Question

What I’m trying to do is a secret link for example website.com/?secret=yes when they visit this page i want to remove this variable from URL so I have the following:

<?php
if(isset($_GET['secret']) && $_GET['secret'] === 'yes') {
    header('Location: http://website.com');
    $secret="yes"; <--take note this is what I'm testing 
}
?>

The above code will redirect instantly so there is no variable in url and I tryed to make this variable myself with $secret=”yes”; to be able to use it with the following code:

<?php if( 'yes' === $secret ) : ?>
secret content here
 <?php endif; ?>

Is this possible? How can I make my code work? I do not want to use session because I want it to do this only once, or everytime they access via the secret link, if they access without it don’t show.

Answer 1

No, that won’t work. Variables do not persist through reloading pages. You can however use sessions or cookies to do this:

<?php
session_start();
if(isset($_GET['secret']) && $_GET['secret'] === 'yes') {
    $_SESSION['secret']="yes";
    header('Location: http://website.com');
    exit();
}
?>

<?php if( $_SESSION['secret']=='yes'){ 
unset($_SESSION['secret']); //unset so when the page reloads the secret data will be gone
?>
secret content here
 <?php } ?>