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Testing...

My friend Steve helped me out with my visitor log script, and it should be pretty robust now.  The problem with the double-logging appears to have been the result of a visitor hitting a page at nodivisions.com and then another at www.nodivisions.com.  This resulted in 2 different ID cookies being created, since cookies belong to a particular host, and strictly speaking nodivisions.com is a different host than www.nodivisions.com (although they resolve identically).  The quick and easy fix for that was to redirect anyone visiting www.nodivisions.com to nodivisions.com; you should now see the www disappear from the address bar if you try to visit that way.

Steve also reminded me of the fact that cookie-based logging is subject to sabotage, since a person can simply delete their cookies at will anytime.  Argh... other than that, it’s an incredibly simple and clean solution.  But alas, I’m back to logging the way I used to (partially), which is based on a combination of a user cookie and some other less dynamic characteristics of the client.  We’ll see how it fares.

Posted by Anthony on Jul 16, 2003 | 5 replies
Filed under: General

Comments:

01. Jul 16, 2003 at 8:10pm by steev:

yay, my first time helpin someone troubleshoot, aside from the beta testing i do, which doesn’t really count...

and chatting with you in IM just now was awesome.

02. Jul 16, 2003 at 8:44pm by Anthony:

Heh... ok, confusion... yes, "Steve" #2 (aka steev) also helped clarify that cookie problem.  (Steve #1 is the person who helped me last night around 2AM, but he doesn’t ever post here.... punk.... maybe now that I’ve called him out, he will.  Except now he’ll probably come on and say bad things about  me.......)

03. Jul 17, 2003 at 2:57pm by Steve:

I think theres someway in PHP (if that’s what you’re using), to set cookies based on a domain and all the ones under that.  I can’t remember it off the top of my head, but we use that at work..

04. Jul 18, 2003 at 8:47pm by Anthony:

By "all the ones under that," do you mean "under" the way that www.nodivisions.com is under nodivisions.com?  If so, that would be interesting.  I’ve never seen that.  I know that for security purposes, it’s not possible to set/edit any cookies that don’t match your domain name; I had always understood that to mean the exact domain name.  Especially because, for example, me.somefreewebsiteco.com is (and should be) isolated from you.somefreewebsiteco.com.  The case of the www subdomain is clearly an exception from a logical point of view, but from a technical perspective, it is still a subdomain.

And by the way, the number of Steves on/related to this post is getting ridiculous.  (The Steve who replied about the PHP is not steev, nor is it the Steve I referred to in my earlier reply.)

05. Jul 20, 2003 at 11:29am by steev:

it is, the tao of steve ;)

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