Using User Agents to return to homepage

[Andrew Thomas]

Im after any thoughts on how to overcome the following:

A site requires an age verification from the homepage, If a user comes through to a page via a search engine and enters a page within the site, I need to see if this user has already visited the site and verified his age, if not to redirect back to the homepage.

I was intending on writing an asp script with USER AGENT in mind, any recommendations appreciated.

thanks

[duckhunter]

What about a cookie? If the UserAgent is in a list of known spiders, don't redirect or drop a cookie which would allow the SE's to spider your site without getting the redirect.

[encyclo]

Do you mean

HTTP_REFERER

rather than the user agent? If so, don't forget that the referrer string can be unreliable at best, and there are many programs which strip out the referrer altogether, so you risk putting people into an infinite loop.

I agree with duckhunter, a session cookie would be better, but you'll have to make arrangements for the bots.

[Andrew Thomas]

Thanks, how would i go about coding this in ASP?

[mattglet]

Take a peek into the Response.Cookies [msdn.microsoft.com] collection.

[dataguy]

Why not set a session variable when a user hits the home page, and on interior pages is that veriable isn't set, then redirect them...