tracking users who donate

[sifaka]

My boss for whom I run the website would like to know in the future, what pages a site visitor viewed before they donated using the PayPal donate button. Is there a way I can track the pages someone views before they donate? Maybe using the Logs in my cpanel?
Thank you,
Matt

[DeadBattery]

You can't track where a user goes. However, you can track where a user came from.
PayPal would have to tell you where the user came from.

[sifaka]

DB,
Wait a minute. They would be coming from the page where the donate button is, of course. (What am I missing?)
I do want to know where they came from, i.e. the pages they viewed before they donated. Can I see that?

---------- Post added at 04:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:29 PM ----------

Dead battery, what do you say?

[Zubair]

DB,
Wait a minute. They would be coming from the page where the donate button is, of course. (What am I missing?)
I do want to know where they came from, i.e. the pages they viewed before they donated. Can I see that?

Actually Yes, You can see which pages are browsed by users. But when someone click on Donate button, it will be redirected to paypal donate page. thats what DeadBattery was trying to explain, You can`t track that.

***Moved to Programming Help***

[AngusThermopyle]

Actually Yes, You can see which pages are browsed by users.

Not using the logs in cPanel, since logging is turned off on free servers.

You have to use your own tracking set up and do your own logging. PHP and cookies is the natural choice.
Then you would have to compare the info that PayPal gives you (time, referring page, IP) and match that with your logs. You can have your PayPal button send them to a intermediate page where they would click on the 'real' button to send to PayPal. The presence of that page in your logs would indicate they were going to PayPal. The only drawback to that is that it gives the donor another chance to reconsider.

[sifaka]

This is on a paid site. Can I track the page views before a donate button click on a paid site?

[AngusThermopyle]

1. What is the format of the log files?
2. What is the information that PayPal sends you?

Most log files have the user IP, the time/date and the page.
If PayPal gives you the time of the donation and his IP, you can run Perl/PHP/Python scripts to match them up.

[sifaka]

The Awstats lists "Hosts (top 25)", but just the IP and the number of page views, hits and bandwidth. It doesn't break it down so I an see what pageviews each IP made and when. Is it common to have that information, so detailed? Can I find it if I look deeper into the Logs?

Thanks

[leafypiggy]

Easy solution:

Track users using sessions or cookies.

Monitor this info by storing it in a database (what pages are viewed, etc)

Modify the paypal donate button so it first redirects to a link on your site that grabs the user's IP, SessionID/cookie, etc, and store that also in the database. Then forward them to the paypal page. You then can match the info from your "tracking cookie" to the info paypal gives you.


Think people. It's not a difficult thing to deploy or make.