Pass a Variable From Link into aWeber Form

Very simple... only takes a little bit of PHP to do this.

1) Add the following code to the very top of your home page...

<?php
session_start();
$_SESSION['ref'] = $_GET['ref'];
?>

What this does is grab the value of the query string in your hyperlink ("ref"), and then saves that value to a "session" (meaning that value will persist throughout all of the pages on your website, so long as the user stays on your site).

2) Now add the following code to the very top of the page that your optin form is on...

<?php
session_start();
$ref = $_SESSION['ref'];
?>

What this does is grab the value of the saved "session" (ie the value of "ref") and saves it to a PHP variable named $ref.

3) Now anywhere you want the value of "ref" to appear in your HTML code on the opt-in page, just do this --> <?php echo $ref; ?>

For example, if you want the value to be passed to a "hidden field" in your Aweber code, then you would do something like this...

<input type="hidden" name="ref" value="<?php echo $ref; ?>" />

For more info @ setting up hidden fields in Aweber, see this.

Any page on your site that contains PHP code will need to need to have .php extensions, of course. But that's pretty much all there is to it.

Another alternative would be to pass the "ref" value through every single page of your site via GET or POST, but that would be a lot more work. Or as atinder and Michael mentioned, you could use cookies instead of sessions. But some users will have cookies blocked by default, so using "sessions" is probably your best bet for something like this.