Session Tracking with Cookie on Server not on page

How to do it if you only have FTP access to the server?

[zgb999]

There are easy ways around from Webtrends and others to install a plug-in on the server which places a cookie for every visitor.

Is there any way to add a cookie (to be used for session tracking) on the server if you only have FTP access to a site?

[bakedjake]

You can do it from any server-side language, such as ASP or PHP.

[zgb999]

Thank you for the feedback!

Is there a way to get a cookie on all pages of a site without adding any code in it?

The plug-in solution is good because it means that you don't have to add any code on any of the existing pages but can track the visitors anyhow.

Or if I did not understand you correctly how do I implement asp or php code to be used on all pages without changing the code of those pages?

[larryn]

If you are using Apache, and mod_user_track is loaded, you can enable user cookies with the following addition to your configuration file:

<VirtualHost x.x.x.x>
 CustomLog logplus "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\" \"%{Cookie}n\""
 CookieTracking On
 CookieExpires "35 days"
</VirtualHost>

This will enable the default cookie, and the CustomLog directive adds that info the the log file after the browser signature.

I'm not aware of any built-in support like this for IIS unless you resort to a plug-in.

[bakedjake]

Naw, you can do session cookies in global.asa on IIS.

zgb999, you may want to ask over in the Microsoft or PHP forums for specific implementation examples.

[acidophil]

and how do i activate cookietracking on apache if i can't mod. the config?
is it possible to use htaccess?

thx

[larryn]

Depending upon how the server is configured, most of the commands to enable cookie tracking can be put into .htaccess -- check [httpd.apache.org ] for info; however the changes to the log format are not allowed in htaccess [httpd.apache.org ], so that might limit your options.