If anyone was watching me this morning they would've seen me go from a state of swearing at my PC to imitating Homer Simpson. It started innocently enough when I tried to post a comment on a website. My PC seemed stuck in perpetual login. I then realized I was having a cookie "d'oh" moment. My browser settings were preventing me from posting so I needed create an exception.

Like many people, I choose not to accept 3^rd party cookies in my browsers. If you''re not familiar with browser cookies, you can review our earlier primer. In this case, the cookie belonged to the popular commenting service disqus, which is used on many websites.

I did see a notice about a browser setting preventing me from logging in at the top of the page. I dismissed it because I was thinking of "login" as if I were a member of this site. When it came time to post my reaction, I scrolled to the bottom of the posts and tried to submit mine. I got nowhere. I only saw my cursor spinning and spinning.

Adding Domain Exceptions To Google Chrome

I could've elected to allow all 3^rd party cookies, but that would be overkill. Instead, I decided to just create an exception for this service in my browser. In this case, I'm using Google Chrome. The process is pretty easy.

1. Open Google Chrome and click the settings icon. It's the one that looks like a wrench at the far right.

2. From the drop-down menu, select Settings.

3. Type cookies into the search settings box.

4. Click the Content settings ... button

5. Click the Manage exceptions ... button.

6. In the Hostname pattern field type [*.] followed by the domain you'd like to allow. The [*.] creates a wildcard which is handy in case you're not sure if the domain uses www or not or both.

7. Click OK.

One item to remember is that cookies are attached to the browser. So, if you were to use a different browser, like Firefox, you would probably be blocked unless you allowed 3^rd party cookies or used a similar setting. These exceptions don't cross over to your other browsers.

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