Issue setting PHP cookie with included files - php

Question

I have the following script which creates a cookie and updates a site counter in a database record if the user hasn't visited the website in a day, else, it will just display the current count of visits. Currently the cookie is displaying NULL every time I reload the index page and therefore the table keeps getting updated more than it should. How do I maintain the cookie value on the index page when this script is included?
if (empty($_COOKIE["visits"])) {
// increment the counter in the database
mysql_query("UPDATE visit_counter ".
" SET counter = counter + 1 ".
" WHERE id = 1");
/* Query visit_counter table and assign counter
value to the $visitors variable */
$QueryResult = mysql_query("SELECT counter ".
" FROM visit_counter WHERE id = 1");
// Place query results into an associative array if there are any
if (($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($QueryResult)) !== FALSE) {
$visitors = $row['counter'];
} else {
// else if this is the first visitor set variable to 1
$visitors = 1;
}
// Set cookie value
setcookie("visits", $visitors, time()+(60*60*24));
} else {
$visitors = $_COOKIE["visits"];
}
The cookie script is included in an index file, so the following would be the index file...
<?php include("Includes/cookie.php"); ?>
var_dump($_COOKIE["visits"]); /* Always returns NULL on this page but
returns the cookies real value if
run straight from cookie.php script */
/* Some main page content goes here */
/* The cookie value is echoed in the footer file that is included by
creating a statement that says echo "total visitors: ".$visitors; */
<?php include("Includes/footer.php"); ?>

Answer 1

The problem is on set_cookie
set it from:
<?php
// Set cookie value
setcookie("visits", $visitors, time()+(60*60*24));
?>
to
<?php
// Set cookie value
setcookie("visits", $visitors, time()+(60*60*24),'/'); // Define the cookie path to be used on this domain
?>
Good luck