PC Help: Make the BBC home page your home page

Set a cookie to take you straight to your personalised 'Where I Live' page

Q I use www.bbc.co.uk as my internet home page. On the right-hand side there is a Where I Live box, into which I’ve typed my postcode to see local news and weather.

Whenever I leave the site and return again later, the location has changed back to London. Can I get the postcode to stay put?

John Simpson

A It sounds like a cookie problem. Cookies are small text files produced by websites to track users, usually to remember what’s in an online store’s shopping basket, retain an email address or, in this case, remember a location.

Each time you visit the BBC home page, it reads the cookie on your computer’s hard disk, which tells it where you live. It then displays the appropriate information.

If you are using a program to block or otherwise disable cookies, it won’t work. Some anti-spyware programs include a cookie blocker ­ if so, make sure this is turned off, or set it to accept cookies from ‘bbc.co.uk’. In Internet Explorer, go to the Tools menu and select Internet Options, then the Privacy tab.

The higher up the slider is set, the more cookies will be blocked (at the top, it will block all cookies). Try moving the slider a notch downwards, click on OK, and try the BBC site again (then restart Internet Explorer and visit it again). If the information still fails to stick, go back in and move the slider down another notch.