehow :|

 

Dave.

[natalie]

Is there anything I can add to the PHP code to make it recognized as a referring HTML? I mean without going back an .html redirect... keep it a .php?

[corbin]

If that header method keeps giving the wrong referrers you could do something like this:

 

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://sales.com/">
<!-- content is the time to wait.... weird name right? -->
<script language="javascript">
<!--
window.location = "http://sales.com/";
//-->
</script>

If your browser does not automatically redirect you, please click <a href="http://sales.com/">here</a>

[fou2enve]

i agree with corbin thats prob the only way to do it