How They Do It: Are You New Here?

I thought, lets post about how "they" do it. This time, let me explain how some WordPress plugins seem to be able to recognize whether you are new or not, and then display a message accordingly. Usually, the message appears for the first 1-3 times someone visits, and says "subscribe"! And after that, it won't appear anymore.

We are not going to do it WP plugin style, but rather for a product site, which has some great products. They want to display a message for the first 3 times, notifying the user that they have great products, with a link to their products page.

Let's get things rolling!

<?php
$say = "Welcome. We think you are new here, so you might not have seen our great <a href = 'productspage.php'>products</a>";
if(isset($_COOKIE['newguest']) && (int) $_COOKIE['newguest'] < 3)
{
$newval = (int) $_COOKIE['newguest'] + 1;
setcookie("newguest", "$newval", time()+60*60*24*365*10);
echo $say;
}elseif(!isset($_COOKIE['newguest'])){
setcookie("newguest", "1", time()+60*60*24*365*10);
echo $say;
}
?>

This is a snippet that you can add to your code easily. It will now disappear after three times, but just change the 3 into 2, and it will disappear after 2 times for example.

I hope you like it, and if you implement it somewhere, let us know!