Adjusting website cookies banner configuration

TODO: review these notes

The Adventist Web Engine (AWE) displays a cookies banner to inform the visitors that the website will place cookies on their computer, if they continue using the website.

Note: By default the cookies banner should be active on the website and prompt the visitors to either accept cookies or allow a restricted level of cookies.

It is possible, if needed, to adjust how the cookies banner functions in regards to visitors from configured regions.

Regions

If desired to adjust the cookies banner per visitor region, the first step is to create Regions:

• Expand the web module
• Expand the website where the cookies banner will be modified
• Navigate to Website Settings > Advanced > Regions
• Click on the "Add region" button
• Provide the following:
  • Name: Title of the Region
  • Countries: Select the Countries under this region
  • Click on "Update" button to create the region

Adjust Cookies banner

Next go to the Cooies section of the Advanced tab. Once there the following items can be adjusted.

Cookie consent status: Set this as needed

• Enabled: by default it is on
• Disabled: a warning will be displayed: "Be aware that this may cause the site to be non-compliant with GDPR."
• Enabled for selected regions: If you want to display only for certain regions.
• Disabled for selected regions: Ignore the visitor's country of origin, if it is in the list of regions.

In either case, when using "selected regions" these regions come from the regions created in the previous step. Set the desired option in the Cookie consent status field. Then enter the regions in the Disabled regions field, if needed.

If desired, the texts displayed on the Cookies banner can be updated under the texts section "Text for Cookie Consent Banner".

Make sure and click on the "Update" button to save your changes!

Testing

Realize turning the cookie banner off may cause a website in a country that requires a cookie banner to be out of compliance with government regulations (for example Germany and GDPR).

To test the banner, one can add a parameter to the URL of the website. This contains a two character country code to indicate where the visitor is coming from.

• Website URL parameter: ?country=XX
• Where XX = two character country code
• Ex:
  • https:www.example-domain.org?country=de
  • Here we would be indicating the user is coming from Germany (de) to the website

The cookies banner can be configured to either appear or not. Setup a region and then with the testing tools, see if banner appears (or does not) according to your configuration setup.

Here is a list^* of the 2 Character country codes for testing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2#Officially_assigned_code_elements

^*There may be some differences between this list and the list used by the 3rd party company.