wow, those were some seriously quick replies, thanks. I understand that cookies is the best way to do things, but I didn't explain my problem well, sorry.
Basically, I have a blog in the works and I want to have an online interface for posting. What I have is a cgi script run through a server side include line in the html, which looks for the session cookie, if it is present will say 'logged in as "user"' and if the cookie isn't there will display a login form. Now, the big showstopper here is that, because session cookies are stored in http headers sent by the client (afaik) the cgi script can't get any, because the http headers are passed onto the html file and any cgi scripts inside don't get anything... is there a workaround possible? I need to use an include line instead of pointing to the script and making it output full html as there are various other scripts run in the html as well, plus I am hoping to use the cookie-detection script in other ways than just the home page... Again, any help is appreciated. GazaM -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list