Stopping cookies being set from a domain (aka "cookieless domain") to increase site performance
- by Django Reinhardt
I was reading in Google's documentation about improving site speed. One of their recommendations is serving static content (images, css, js, etc.) from a "cookieless domain":
Static content, such as images, JS and
CSS files, don't need to be
accompanied by cookies, as there is
no user interaction with these
resources. You can decrease request
latency by serving static resources
from a domain that doesn't serve
cookies.
Google then says that the best way to do this is to buy a new domain and set it to point to your current one:
To reserve a cookieless domain for
serving static content, register a new
domain name and configure your DNS
database with a CNAME record that
points the new domain to your existing
domain A record. Configure your web
server to serve static resources from
the new domain, and do not allow any
cookies to be set anywhere on this
domain. In your web pages, reference
the domain name in the URLs for the
static resources.
This is pretty straight forward stuff, except for the bit where it says to "configure your web server to serve static resources from the new domain, and do not allow any cookies to be set anywhere on this domain". From what I've read, there's no setting in IIS that allows you to say "serve static resources", so how do I prevent ASP.NET from setting cookies on this new domain?
At present, even if I'm just requesting a .jpg from the new domain, it sets a cookie on my browser, even though our application's cookies are set to our old domain. For example, ASP.NET sets an ".ASPXANONYMOUS" cookie that (as far as I'm aware) we're not telling it to do.
Apologies if this is a real newb question, I'm new at this!
Thanks.
