Homepage redirection depending on new or returning visitor

PHP
1

I would like to know how to make an introductory splash page only appear to first time viewers to my site. Returning visitors would see a different landing page.

I am thinking this may mean adding cookies that expire after a certain number of time. I would not like for the user, once in the site, to click on the home button/link and end up at the splash page.

Advice/demos or resources on this would be most appreciated.

2

I believe that your choices would be either to use cookies or to use sessions.

cookie option > http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3079925/display-welcome-message-to-first-time-visitors
session option (answer 6): http://wordpress.org/support/topic/temp-landing-page-but-access-rest-of-site