Setting custom cookies in Wordpress

Question

I am trying to set cookies to re-route returning users to my a specific page within my Wordpress site.

I'd like some advice with these 2 things:

1. Where in the Wordpress php files should cookies be checked before loading any content to handle a redirect? Is there a good file this should exist in over others?
2. How do I properly set a cookie within Wordpress? setcookie('cookie_name', 'cookie_value', time()+4000); doesn't seem to be saving any cookies to my system.

Answer 1

Ah, realized I needed to hook this into the init().

SOLUTION: I created a function in functions.php that would set and check the cookie. for this to work properly, after defining the function, outside the function call this: add_action('init', 'function-name'); – Atticus

Answer 2

1 - You can check for cookies and do your redirect using hooks that are called before any output like the 'init' hook:

<?php

// Hook the function "redirect()" on to the "init" action
add_action('init', 'redirect');

// redirect() may redirect the user depending on the cookies he has
function redirect(){
  /* CODE */
}

?>

2 - The best way to set cookies would be using the 'init' hook like this:

<?php

add_action('init', 'my_setcookie');

// my_setcookie() set the cookie on the domain and directory WP is installed on
function my_setcookie(){
  setcookie(
    'my_cookie_1', 
    1, 
    strtotime('+1 month'), 
    parse_url(get_option('siteurl'), PHP_URL_PATH), 
    parse_url(get_option('siteurl'), PHP_URL_HOST)
  );
}

?>

This is more consistent, if you have a blog at www.example.com/blog, the coockie(s) will not be available at

• www.example.com
• www.example.com/store
• example.com
• www2.example.com
• ...