file redirect?

I'm trying to figure something out and thought I'd see if you guys have any ideas. The goal: tracking the number of downloads for files on the server. The approach: routing file downloads through /download.php like this: http://server/download.php?target=/myfile.zip What I tried that worked was using javascript to launch download.php in a new window and use a meta tag to redirect to the file in question, like this: print "<meta http-equiv='refresh' content='0; URL=$destination'>"; This works, but it's really slow, because it usually takes a while to open a new browser window. I found another approach, but couldn't get it to work: $content_type = "Content-type: application/zip"; header($content_type); header("Content-disposition: filename=".$filename); header($destination); It seemed I got close at one point... it would open a File Save window, but the file would end up as 0 bytes in size. My preference is using the second approach if I can get it working, because it's much faster than opening a new browser window. Any ideas of how to make it work? Thanks, -Ed