Black_Knight - 7:56 pm on Nov 2, 2002 (gmt 0)

This level of tracking is simple enough to handle with JavaScript if you wanted - I could modify my own JavaScript tracking cookie to handle this within two hours.

Be careful with cookies though. Many many sites get cookies wrong, setting far too many of them, when the total amount of saved data would have fit in the (roughly) 4,000 character limit of a single cookie.

Cookies have a bad rep, whether we like it or not. It is therefore essential to bug the user as little as possible, allowing them to choose to accept or reject cookies more easily. None of the stuff where every page you visit in the site keeps asking to set multiple cookies.

I have prompting enabled for cookies. A good site recognises my opening page request (see if the referrer host is from another domain) and then sets a master cookie. That master cookie is there to record whether the user is rejecting cookies.

From then on (where referrer host for each page request is from your own domain) you only attempt to write a cookie if they have accepted the master cookie. If not, you don't want to make them keep rejecting the cookies until they either permanently block your site, or simply leave in disgust at your impolite cookie behaviour.