Reviewed: Cookie Confirm 2.0(RC)

If you are living in the EU, you’ve probably heard of the Cookie laws that went into force earlier this year. This law requires websites to tell visitors that they’re using cookies; and give them the option to opt out.

That’s great, but… How do you achieve this on your website? In Joomla! you can choose for a few extensions that will help you to do this. We tested version 2.0 of Cookie Confirm by Twentronix.nl

Configuration

Installing Cookie Confirm is as simple as (most) other Joomla! extensions. You go to your extensions manager, install it and then you’re set. Using Cookie Confirm afterwards isn’t much more complicated. When you use a bit of common sense, you’ll probably have no problems configuring Cookie Confirm.

Cookie Confirm Configuration Screen

The Configuration Screen.

The extension allows you to choose between two types of “acceptance” – you can choose for an opt-in or an opt-out model, depending on your preference (but more important, the laws of your country).

Cookie Confirm allows you to easily create the message you show to your user. You can opt to write a message in the back-end, but – and this is a big plus – you can also choose to use Cookie Confirm’s language files for the message. This allows you to show your visitors the message in their own language.  Combined with the option to link to your Privacy Page, this allows you to completely customize your message for your audience.

Cookie Confirm's stylish message
Cookie Confirm’s stylish message

Google likes cookies, too.

Little known fact: Google likes cookies, too. It uses cookies for Google Analytics, but to comply with the law you’d need to make these cookies optional as well. If you enter your GA info in Cookie Confirm, it will make sure that only users who accept your cookies will be tracked.

More customizing options? Sure.

If the “Standard” options of Cookie Confirm 2.0 don’t suffice for your site, you can take things one step further.  By Default, Cookie Confirm will “disable” cookies inserted by Javascript or PHP, but that might not be enough for you to comply with the law.

If there are other parts of your site which shouldn’t be visible when cookies aren’t accepted, using “Block Elements” is your friend. The concept behind this is really simple. In Cookie Confirm, you can add elements and classes that you want to “block” when cookies aren’t accepted.  For example, if you’re choosing to block all Div elements with the class “cookies”, you can add them to Cookie Confirm to make it so.  You can see this feature in action here.

Conclusion

Cookie Confirm is a solid extension, which is perfect for its job.  It’s easy to configure and very customizable.  On top of a good extension, for only €35 a year you get access to some excellent documentation and support.

If you’re building sites in Joomla this component is a “must have”. If you’ve got to comply with the law, why not make things as easy as possible?

Disclosure: We were given a subscription to Cookie Control so we’d be able to test the extension, and write a review.

1 thought on “Reviewed: Cookie Confirm 2.0(RC)”

Comments are closed.

Discover more from PowerUser Guide

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading