I have a website (www.thesmartass.info) that has lots of iframes
inside of each other.  The purpose of this website is to be a
startpage to the internet.  Currently when you load the website you
see random images, random quotes, etc...

What I want is a basic cookie script that I can have multiple things defined in. 
(css, artwork, background, colors, navpage, centerpage, other)

How I would like it to work is via a get on the address line:
thesmartass.info?index.php?css=smartass5.css?Art=xevor-fallingspring.jpg?BG=somethingdark.jpg?Nav=sidebar.php

I need all the variables to be defined on the index page, but then i
need them all to work on all the subpages so that i can always set
them by referencing index.php

I want to also make sure that there is no set path for all the files
as It will be different for each variable. Also I need each variable
to have it's own default so that I can point it to a random script
until they choose to set a different cookie.

Does this make sense?  Go to: http://www.thesmartass.info/ and after
it loads hit refresh a couple times and you will see why I want it to
give people the ability to choose what is there the next time they
load the page.

Also if I could give people the ability to choose the default pages
that load in my iframes then it would cut the load time a lot as one
of the default loading pages loads a form with 400 playable nintendo
games in it now which is a bit slow.

Just check out http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.session-start.php


Search google "php cookies", "php session variables" add "tutorials"
keyword in separate search.


Plenty of free tutorials to go around.

Cool site too. I could never find the old beatle juice game. I have
weird memories of it as a kid.

I've already done that, I have been fighting to get multiple different
cookie scripts to do just what I ask and have not succeeded. 
Everytime I think I have created the perfect script, it doesn't even
set the cookie.  I think after so many wasted hours it is worth a few
dollars to have somebody else do it for me.  Thanks for the comment on
the website, I'm always trying to make it better... that's why I'm
here now ;)

Make sure you set session.auto_start=1 in your php.ini.

Also, if session.gc_divisor=session.gc_probability, it will not work.


Make sure you start with <? session_start(); ?> in all the pages you
CALL or create session variables in. It has to be the first thing on
your page.

Example
<? session_start(); ?>
Woked

lakdf<? session_start(); ?>
Nope sorry, data already output can't understand now. Stop everything.


Try adding ONLY
<?
session_start();
session_register('taco');
$_SESSION['taco'] = "lemmings";
?>

in one page and
<? session_start();
echo $_SESSION["taco"]." fall off cliffs. That's what ".$taco." do...";
?>

It uses two methods of grabbing the session var.
If that doesn't work there's probably something wrong with your php.ini.

i don't want sessions, i want cookies that will last for a year...

phpfreaks has an excellent working page by page tutorial:

http://www.phpfreaks.com/tutorials/120/1.php


I don't think I can simplify it much more than they can, but you've
probably already seen it just searching php cookies.

Fine you wanted me to do it myself so badly... well I have finally
fixed my cookie script, realizing it was only not working because I
was using a capitol letter to set the cookie and the script didn't
call for one.. grr, however I have another problem, I need this script
to be able to be loaded from index.php and understood from content
php... which currently doesn't work... here is my current script:

<?php 
 
if (!empty($setsidebar)) { 
 $sidebar = $setsidebar; 
 setSidebar(); 
} elseif (!empty($_COOKIE['sidebar'])) { 
 $sidebar = $_COOKIE['sidebar']; 
} elseif (!empty($eatcookie)) { 
 eatCookie(); 
} 
 
 
function setSidebar() { 
 global $sidebar; 
 setcookie('sidebar',$sidebar,time()+2678400,'/','thesmartass.info'); 
} 
 
function getSidebar() { 
 global $sidebar; 
  
 $default_sidebar = "sidebar2.php"; 
 
 if (!empty($sidebar)) { 
  $bobfile = $sidebar; 
  if (!file_exists($bobfile)) { 
   $bobfile = $default_sidebar; 
  } 
 } else { 
  $bobfile = $default_sidebar; 
 } 
  
 return $bobfile; 
} 
 
function eatCookie() { 
 setcookie('sidebar','',time()-2678400); 
} 
 
?> 

you can set this cookie by the following: 
http://www.thesmartass.info/content.php?setsidebar=sidebar1.php
http://www.thesmartass.info/content.php?setsidebar=sidebar3.php
http://www.thesmartass.info/content.php?setsidebar=eatcookie

but if you go to any of those pages you will notice my page is all
white and looks like crap, that's because content.php is just a
subpage of index

what I need is to be able to load the php script above on index.php
and having the variable still understood when i launch it on
content.php with getSidebar();  in theory my understanding is since i
defined the domain name in the setcookie line it should work for the
entire domain!?