I have two separate websites and each has a highly active forum section and gallery section. I have problems because my members bookmark the forums page and/or the gallery page and seldom, if ever, return to the home page.

I need a method of making the users visit the home page at lease once a week.

I would like a script I can add to the homepage to create a cookie and the forums main page (SMF in PHP) and the gallery main page (Coppermine in PHP) will check the cookie and redirect the users to the homepage when the cookie has expired. The checking script should also be able to test for cookies.

Any ideas would be welcome. :)
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So you want to hack not one but two separate applications? Neither one of which is particularly easy to hack?

The easiest way to do this is to set the cookie with javascript, since you don't want to get into actually hacking the forum or coppermine code itself, that's not fun. Here's the javascript cookies script I use.

This cookie will be created or tested on page load using that javascript, and the javascript you just call in the head tag by tweaking the template header html.

So all you do is create a javascript cookie using a javascript cookie library file, check it every load, if the value is > than 7 for days, you redirect to home page.

In this case javascript is fine, since this is definitely not a core feature, and does not affect actual site functionality, which is usually the test I use to decide whether or not to use javascript for solutions or not.

Personally, if someone did that to me I'd stop going to their site, but that's your call.

It's better to just have an information bar with the information you want them to see in my opinion contained on the gallery/forums pages.

But we don't write people's code for them here, unless of course they want to pay for that, lol...

By the way, all non relevant links will be removed, and the rest simply do not display to anyone else than logged in users.
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I definitely appreciate your response. It difficult at best to determine how I might utilize the information you have supplied.

As for your approach to my problem, if you are attempting present your services for compensation, you might well leave comments like: "Personally, if someone did that to me I'd stop going to their site, but that's your call." to yourself.

There are sufficient scripting forums on the internet where I may seek my solution.
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LOL, you misunderstand completely. I'm not trying to get work, just letting you know that I won't do someone else's work for them for free, although specific code related questions are of course always interesting and welcome. That means the poster has already done the work, but has hit a snag in their efforts that they can't resolve.

Such a snag does not mean you haven't even started yet and don't know what to do, it means that you have generated code, hit a bug, something you can't achieve, can post relevant code, which can be studied by others, who can then offer solutions. No good coding forum I'm aware of writes your program for you, but I'm sure you can get someone out there to do that.

Generally, only amateur programmers will have so little respect for the difficulty of programming that they ask to have their solutions generated for them for free by other programmers. More experienced programmers value their time, and tend to only be interested in complicated problems that are hard to solve if they are going to do free stuff.

I've never met a really good programmer/coder who would write my solutions for me, but I have met some of the best in the world who would always help me once I demonstrated with code samples that I had worked very hard on the problem and hit a wall I could not cross. This tells them that I am not doing what you are doing, trying to get the answer for free with no work on my part.

So don't be surprised when you get this type of response, especially when you have zero code to show, and zero effort put out to really locate and create a solution.

A true code question, with relevant code snippets, is what I consider a good question, and a question that is worth answering, since it will probably help other readers over time.

Sometimes the question is so intrinsically interesting that someone will find it worth working out, this is most definitely not in that category, since it's fairly trivial to do it.

I'm definitely not really offering my services, don't misunderstand me, although I did jokingly say that.

The general solution I outlined is exactly in keeping with the general question you asked.

If you want a specific solution, you have to do the work required to get to that point, most people who post here get paid to create those types of solutions, so doing it for free for someone we don't even know is just silly, unless, of course, they want to pay for that service. Which is not at least my intention, I'm not soliciting a job, I have plenty of work, don't want or need more. Especially not free work for someone I don't know.

What I was saying when I said I would leave your site if you did this to me routinely is exactly that, I would stop going, I don't like it when websites force me to do something I don't want to do.

Anyway, good luck in your efforts to get this done by someone else for free, you'll probably find somebody or other out there who will do it, but you wont' find them here.
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Hmmm. Well, actually, coppermine's not any harder to hack than wordpress is. I've done both, for a couple of years now.

No, I'm not interested in doing this for money; I have ZERO interest in doing what you're wanting done, because I wouldn't put up with for even one site-access-attempt what you're wanting to do. NO ONE "forces me" to go anywhere once a week.

Sheesh.
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