newbie: setting cross domain cookies

[Buzby]

Hi - apologies in advance if this is a stupid question!

I want to offer an affiliate scheme to my site and track where visitors are
coming from, so in the event of making a sale I can pay out. For a number
of reasons I'd like to set this information in a javascript generated cookie
on the originating site and pick it up on my site when the visitor comes by
at anytime in the future.

Try as I may I can't get the cookie to cross domains? Is this possible - or
is it possible to set a session variable in Javascript which I could pass
and write the cookie on my site.

For SEO purposes I want "clean" spiderable links in to my site, ie: no
querystrings etc etc

TIA

Buzby

 

[kaeli]

Try as I may I can't get the cookie to cross domains? Is this possible

It's possible, but due to many people abusing it, most browsers block 3rd
party either by default or by the user setting such a preference.
It's not good to rely on them. At best (arguably), you'll drive away
visitors; at worst, your stuff will break and people won't get credit.

Also, there is no guarantee visitors will even have javascript enabled.
Really important cookies (like cookies that have people getting paid or
charged money) should be set via server-side headers. And even then, people
can still have cookies turned off.

Thus the reasons for the vast majority of affiliate links you see having URL
params. It is the least likely method to fail.

HTH

--

 

[Buzby]

It's possible, but due to many people abusing it, most browsers block 3rd
party either by default or by the user setting such a preference.
It's not good to rely on them. At best (arguably), you'll drive away
visitors; at worst, your stuff will break and people won't get credit.

Also, there is no guarantee visitors will even have javascript enabled.
Really important cookies (like cookies that have people getting paid or
charged money) should be set via server-side headers. And even then,
people
can still have cookies turned off.

Thus the reasons for the vast majority of affiliate links you see having
URL
params. It is the least likely method to fail.

kaeli

Thanks for that - I was sort of coming to the same conclusion, I think what
I'll do is track the http headers, kick off an affiliate ID session
variable and/or cookie as they arrive at the site, that way I can easily
identify who came from where - I was just hoping there might have been a
quick and dirty fix!

Thanks!

Buzby