IE6 & cookies, stop my web store from working 1

[dabhand]

Hi,
This is my first posting but I am hoping someone can give me some guidance on this problem....

I manage a web store located at

http://www.ontracks.co.uk

last year we added a new shopping basket application to allow customers to shop the entire 35,000 products. Our existing host could not support the functionality required so we found a second Host who could and set up the software under

http://www.ontrackscart.co.uk

We then simply changed the links on the main site to point a visitor to the right pages on the new server when they started to shop. As we have a frame set up the address always stays as

http://www.ontracks.co.uk

so the customer is not aware they are browsing across two sites.

We track customers by cookie, or if the cookie test fails the software switches to IP tracking.

For IE6 visitors the Cookies do not work because the default cookie setting on IE6 blocks 3rd party cookies - which

http://www.ontrackscart.co.uk

effectively is. We need to find a way to avoid this problem as some ISPs randomly change the IP address of their customers (AOL) - so an AOL customer using IE6 can't use our web store at all.

I know I could move all the pages and files from the original server host onto the new company, presumably point the ontracks.co.uk domain at the new host server, and simply then rename the links etc to ensure they all remain on the new ontracks.co.uk domain rather than moving to ontrackscart.co.uk. But this is a lot of work, several hundred pages would need their hyperlinks re-written, 20-30 CGI scripts would need changing and all in a short period to avoid being unavailable to customers.

So, does anyone have any other alternatives - for instance can a web site include code to change cookie preferences on IE6 (similar to 'click here to make this page your start page' code). Or is there some other code which can make IE6 treat the two domains as one?

Any help great fully appreciated.

Tim

 

[manarth]

For future reference, using relative URLs on webpages makes it MUCH easier to migrate domains.
e.g. &quot;<a href=&quot;

http://www.ontracks.co.uk/shopping/main_page.html>&quot;

could be &quot;<a href=&quot;/shopping/main_page.html>&quot;

<marc>[ul]help us help![li]please give us feedback on what works / doesn't[/li][li]not sure where to start? click here: faq581-3339[/li][/sup][/ul][/sup]

 

[paulomorin]

Dear Tim, I have a &quot;recipe&quot; for you...

I had the same problem with my shopping cart...

Your cookies are third party cookies and IE6 default setting rejects this kind of cookie...so I solved this problem writing a &quot;Privacy Policy&quot; according to P3P -&quot;Platform for Privacy Preferences&quot;, a W3C recommendation...

1) To get the big picture, read:

http://www.wdvl.com/Internet/Security/P3P/index.html

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum21/2745.htm

http://www.privacycouncil.com/freep3pfix.php

2) To get a software to write the policy:

http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/p3peditor

(it needs java 1.3.1 - at the site they say p3peditor works fine with 1.4.1, but it is not true...). You can find companies which can do the job for less than $50, if you want - just search P3P at google...

3) When you get the policy, you need to create a directory at the shopping cart site named /w3c with the files (with these names):

p3p.xml
p3policy.xml

4) When you use IE6 try to visit the shopping cart site and click on view/print privacy report...and you will get a simple report of privacy of your site. Now you complain with P3P...

5) Finaly you have to include on your script the HTTP header with the compact policy...it will be detected by IE6... in my Perl script I included:

print &quot;P3P:CP=\&quot;ALL DSP COR CURa ADMa DEVa OUR DELi NOR IND PHY ONL PUR COM NAV INT PRE OTC\&quot;\n&quot;;

6) Doing this, the default IE6 setting will accept your cookies!

about 4-6 hours of reading and working...

Good Luck !!!

Paulo

 

[dabhand]

Hi Paulo,
Thanks - this is great. Both the main site and the shopping cart both already have P3P certificates so at least half the work is done.
Just to clarify for me - on point 4, you say 'now you complain with P3P' What do you mean? Looking at the privacy report they work fine and the info box does not have a complain button - I must be missing something!
The files are in the wt3 directory as required in case you want to view them.

Then on point 5 you say a header has to go in the script. Do you mean the CGI script my shopping cart uses or the P3P.xml file?

Thanks for more help
Tim