BOINC Referal System
From Pirates@Home
This page describes the structure of a referal system for BOINC. Existing users can get some kind of credit (yet to be determined, possibly project specific) for bringing new users to a project.
How it Works
A person who is new to a BOINC project will have the opportunity both at account creation and anytime after to identify another user as the person who refered them to the project. This may or may not give the refering party a reward.
A referal can be made by providing a link to the project with a query added to the URL, as in http://pirates.spy-hill.net/Welcome.php?refered_by=3086
Questions:
- Should this work on every page? or
- should it work just for particular pages?
The refered_by= provides the userid number of the refering user. This is stored on the new user's browser in a cookie.
A "Welcome" page tells the new person about the project, and BOINC, and guides them through downloading the client and creating an account. At the account update follow-up dialogue after the account is created they are given an opportunity to specify the person who refered them. If the cookie is found then the field is already populated. Whether it is or is not, they have the opportunity to confirm the referal, change it to someone else, or deny any referal exists.
The existence of the referal is stored in a new database table. But the referal is initially only conditional. The new user needs to crunch up to a given credit level to finalize the referal. Only then is the reward given to the refering user.
