Redirect in htaccess to limit sending of cookies

Question

I would like to write a redirect to avoid cookies being sent on graphics & css files. I think what I want is to redirect html and php to www, and others to root, possibly keeping js on the www so scripts can process cookies. This is for Joomla installations that are not cookie aware and I don't want to have to change the template files etc. Related question, can I just redirect the no-cookie files to root if the html is sent to www, or do I need to create a subdomain (which would complicate the no-change policy for the templates)

Thanks.

Answer 1

For reference, here's another SO question along the same lines: .htaccess, YSlow, and “Use cookie-free domains”.

As the accepted answer in that question mentions, creating a redirect from a cookie domain to non-cookie domain would be counterproductive and result in extra round-trips.

I'm not familiar with Joomla, but if as you mentioned the goal is to not mess with the Joomla templates too much, you could do one of:

• Register a new domain which is an alias (cname) to your original domain. For example if you already have www.example.com, register examplestatic.com and set it to point to www.example.com. Then adjust your templates to include static files from examplestatic.com. Those requests should be cookie-free.
• Use Amazon CloudFront as a CDN. You would use their Custom Origin feature to pull files from your server as the origin. Then adjust your templates to refer to the CloudFront domain instead of yours.

Going down this path may or may not provide much benefit for your situation. You didn't mention it, but I would make sure to start with the higher impact performance rules like minimizing HTTP requests by combining static files, enabling gzip compression, optimizing images, and so on.