Session Data, Referrer-Specific Content, etc.

[euphline]

Greetings.

I'm working on some new "site management" software for some of my free sites. In the past, I've used offline scripts to build totally static sites. I've been thinking about moving to a system of dynamic sites[0]. I'd like some input from the point of view of:

• general ethics
• link list operators
• user experience

Specifically, here are some thoughts:

• Cookies - (Good | Bad | Evil)
• Referrer-Based Behavior (I could build a site that would, say, only do popups if the user was coming from a site that agreed to link to sites with popups[2], offer 3 galleries if the referrer requires 3, 2 if not, mouseover where allowed, etc.)
• Track the # of actual click-throughs based on the referrer
• Referrer-Based Behavior Extended - Actually alter things like the list of recips based on the referrer[3]
• Session Strings - URLs that look like this: http://www.foo.bar/mysite?session=123532432&pic=123
• Bogus File Extensions - There's no real technical reason to send JPG's out as http://www.foo.bar/picture.jpg ... there might be reasons to send it out as http://www.foo.bar/picture

What do y'all think?

Note: On any site like this, I would expect to setup a webmaster resource page to explain to curious folks exactly how the site worked. While I might not tell link lists in my submission about the system, I wouldn't plan to be secretive about it.

-jbn

[0] - I'm aware of the server load and responsiveness issues often associated with dynamic sites. If you'd like to discuss those, let's do so in another thread, probably in the scripting forum.
[1] - Yes, this could arguably go in the link list forum, the scripting forum or ___.
[2] - Just an example. Personally, I don't ever use popups.
[3] - I think this is probably unethical, but I'm curious about opinions