Joomla! Discussion Forums

I am modifying index.php in my custom template and need to know if this is the first time through of the current session. I want to do X on the first time then do Y all the remaining times to the home page (index.php) code.

I tried to follow the PHP code when a Joomla session fires up and there seems to be much opportunity to figure out the session's status but I could not figure out what would tell me if the session has just started and likely the first time to the template home page.

I think I could initialize a global variable at the front of the joomla code then check the value in the template index.php to see if is the initial value then do x and then alter the value for for future checks.

Hopefully you folks have a more elegant approach.

thx