Request for a tough bit of code

[amykhar]

What I need to do is possible, I just have no clue how to do it. :D

Have you ever seen the Amazon honor system box? The code, on an affiliate's server, accesses a script on Amazon's server. This script then greets the user based on their AMAZON cookie.

I need to do something similar. For a variety of reasons, my front page is hosted on one host and domain, and my forums on another. I would like to have a script on the forums server, that when accessed on the front page server, does two things:

1. It marks the user as being online on the Who's online.

2. It greets the user with their forum name on Who's online.

Anyone have any ideas on how I can accomplish this?

Thanks in advance,
Amy

[Palmer ofShinra]

While I can't give you the code forit, I can give you the basic algorithm.

See, cookies can only be read by the domain that issued them. So your main site can't read your forum cookies.

The trick to getting an off-server page to read a server's cookie is to use a frame. The frame accesses a page on the off-site server and reads the cookie.

You then need to have the off-site script read the cookie and then somehow return that info to the other page.
I can't say I'd know how to do that...