I've been doing a lot of reading on how to optimize website performance. Both Google and Yahoo advocate using cookie-less domains; I've also read about setting up subdomains to achieve the same effect.
My question is: is there a way to determine if cookies are being set at the *.example.com level versus the www.example.com level? I have read that if cookies are being set on the former level, they will automatically be set on all subdomains. This would defeat the purpose of setting up a subdomain like static.example.com, which is what I am considering.
My website is running a PHP-based content management system (ExpressionEngine) with an e-commerce platform that uses cookies (FoxyCart), but I do not set cookies with my own scripts.
In the same vein, is there a preference for having a cookie-less subdomain (like static.example.com) or an entirely separate, cookie-less domain (like static-stuff.com)?