As much time as I spend on this forum I thought I would ask this elementary question that I cannot seem to find an answer too. I think the main reason I cannot find the answer to the question is because im not inputting the proper keywords into google. So even if you can throw some terminology at me to use as keywords this would be great. Ive been procrastinating starting a thread with this question for some time so since then I think that I found an answer that could be the most ideal solution but Im sure there are other solutions.

Let me tell you what im trying to do. I manage a small businesses wordpress website. They want to implement coupons. Ok this is no problem. Ill style up a basic coupon voucher, save it as a PDF and provide a download link. But they want to limit the coupon to one coupon per customer for a specific time period. How do I go about limiting 1 coupon per customer and for a set time period? It would be awesome to be able to tally the number of claimed coupons but I assume the easiest way would be through google analytics.

I was using woobox, which at the bare minimum provided what we needed but since then woobox starting charging a subscription fee. I am assuming that the best implementation of limiting access will need to be done via the users IP address. So then cookies come to mind.

I could implement some sort of user registration that would lead them to the coupon page but the company felt that would deter the overall number of claimed coupons. another idea was to require the customer to enter in an email to get to the download page so the question could be how to limit content by email address.

So my question is, what are some other ways to implement limiting access to a webpage and/or download link besides cookies...or is this the best way? If i set something up limiting by email address i assume that a database would be required so cookie may be the less amount of set up work.

Do any of you know of any wordpress plugins or scripts that I can modify so that i can accomplish this.

I am pretty much content tracking visits and such through google anlaytics but if you knew of a better way this is a plus. the company wants to be able to view the claimed number of coupons at any given time. I could do this through google analytics but I know they are going to get all stressed having to think a little bit navigating a section of Google analytics.

A long winded general question indeed but I appreciate any response and your time reading through this.