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UK Cookie Consent Plugin for WordPress
A light-weight plugin for WordPress sites to comply with UK cookie laws. UK Cookie Consent plugin adds a notification bar at the top of the site the first time a page is loaded by a visitor, informing the visitor cookies are used by the site.
The visitor has the option to agree to the use of cookies, ignore the message, or leave the site.
When the visitor agrees to accept cookies, the notification bar is removed from view – the plugin loads an acceptance cookie to the visitor’s browser.
UK Cookie Consent plugin is designed to comply with cookie laws enacted in the United Kingdom. It does not provide compliance for the much stricter Dutch laws
UK Cookie Consent Plugin Does Not Disable Cookies
UK Cookie Consent plug-in does not disable cookies on your site or prevent the user from continuing to browse the site. Several other plug-ins have adopted the “explicit consent” approach that obliges users to opt in to cookies on your site; this is likely to deter visitors.
Review and Rating
Review and Rating of UK Cookie Consent Plugin
Installed on this site in May 2012, it’s time to give UK Cookie Consent plugin an in-use review. First off, my first impressions of the plugin have not changed. It works, well, and retains the original 8.7/10 rating
Bugs: Only two bugs so far. The first was with the information page page link and is now fixed. The other has only recently been mentioned – the bar is not hidden if Super Cache or W3TC plugins are used to cache the site. The developer has responded positively so my rating for this category remains 9/10
Versatility and Features: The plugin has only one purpose, so versatility is based on this single function. There could be more options to configure the plugin, e.g. colour styling and position. 7/10.
Requires WP: 3.3.2 or higher
Compatible up to: 3.4.2
Last Updated: 2012-7-2
Downloads: 3,595
Stats Date: Sept 22, 2012
Easy Set-up: It is easy to install and get UK Cookie Consent plugin working – 9/10. The plugin is pre-configured and will work after activating – 9/10 for ease of set-up.
Developer’s use: Sadly, there is still no sign of the plugin being used on the developers website – 1/10
Tested and used on a Graphicline site – 10/10 for both
Excellent Support by Plugin Developer
To the plugin developers credit, the bug was resolved in less than 24 hours after it being brought to his attention. This is really great support for a free plugin, something all WordPress plugin authors should take note of.
I am looking forward to more plugins from this author. Excellent response!
Installation and Set-up
Install and Configure UK Cookie Consent plugin
UK Cookie Consent plugin is almost install and go. There are only four fields in the plugin admin page, which have been pre-configured.
- Notification text: The message displayed in the browser bar informing visitors cookies are being used.
- Accept text: The name of the button visitors click to remove the bar.
- More Info text: Name of link to the page on the site with information about cookies.The plugin creates a basic cookie information page named Cookie Policy.
UK Cookie Consent Plugin v 1.31 Admin Page
When activated a cookie policy page is automatically created, and the URL to the page is found in the plugin admin settings (note; the URL shown is my custom permalink to the policy page). Test the link found in the cookie notification bar.
The text displayed can be customised as required. If the default text is OK for you, there is nothing left to do except for some recommended SEO on the Cookie Policy page.
Installation Problems?
Problems Installing the UK Cookie Consent Plugin
Some users have had one or two problems installing Cookie Consent. The most common problem found is the page isn’t found. Let’s look at how the plugin works.
When activated a cookie policy page is automatically created, and the URL to the page is found in the plugin admin settings (see infographic above ” UK Cookie Consent Plugin v 1.31 Admin Page ” – note the URL shown is my custom permalink to the policy page). Test the link found in the cookie notification bar.
- If it doesn’t work – go to ‘Pages’ in WordPress dashboard, find the page called “Cookie Policy” and open it to edit. UPDATE the page . CLEAR the site CACHE if your site is cached. Go back to the website or blog. Clear your browser cache and try the link again. This will fix 95% of Cookie Policy page not found problems.
- Another problem (mainly with the first version (and remember this is a new plugin) sometimes occurred when the site or blog uses custom permalinks. In this case follow the procedure above (1.) to update the page – view the updated page. Copy the permalink. Paste the permalink into the ” Info page permalink ” field. Follow the example shown in the infographic above (the field is highlight pale red here for clarity (not in the plugin admin)
Only paste the path, NOT the domain part of the URL – in other words, delete http://www.yourblog.com/. e.g. if the full path copied from the browser address bar is http://www.yourblog.com/cookies/ then only paste cookies/
Or it will have a duplicate domain and not work properly.
Read more about WordPress URL structures.
SEO Policy Page
SEO the Cookie Policy Page
I recommend the Cookie Policy page generated by the UK Cookie Consent plugin should have the robots “noindex,noodp,noydir,noarchive” meta values added; there’s no benefit to your site allowing search engines to index this page.
There will be duplicates of this page on thousands of blogs and sites, so it really must have the “noindex” meta markup added. Even if these are not word for word identical, rather take the conservative approach…
+Mike OtgaarChapter 2: Part 9 Updated: September 22, 2012
Plugin Download and Support
- Download UK Cookie Consent Plugin from the WordPress Repository
- UK Cookie Consent Plugin Homepage (catapultdesign.co.uk)