Hello,

I want a task list which visitors can tick off items from.
Once visitors have checked items off, I want them to be able to come back and still have those items checked off, either by cookie or them having a login (the latter would be better) - actually, I'm sure this bit will fall into place once I've got a working checklist so there's no need to discuss the merits of user registration here!
Also, once items have been checked off, there might be further actions that become possible, so I want these to appear, although it doesn't matter if the user has to refresh the page manually before this happens.
I've been googling for a solution to this but haven't got very far, could someone point me in the right direction?

You need a database to store the items the checks aer attached to, along with the user that owns them, and whether they're checked or not.

Then you need some type server application that knows the users, and how to talk to the database on their behalf. This might be some off-the-shelf component ( that I don't know about ), but the way a lot of people would handle this is learning either ASP or PHP - both are server-side scripting languages that let you do something procedural and then turn the results into html.

ASP.NET has the exact control you're looking for ( check list ) that can be bound to a database pretty easily. And you can get Visual Web Developer for free on Microsoft's web site, which makes developing html and ASPx easy. I don't know PHP, so I can't tell you how to get started on that route.

Finally, you might want to look into "Google apps for your domain."

Can't you do something like that with javascript and cookies?

Sure you could, until the cookie expires. More than a few items to a list, though, and things will start slowing down. If you really have to use java, use java beans.

Hi,

Although I'm not a fan of Microsoft, AFAIK there are no issues with ASP and alternative browsers (Safari, Firefox, Opera), and as the software is free this looks like the best solution, as I don't know PHP (although I hear the similiarities between it and ASP are marginal).

Thanks very much for your replies, you've been most helpful .