Google Analytics multiple domains under one account while excluding one domain?

Question

Cross-post from Stackoverflow

Here's the problem I am having:

Currently, we need to track across www.chess.com and secure.chess.com. However, I cannot set the domain to .chess.com because the cookie causes some problems on another domain, live.chess.com.

So, to work around this, in code - I do something like this:

<? if (HTTPS) { ?>
    <script>
    var _gaq = _gaq || [];
    _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-01']);
    _gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'secure.chess.com']);
    _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
    </script>
<? } else { ?>
    <script>
    var _gaq = _gaq || [];
    _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-02']);
    _gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'www.chess.com']);
    _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
    </script>
<? } ?>

However, this forces us to maintain 2 analytics accounts (UA-XXXXX-01 and UA-XXXXX-02) and creates a separation between HTTPS and HTTP traffic.

How can I set this up so that ONE analytics account will track both secure.chess.com and www.chess.com without setting a top level cookie (.chess.com)?

Answer 1

<? if ( %%HTTP_HOST%% != 'live.chess.com' ) { ?>
<script>
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-01']);
_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', '<? echo %%HTTP_HOST%% ?>']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
</script>
<? } ?>

(Where %%HTTP_HOST%% is a variable generated by your server-side script)

Edit: To confirm, the following code is included on all pages generated at secure.chess.com and www.chess.com and no script errors display at secure.chess.com correct?

<script type="text/javascript">
  (function() {
    var ga = document.createElement('script');
    ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
    ga.src = ('https:'   == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl'   : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
    var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
  })();
</script>