Are Cookies Required to Sign In?

I routinely get Server Errors when trying to sign in. It doesn't seem

to happen if cookies are enabled. Are cookies necessary and if so, why?

Yes. You can browse the site without cookies, but to log in you will need to have cookies enabled.

The reason for this (if you care) is that HTTP (as in: *http*://www.photo.net) is stateless. That means that for every request you make from the web server, the server has no automatic memory of the *last* request that you made. Think of it as a constant reintroduction -- Hi, I'm Bill, can you send me those TPS reports? Hi, I'm Bill, can you send me those extra red staplers? This was done partly to help make web servers more efficient (since from a computer's standpoint, having to remember who everyone is from one request to the next is a lot of extra load).

Cookies (a.k.a. Magic Cookies) are a small (tiny) text file that your computer accepts from the server so that the server can remember who you are the next time you visit. Usually it will have some information about when the cookie was set, when it expires, and why it was set. For database-driven sites like photo.net it will often also have a unique identifier that allows the server to locate the right person in the database and give them the right set of permissions to access various resources.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying: without cookies the site don't work.

HTH,

jon