Bagism

Cookie Fixer

The Problem

Some Bagism visitors have been experiencing strange errors such as 'Code Not Specified' or 'Bad Request' when trying to use various features like posting to the Web Boards and voting in the Polls. If you are not experiencing either of these two errors, you do not need to follow the instructions on this page

These errors have been linked to Bagism "cookies" that are stored in a format not understood by some web browsers. Cookies are pieces of data stored in a file on your computer by a web site so that the data will be available again when you return to the site.

Bagism stores cookies when you choose to have your Name, E-mail, and/or Password settings "remembered" when posting messages to the Web Boards. If you left your E-mail or Password empty, the Web Board program would store the cookie anyway. Apparently, having a blank value for a cookie can cause problems for some web browsers. The Web Board program now only stores a cookie if you have entered some data.

The Solution

If you are experiencing this problem, deleting your Bagism cookies from your computer should fix it.

The following instructions are for manually deleting Netscape cookies. Internet Explorer has a built-in utility for easily deleting cookies. It is available in the "Options" or "Preferences" section.

  1. Quit Netscape (you may want to print or save these instructions first)
  2. Search for a file on your computer named "MagicCookie" on a Mac or "cookies.txt" on a PC. It should be in your Netscape folder.
  3. Open the file in a text editor such as "BBEdit" on the Mac or "NotePad" on a PC.
  4. Delete each line that begins with "www.bagism.com" or ".bagism.com".
  5. Save the changes and re-start Netscape.

If you use a Mac, there is a nice program called Cookie Cutter that makes it very easy to delete Netscape cookies. Anyone know of a link to something similar for Windows?

After you delete the Bagism cookies, you should not see any more errors (at least, not of this variety ;-). Try posting a message on the Web Boards to see if the problem is gone. Since Bagism cookies are now stored in a different format, once you fix this problem, you shouldn't experience it again.