In this day and age, when it comes to website design and how some of the website’s features and content are displayed, we are required to do things in accordance with certain laws.
And in this article, we will be concentrating on cookie regulation and how you may want to avoid breaking the law by using this simple plugin that I have in front of me. I am, of course, talking about Simple Cookie Control!
What is Simple Cookie Control
It is basically a plugin using which you can design and play around with how your cookies behave on your site, while all the while keeping in mind the new regulations imposed by the EU.
You can create the first block that is shown to your visitors when they come to visit your site, and then you can additionally add another panel on which they will be asked if they have changed their mind as far as cookies are concerned.
What are the features of Simple Cookie Control
Now, I will be listing the features this plugin has available:
- Cookie banner: here you can customize the cookie banner using the WordPress customizer. You can change up the style of the cookie, the position, and the content.
- The ability to show or not to show a secondary banner after the primary one is hidden. This allows your visitors to once again see the main (primary) banner in order to give them the opportunity to change their decision when it comes to cookies.
- The ability to either activate or deactivate the implementation of the basic internal analytics so that you can know the exact number of people who have accepted the cookies and who have rejected them.
- Change the name and days to expiry of the cookies that are keeping track of the user’s choice.
- The ability to choose if you want to implement Google Tag Manager (Google Analytics). It is conditional on the acceptance of cookies.
- You can also decide if you want to show or hide the conditional content.
How to install the plugin
You install this plugin as you would any other plugin in WordPress. Just simply go ahead and download the zip file of the plugin, unzip it and add it to your “wp-content/plugins” directory in your WordPress installation.
How to use the plugin
It is simple enough. You first need to go to the customizer and to your own custom setup. Then search for the Hide/Show blocks by Cookies under the SumaPress category.
You will then be able to go ahead and customize the box that is going to be shown to your visitors when they visit the site.
You can change the color, text, and so on.
You can also add shortcodes if you feel like you want to add some additional features.
Costs, caveats, etc.
This plugin is completely free to use, and it does what it claims to do. It gives you a fine number of features for you to play around with so that you can increase the chance of visitors accepting the cookies in the end.
It is easy to set up and understand with little to no fuss about it. And I must say that I really like how this plugin gives your visitors the opportunity to change their minds as far as the use of cookies is concerned.
To quote the developer: “Both with the Gutenberg block and with the shortcodes this plugin allows you to show or hide content, as well as allow partial acceptance and rejection of cookies for each content. It also allows the user to change his mind at all times.”
If you want you can add the cookie option for your visitors, but then lock some of the content on your site by using the secondary cookies. For example, if the user has declined the use of cookies on your site, you can then turn a video on your site into a static picture in their case.
You can also add the option for them to choose if they want to allow a limited number of cookies to be used in order to make the video play. This is actually quite effective because it will increase the chances of the users actually using at least some of the cookies.