We have recently changed our Cookie Law compliance so that we now use a kind of semi-implied consent.  We still show a banner asking first-time website users to agree to our use of cookies, but it no longer blocks continued navigation of the site and the notice is now shown as a bar at the bottom of the page.  The notice is still more conspicuous than many – so we can be sure that users are well informed.

This follows the UK ICO changing their own website to use implied consent. This action has added further confusion to the rules about this. The entire EU Cookie Law is really a big mess and the level of compliance appears to be very patchy.  However the law has not changed and all sites must implement some reasonable action to avoid risk of penalties (unlikely though that seems!).  It remains an unnecessary and unwelcome cost burden on small website operators.

Our solution is adapted from the original script we used. It is simple and lightweight and has an equivalent WordPress plugin that I made by modifying the previous one.

If you are a website owner or author – anyone is welcome to use or further adapt our version.

You can download my version of the script here – cookie-warn-bar.zip

To install:

  1. unzip cookie-warn-bar.zip
  2. editthe script file  as required, for example change question text and button URLs
  3. upload to your web server
  4. insert <script type=”text/javascript” src=”/cookiebar.js”></script> usually just after the <body> tag in your pages.

Here are details about the Cookie-Bar WordPress plug-in.

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