saving cookie information in sessions

[DLR]

Hi all.
I want people to be free to browse my site for information - and only provide their name if they want to log in (there is no benefit to the viewer for this, other than having one's name on the pages).

I would like the index page to welcome them automatically (i.e without signing in) each time eg. "Hello [color=red]David [/color] (name from cookie), welcome back". So I need to set cookies.

However I want to encourage them to sign up for my newsletter. I want to make the site friendly and I want to have the signup page automatically insert the name from the cookie, into the form

<input type ="text" value=" <?php echo $_COOKIE('name'); ?> ">

I know this can be done - this forum does it when I open the page - but how?

This has got me beat!
Any guidance will be most welcome!
Thank you

[Orio]

Should be:
[code]<input type ="text" value=" <?php echo $_COOKIE['name']; ?> ">[/code]

Orio.

[DLR]

Hi Orio,
Thanks for the feedback.
Does this mean that a cookie value can be saved in this way?

How can do that? Do we have session_start() at top of page - if so, how do we automatically call up the cookie?

Thanks

[Orio]

If you want to set a cookie, use setcookie().
All of the cookies' values are available using the $_COOKIE super-global array, just like I showed you in my previous post- $_COOKIE['the_cookie_name'].

Orio.