EU Cookie Compliance Plugin
If you have just arrived at our home page or directly at this web page you will probably have noticed a small "Cookie Notice" at the top of the screen?
You may or may not be aware that the EU have been working on a new law which states that UK-based companies are required to be completely transparent about the cookies their website uses and that the visitor should be given the option to consent before having the cookies placed on their computer.
This law came into effect of May 26th 2011 and becomes enforceable by the ICO (The Information Commissioners Office) on 26th May 2012.
It is fair to say that the precise details of the law (how it will be enforced, and exactly how to comply) are a bit of a grey area at the moment. This new law is the first of its kind and there are no existing protocols which could shed light on how things will unfold. At the moment there is no clear cut solution to this situation.
To read more detail about this law please review the ICO's website here.
What does this mean to you?
If your website uses cookies and if you don't comply the ICO have been granted power to fine website owners up to £500,000.
The complete, long-term solution could potentially involve a complete rebuild of your website. At the very least it would involve tracking down every cookie, what they do, determining where in the code they are instantiated, adding more code that allows them to be optional... a big ordeal but a necessesity for your future plans for your website.
How do you know if your website uses cookies?
In short, it's a bit technical. There are tools out there (for example, the Web Developer plugin for FireFox) that will allow you to examine the cookies placed on your computer by any particular website. The safest way is to speak to someone who understands website development.
So your website uses cookies? What can you do?
We have developed a website plugin that will enlighten your visitors to the use of cookies on your website, let them know what they are and what they do. Your visitors may then make an educated decision as to whether they agree to these cookies or not. It does this by sliding in a small banner at the top of the screen as you will see on this website.
How to we supply our service?
- The first thing that must be done is a full audit of the cookies used during a visit to your website. To do this we simply browse your website whilst monitoring the cookies that are set up. We then review these and configure the details of your plugin accordingly. We may also need to ask you a few questions about your website too.
- Once this has been done we can then install the plugin on your website. This is a minimally invasive proceedure. Two things must be done to achieve this:
- Add two lines of code to your website. If your website is template-based this is a simple job of just adding these two lines of code to the template files. If not, these lines of code must be added to every page individually.
- Upload a folder with a small configuration file to your server.
- That's it.
All we need from you is FTP access to your server (unless, of course, you are an existing Sputnik customer then we already have this information).
How much does it cost?
We like to make sure this service is affordable. Drop us a line at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with a link to your website and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.
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