README

A Bene Feature module.

Description

The Bene Promo Redirect tool is a intended for special, short-term campaigns such as end-of-year giving pushes, to redirect site visitors to a specific page or external site when they visit your website. It uses no cookies, and instead decides whether or not to redirect users based on how they arrived at your site: if they arrived from the promoted page that you redirect them to, for example, it will not redirect them again. Similarly, if they are already on your site and click an internal link, it will not redirect them because they are coming from inside your site.

The Promo Redirect tool supports redirecting from any number of specified pages, but never allows redirects from admin pages or from "user" pages, such as the login page. The most common usage is to redirect only the homepage, which is specified by adding "/" in the configuration screen.

Strategic Use

Bene Promo Redirect should be used sparingly, for moments when you want all of your interested constituents to receive exactly one message: something important needs their attention right now. Over-using this behavior may wear on your constituents, and make its usage less impactful.

Think of this feature as a loudhorn: useful but also mildly annoying! People will listen to an important announcement on a loudhorn, but not more.

How To

To configure the Promo Redirect feature, log in as a user with the "Configure Bene Feature" permission (this is usually associated with the Staff Admin role). Go to Configure -> Bene Features and find Promo Redirect. If necessary, click Enable to enable it, then you can click Configure. (Note: when you are done with your promotional period, you can come back here and Disable the Promo Redirect feature until the next time you need it.)

On the configuration screen, complete the desired fields. To redirect your home page, put "/" as one of the redirect pages.

Be sure to visit your redirect "Destination" page and verify that any links on that page that go back to your website use the exact "protocol" and "domain" that appear when you are on your site. For example, if your site loads with "https://", make sure your page doesn't link using "http://". The same is true for including "www." before your domain: make sure they match. A mismatch breaks the feature's ability to identify where people are coming from and make an appropriate decision about redirecting them.