Oddity in admin CP, plus ? about subdomains, paths, and cookies

[JJR512]

I have two boards set up on the same server. One is located at www.jjr512.com/forums and the other is at www.jjr512.com/test . I have subdomains set up, so I can access the boards either at the addresses I just gave, or I can use forums.jjr512.com or test.jjr512.com .

I've been trying to figure out how to keep the cookies for these boards separate, so that when I'm playing around with my test forum (which I use to test new hacks and stuff; it's not open to the public), I don't throw off my "last visit" time for my main board.

As I was looking at the admin control panel, reading the explanations of what the Cookie Domain and Path to save cookies settings were for, I noticed a difference in the description between one board and another. Both boards are 2.0.3; in fact, the test forum board was installed as a copy of the files from the main forum.

Now in my /forums board, the description for Cookie Domain says:

The domain on which you want the cookie to have effect. If you want this to affect all of yourhost.com rather than just forums.yourhost.com, enter yourhost.com here. Can be left blank.

But the description for my /test board has an extra bit, which I've bolded:

The domain on which you want the cookie to have effect. If you want this to affect all of yourhost.com rather than just forums.yourhost.com, enter .yourhost.com here (note the 2 dots!!!). Can be left blank.

(And indeed, this description does have an extra dot in front of yourhost.com that the description from the /forums board does not have.)

Can anyone explain the difference?

Regardless of that, I need help specifying the values thereof. I'd like to know what, exactly, to put on each line on each board's control panel to keep the cookies for these sites totally separate. I've tried searching for this info, and haven't gotten any clear idea of how to do it. I've actually already asked a similar question, but that question didn't involve subdomains, which I wasn't using at the time; now I am. Please help!

[tubedogg]

The extra bit was added somewhere along the way. Your /forums board was installed pre-2.0.0 final, right? I think they just forgot to add in the query to update the setting description when they changed it.

Anyway to answer your question, you need to set the "Path to save cookies" in this case. Set your /forums board to
/forums
and your /test board to
/test
Now if you will only be accessing these as subdomains, then instead, set the cookie domain to
forums.jjr512.com
and
test.jjr512.com
respectively. However if you are going to be accessing them both through the jjr512.com/folder *and* subdomains, leave the cookie domain as
.jjr512.com
and edit the path to save cookies.