Question

I am trying to do an introduction page for a website. The trick is, i would only like the user to be redirected here on the first visit. E.g. if he has no session yet. (Although I am not familiar what else to use.) I have been told about .htaccess could do the trick. I use the wordpress engine.

Intro page: http://www.example.com/?page_id=5 (First visitors should be redirected here.)
Index page under: http://www.example.com/ (Should not be changed for the engine’s mechanisms. In fact this is a custom page too http://www.example.com/?page_id=1, but was selected to be main page in the wordpress options.)

Can you help me? Can you show me specific htaccess code?

Thanks,
Sziro

Answer 1

Can you edit your php files? php handles sessions more flexibly than .htaccess.

Basically something simple to put at the top of your header.php (before anything else gets executed).

<?php
    $redirect_url = home_url('/?page_id=5');
    if ( !isset($_SESSION['blablabla']) ) {
        $_SESSION['blablabla'] = "blablabla";
        wp_redirect($redirect_url);
    }
?>

This way whenever any page is accessed (since wordpress includes the header in requested pages), php checks if the session (specifically $_SESSION[‘blablabla’]) has been set, if not then redirect to the home page.