Cookies? Are they allowed in plug-in's ?

[Pebble]

I was recently told in this thread that PB's wont be allowing cookies in plug-ins : support.proboards.com/thread/430622/code-keys-using

Has this been confirmed? I've just seen a plug-in with cookies.......  So I'm wondering what the standing on this is.
I know that in Europe, most sites now ask you to tick/select to confirm that you are going to allow cookies. Would a plug-in using cookies need to have a disclaimer etc?

Thanks for any info

[Peter]

It's not that ProBoards isn't allowing them, it's more down to providing the best experience for the user. Cookies add a small overhead as they are included in each HTTP request for the domain / path, and remember that headers are uncompressed, so this adds extra to the page load.


But Like I said, there isn't a set rule (yet) that you can't use them, though now with client side storage becoming popular and more well supported in browsers, it would be more wise to forget cookies, as they are less secure now days compared to something like localStorage.



As for the EU Cookie Law, it really depends on what you are storing, but yes, you would have to get the user to opt-in under certain conditions.


Use a plugin key, it's what they are there for, and they work nicely.

Hopefully VS Admin will respond just so you get the official word about them.

[Jordan]

If you aren't going to use a plugin key, use localStorage as Peter said. It's easier and better in every way. Cookies have to be sent to the server on each page load which slows things down and is a waste of bandwidth (if a lot of people use your code). Cookies are old school, don't use them unless you are using them for the right reasons on your own website that has nothing to do with Proboards.

[Pebble]

Thanks for the replies.
I'm probably going to go down the localStorage route which is pretty straight forward.
 My only reservation about the key system is the limited amount of them. Not a problem at the moment but a year or two down the line, people may be getting to a point of having to choose between codes because they've used all thier keys.

[Thesealion]

If there's only 10 I don't think it will take years before people have this problem


There are also things like working with guests or on custom pages that key's don't really work with as far as i know...

[VS Admin]

Each forum can expand the number of keys it has.

We have experimented in v5 with deleting all cookies that ProBoards does not use when a request hits our server, since as has been mentioned in this thread it slows down the experience for the end user and cause more bandwidth usage on our end. Don't be surprised if in the future v5 does in fact delete cookies that we (ProBoards) did not set.

You should use plugin keys. They are there to make your life easy. Upgrades for plugin keys will be very cheap if a forum wants to go beyond the free amounts provided. These numbers are not necessarily final, but we're thinking of prices around $1 for a plugin key, $4 for a super key, and $1 for 5 additional plugins. There are also packs where you can get more plugins, keys, and super keys at discounted rates.

[Thesealion]

What about the things i mentioned? For instance now it is impossible to set a key by an action a user does on a custom page. Using, for example, in my code (Lion Rules System) I had to use a workaround by checking the user's previous url. This wouldn't be possible for all things. If I was actually inputting things into a key based off what a user inputs into a textarea on a custom page this wouldn't currently be possible.

Also guests. Right now as far as I know keys don't exactly work with guests while cookies do. For the code i posted earlier, if a guest tries to post (before i remove guests from the code) they will get the same alert as members. However, when they accept the rules the key doesn't update for them which means that it will always say they haven't logged in. If I want guests to post on my forum, but have to read the rules first, the only way to currently do this as far as i know is through cookies

Not in any way trying to sound mean here just have questions about how it is gonna work

[VS Admin]

We're still analyzing the implications of plugins on custom pages, but my guess at this point is that they will be enabled.

For guest users, we recommend using HTML5 local storage instead of cookies.

[Chris]

Dec 5, 2012 12:29:38 GMT -8 VS Admin said:

We're still analyzing the implications of plugins on custom pages, but my guess at this point is that they will be enabled.

For guest users, we recommend using HTML5 local storage instead of cookies.

Which, to mention, is easy if you use Yootil. Peter just built it into the storage class in Yootil.

[Thesealion]

Ok I have never heard of Local Storage...will have to look it up...