Wondering if you can implement a setting for the site that puts a cookie on the user's pc, so that if they've viewed the splash screen within the last couple days, it will automatically redirect to the news.php page?

Maybe there's a way to do this with javascript?

My splash screen is used as a recruitment screen, so regular members don't really need to see it all that often. I realize they can just bookmark the news.php page to bypass it. However, having a way for the site to remember if you've viewed it recently, and then bypass it would be a welcomed feature.

You'll definitely want to use the javascript cookie functionality for this.

While some of our templates use javascript cookies, I don't really recommend our scripts, as they're more specific.

The following functions from http://www.quirksmode.org/js/cookies.html should help you out

function createCookie(name,value,days) {
	if (days) {
		var date = new Date();
		date.setTime(date.getTime()+(days*24*60*60*1000));
		var expires = "; expires="+date.toGMTString();
	}
	else var expires = "";
	document.cookie = name+"="+value+expires+"; path=/";
}

function readCookie(name) {
	var nameEQ = name + "=";
	var ca = document.cookie.split(';');
	for(var i=0;i < ca.length;i++) {
		var c = ca[i];
		while (c.charAt(0)==' ') c = c.substring(1,c.length);
		if (c.indexOf(nameEQ) == 0) return c.substring(nameEQ.length,c.length);
	}
	return null;
}

function eraseCookie(name) {
	createCookie(name,"",-1);
}

Then you can use it by doing something like this at the bottom of your splash page, or in the onload event.

if(readCookie("splash_shown"))
	document.location="news.php";
else
	createCookie("splash_shown",true,365);