How to Add a Cookie Consent Notification in WordPress in 3 Easy Steps

You’ve heard about cookies, you know it is important, but…

What is a cookie?

Cookies are (usually) small files with user details that your website uses to identify specific users and to improve their browsing experience. They act as website visitor trackers.

A web server sends cookies to your browser when someone visits your website. The browser stores these messages in a file called cookie.txt. When your visitor requests another page from the same server, their browser sends back the cookies to the server. These cookies contain information about your user’s visit to your webpages and also the data that they share like their location, IP, name and preferences. Cookies help you, the website owner, know more about your visitors’ preferences so that you can show them more of what they like.

Why do you need to let your customers know your website uses cookies?

Cookies are one of the easiest ways to gather users’ data. Privacy laws now make it mandatory to have a WordPress cookie notice on your site if you’re using cookies. An important thing to keep in mind is that you must always get your readers’ consent to use cookies. More importantly, the readers’ consent to cookies must be informed. Therefore, you need a well-crafted cookie consent notice to inform your users about your ways of using cookies.

With the increasing rate of website hacks and data breaches, people today are much more concerned about their data protection and privacy than ever before. So, having a cookie consent notice is not only a legal requirement for you but also a way to improve your relationship with your readers. A cookie consent makes room for more transparency, which in turn, increases your customers’ trust.

If you are wondering how to write a cookie consent message, add a cookie notification to WordPress, and how to obtain users’ consent easily, then you are in the right place. In this article, we will give you a detailed guide about how to create a WordPress cookie notice.

What is a cookie consent?

The cookie law is part of privacy regulations of different countries that require websites to take consent from website visitors to store or retrieve their personal information. The laws give individuals the right to refuse the use of cookies. Cookies can be sent only if a visitor agrees to accept it.

The following are the legal requirements of a cookie consent:

Consent must be given freely
The consent has to be revocable
The notice should give complete information
The consent must be informed
The consent must be taken prior to data collection

Do I need a cookie banner for my website?

A cookie consent banner is a popup that contains a cookie warning. It appears when a person visits a website for the first time. It usually has a checkbox to take consent from the viewers.

A website must have a cookie banner if it has visitors from the EU or California and other countries where privacy laws require it to collect user information. It is a must-have in order to be compliant with GDPR and CCPA. As per the ePrivacy Directive, a website needs to have a solution that scans and finds all cookies and notify the visitor about them and get their consent before collecting and processing their data. A good cookie banner gives the users the right to choose what kind of cookies they are okay with. Visitors can then accept or reject certain categories of cookies.

Having a cookie banner means that you need to employ the most advanced thorough and deep scanning consent management solution on the market. If you want to make sure that you find and manage all the cookies and trackers present on your website as required by GDPR and CCPA, the easiest option for you is to go for a plugin.

Tracking cookies manually is difficult and requires a lot of effort. Unless you use automation technology, it is not possible to completely protect your users from data abuse and privacy infringement. WP cookie consent is a plugin that is specially designed for cookie management. It comes with all the features that you require to comply with GDPR and CCPA. All you have to do is install and activate the plugin. The plugin will then handle everything automatically.

How does WordPress use cookies?

WordPress comes with default cookies. It uses them to check logged in user sessions and manage authentication. It tries to remember a users’ name and email address if he or she shares them while filling out a contact form.

You can also use WordPress plugins for further cookie settings. There are many WordPress plugins available on the market that will add their own cookies to your site for different purposes. For instance, OptinMonster lets you show email opt-in forms for new and returning users.

Some third-party services like Google Analytics and Google AdSense also set cookies on your WordPress websites. You can view all the cookies in your browser settings.

How should you write a cookie consent message?

The main purpose of a cookie consent notification is to inform the visitors that you use cookies. You should also disclose the ways in which you use them.

