Using PHP to echo message if user came from redirected site

Question

I am launching a new site with a brand new URL (rebranding). When a user goes to the old URL, they will be redirected to a new URL. I would like to display a message to those users, welcoming them to the new site. This message would ONLY appear to users who have been redirected.

Using PHP's $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] I believe I can accomplish this, but I have run into a roadblock.

The following code works great if the user comes from Google:

<?php $referral = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
      $referral = strtolower($referral);
      $referral = explode ("/", $referral);
      $referral = $referral[2];
        if ( $referral == 'www.google.com'){ ?>
            <div style="font-weight:bold; position:absolute; top:200px; left:50%; width:300px; margin-left:-200px; background:white; padding:50px; color:black; text-align:center; font-size:17px">
                You Came From: 
                <?php echo $referral; ?>
            </div>
<?php }; ?>

This basically stores the URL of the HTTP_REFERER, makes it pretty, and them echoes it ONLY IF the user came form Google. I would like to do this with the URL of the old site, but it doesnt seem to be working. I am setting up the redirects using Permanent 301 redirects in the cpanel. Will HTTP_REFERER work with these redirects? As is, nothing is stored in the $referral variable when coming from the redirected site.

I would like to use the same concept as the code above, but make it with with 301 redirects. Any ideas?

Answer 1

I think there may be some problems with using the 301 redirect - what I recommend is simply redirecting to a special URL from your old website - this makes it very easy and clean.

So instead of:

http://oldurl.tld -> http://newurl.tld

You can do:

http://oldurl.tld -> http://newurl.tld/specialwelcome