Cookie or session tracking help

[pjorstad121]

I have searched the forums and found a few references, but
not what I am looking for. I am trying to find a way to
track visitors to my site for the duration of their visit. I
don't know if the best way to do this is with a cookie or
some type of session tracking mechanism that expires once the
visitor leaves my site. I'd appreciate some insight into how
this is done, best practices (coding and from a privacy
perspective)and maybe some links or good references on how to
do this. Also, if this is not the correct forum, please let
me know where this should go and I'll move it.

Thanks in advance.

[tedster]

Session tracking can be quite a broad topic. I've found a decent web page that covers some basics, especially using the most long standing technical approaches.

It's a good article, because it presents the basic concepts you need to have under your belt before you can make a good choice for your situation. As the article says,

"...in order to understand the beauty of new technologies that
exist today it is often necessary to understand what used
to be done before that technology came into being."

[webreference.com...]