CODEWITHSUNDEEP
detection
user2846454
user2846454

Reputation: 33

Detecting where user has come from a specific website

I'm wanting to know if it's possible to detect which website a user has come from and serve to them different content based on which website they have just come from.

So if they've come from any other website on the internet and landed on my page, they will see my normal html and css page, but if they come from a specific website (this specific website would have also been developed by me so I have control over the code server-side and client-side) then I want them to see something slightly different.

It's a very small difference that I want them to see, and that's why I don't want to consider taking them to a different version of the website or a different page.

I'm also not sure if this solution will be placed on the page they coming from or the page that they arriving on?

Hope that's clear. Thanks!

Upvotes: 3

Views: 2995

Answers (3)

Brendan
Brendan

Reputation: 938

The Document's referrer property is what you're looking for if you want a client side solution:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Document/referrer

The value is an empty string if the user navigated to the page directly (not through a link, but, for example, by using a bookmark). Because this property returns only a string, it doesn't give you document object model (DOM) access to the referring page.

Upvotes: 0

Andrew Grothe
Andrew Grothe

Reputation: 2374

I would add a URL parameter like http://example.com?source=othersite. This way you can easily adjust the parameter and can use javascript to detect this and slightly alter your landing page.

Otherwise, you can use the HTTP referrer sent via the browser to detect where they came from, but you would need to tell us your back end technology to get an example of that, as it differs a bit.

In javascript, you can do something as easy as

if(window.location.href.indexOf('source=othersite') > 0)
{
  // alter DOM here
}

Or you can use a URL Parameter parser as suggested here: How to get the value from the GET parameters?

Upvotes: 0

user1886876
user1886876

Reputation:

What you want is the Referer: HTTP header. It will give the URL of the page which the user came from. Bear in mind that the Referer can easily be spoofed, so don't take it as a guarantee if security is an issue.

Browsers may disable the referer, though. Why not just use a URL parameter?

Upvotes: 0

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