For beginners however I suggest any of the first two methods to implement session tracking. Rather the facing the learning curve associated with cookies you could manage with one of the above 2 techniques that you could implement using any language. My first preference is always for hidden fields. But in cases where I am not dealing with forms as such (which generally doesn't happen) I also use URL Rewriting.

Hope this article gave you a sound introduction to session tracking. I am sure you can use the knowledge presented here for you personal programming needs. However in case you plan to implement a professional website then I would suggest you to look into APIs specifically designed for session tracking which would do all the above mentioned stuff for you automatically without you worrying about the nitty-gritty details.

- Kiran Pai