Here are the things a quality cookie consent should include –

An attractive and catchy banner appearing during the first visit
A clear and simple “the website uses cookies” message
A link to the privacy policy page
Interactive elements like a button to collect users’ consent

While drafting the message, you should always keep your visitors in mind. Frame it in such a way that they can easily understand it. The main features of a cookie consent are as follows –

Short and simple
Target specific language
Visually appealing

How to add a WordPress cookie notice to your website

If you want to add cookie notices to your WordPress website, there are many tools available on the market. In this post, we will show you how to use a WordPress plugin called WP cookie consent.

WP Cookie Consent: A brief introduction

WP Cookie Consent is an easy-to-use WordPress plugin for cookie consent. It allows you to make your site compliant with GDPR cookie consent and CCPA’s “Do Not Sell” opt-out regulations. It adds a catchy banner to your site in the header, footer, or other areas. It also lets you display your compliance status regarding the GDPR or CCPA laws easily.

You can customize your cookie notice completely to make it blend in with the theme of your website. You can also set the time for the appearance of the cookie notice and choose to make it disappear after a few seconds.

The plugin helps you generate fully customizable cookie consent notices. Your users may revoke their consent or change the consent categories at any time. You can view reports or consent logs and auto block third party cookies.

There are features to display or hide cookies based on geolocation. You can also add a fully customizable “Do not sell my personal information” notice to your website.

The plugin is easily customizable and well documented. It detects all website cookies in a single click. It saves your time by populating cookie details and categorizing the cookies. WP Cookie Consent is well documented and supports multiple languages.

Features

Powerful cookie detector tool
Auto cookie categorization
Granular cookie consent
Geo-location targeting
GDPR & CCPA compliance

The premium cookie consent plugin costs $17. If you would like to start with the free version, you can download the free cookie consent plugin from the WordPress plugin directory.

If you have WP Cookie Consent installed on your dashboard, creating a cookie notice is easier than you think. You can add a cookie consent notification to WordPress in three easy steps.

Step 1 – Install the WP Cookie Consent Plugin

WP Cookie Consent is a premium plugin. You can purchase the plugin zip from club.wpeka.com, the official website of the plugin. To install the plugin, follow the steps below:

Log in to your WordPress dashboard
Go to Plugins > Add New
Upload the plugin zip
Click on the “Install” button
After you are done with the installation process, activate the plugin

Step 2 – Customize settings

The next step is to customize the plugin as per your requirement. To customize the plugin, follow these steps:

Go to WordPress dashboard > WP Cookie Consent tab

Here, you can enable or disable the cookie bar on your website. You can select either GDPR or CCPA to show any of them respectively.
Now go to the Design tab.

Here you can choose how to display the Cookie bar, select behavior of closing action of the Cookie Bar once visitor accepts or rejects cookie settings, and customize the Cookie bar.

Over at the Buttons tab, you can customize Button styles & behaviour.

Step 3 – Edit the message

To edit the message that shows up in the cookie banner, follow the steps below:

Switch over to the General tab

Here you can add a text which will be displayed on Cookie Bar. You’ll also get an option to add a text which will be visible to website visitors under the ‘About Cookies’ section when they click on the ‘Cookie Settings’ button.
Click on the “Update button” to save the changes.

Conclusion

Once you are clear about how to add cookie consent to your WordPress website, the next step is to use a WordPress plugin to do that. Needless to say, the plugin is a tool that should be backed up by a well-defined cookie policy.

Users should know what kind of cookies you use and for what purpose. Users may want to know these details before giving their consent. You can put a link to the page near the consent checkbox. It will make it easier for you to obtain users’ consent to cookies.

If you liked the article, leave your feedback in the comment section. We would love to hear from you. If you have any questions, please let us know. We will get back to you soon.

About Gabriella Galea

Gabriella is the Content Manager at WP Mayor. Architect by profession, designer by nature, she is dedicated to helping readers navigate the online world of WordPress. You can find her on Twitter @GabriellaGalea.