Question

I have a landing page that I would like viewers to see when first arriving at //domain.com. Then, if they have been to the site before the browser would automatically skip the landing page and take them directly to //domain.com/main.html

What is the best approach to do this?

Answer 1

If I were you, I would actually re-direct if they haven’t seen the page the first time. It creates a more intuitive URL.

Either way, strictly speaking, you want to use setcookie the first time that the person visits the site, and then test to see if the value exists in $_COOKIE upon return. Realistically, you probably want:

1. Redirect if cookie not present
2. Link on landing page re-directs them to a page which sets the cookie.
3. Page which sets the cookie re-directs them to the actual main page.

Why do you want to set the value after the use clicks a link? Well, that way you can force them to actually look at the page before continuing, and I think that is more what you want.

Your redirect might look like:

if( !isset( $_COOKIE[ 'seen_landing_page' ] ) )
{
    header( 'Location: <other page>' );
    die();
}
// do whatever else here.

You can then have a simple pass-through page:

setcookie('seen_landing_page',TRUE);
header( 'Location: <your main page>' );