best performance?

I have some very busy topsite and the button on this busy sites is generating some nice load.

Since I rank the sites based on the inbound clicks I don't need the button impression count.

now my problem, because there are ~500 websites using the the link to the button I need to do something.

at the moment I use some php file function to show only the image through the button script. It looks like that server load is lower since I use it this way (no more database transactions inside the button script).

I sit maybe better/faster to redirect the button request to the button image via mod_rewrite?

No. Redirect it through php :)

php is faster than mod_rewrite, plus this way bots wont load your server.

???
<?php
header("Location: button.png");
exit;
?>

Right, but location headers should have complete urls (http://.....)

ok thanks
do I need to add a content header too?

No. In fact it would be wrong to add one, as the location header indicates that there is no content in this page :)

ok clear :)

the good news is that the server has still 220-250 threads but is fast as always (again)

i think the best thing is to use only text links and not the button anymore :)