User System: Cookies and Nav Links

Hi, I'm trying to set up a sort of user system on my site with punbb. However, I seem to be having problems with both Cookies and Nav Links, and I have yet to find a fix.

http://brain-cheese.org
http://forums.brain-cheese.org

First, when I try to check if the user is logged in or not on my site, they are always registered as a guest.

I first had the cookies setting in config.php set to "", but then I tried both brain-cheese.org and .brain-cheese.org, but neither seemed to work.

Secondly, I need to know how to basically display the forum nav links on other parts of my site. Here's the code if you wish to see it.

<?php
$pun_root = 'forums/';
require $pun_root.'config.php';
require $pun_root.'include/common.php';
?>

[site html, etc here...]
<?php generate_navlinks(); ?>

I tried to just run the function from functions.php, but that doesn't do anything, it doesn't output anything, though I wasn't sure if it was supposed to anyway...

Some assistance correcting these problems would be greatly appreciated.