WordPress is widely used by almost every website owner who tends to run a visual image in front of their targeted audience. Working gets easy when one understands WordPress inside out. But it is also possible that you are not necessarily aware of every specific problem faced by WordPress users.
However, you need not worry about that perspective, as in this blog, we will help you understand a common word available in WordPress, which you might even often hear of while working in digital marketing: cookies.
Cookies in WordPress enable you to connect with the required website to view. These cookies are those tiny bits of information about your connection stored by the viewing website whenever you visit any website.
This appears every time you log in to any website, where a pop-up box appears on your screen inhibiting you from getting into the content of the website until you click on one of the two or three options given to you in that popped-up box, which are:
- Accept Cookies
- Deny Cookies
- Manage Cookies
Once you click on any of the above options, it accordingly manages your request to view the website along with the information it contains about you. Thus, this helps a lot in saving time in the future whenever you revisit the same website, as it occurs only the first time you visit that particular website with a new IP connection.
What Does WordPress Cookies Mean?
WordPress sets these cookies as the first-party gate responsible for collecting general information about the user visiting the website, such as their language preference, the last area they visited, etc.
Other than this, the cookies set by the external company are called third-party cookies, where those external agencies tend to collect information about the visitor.
Why Does WordPress Use Cookies?
WordPress, which is not an unknown site to anyone, also knows that it contains cookies, but sometimes the users are unaware of its usage by WordPress. The uses of cookies by WordPress are:
1. It helps track down the user to their website, whether they are new or old.
2. To provide a personalized sense of experience to the users.
3. To store their information while shopping online, such as on Amazon.
4. These cookies help in getting personalized feedback to the website owner.
5. Installed in to ensure the functioning of the website.
Are the Cookies Used by WordPress safe?
Cookies that are inserted into the website from the WordPress side are generally secure, as they help the user protect their data from being scammed. Moreover, these cookies function basically to encrypt your data on their website safely.
Types of WordPress Cookies
There are two different types of cookies used by WordPress
1. User Cookies
2. Comment Cookies
User Cookies
User Cookies are also called session cookies, which help collect information regarding users who visit the website rarely or often. They are stored on the website for a shorter duration until the browsing session ends. Once the user has logged out of the website, these WordPress cookies delete the user's encrypted data from their storage.
These cookies measure the site by viewing which content, or the page on their website, was viewed by the user.
Comment Cookies
These WordPress cookies store the information of users who comment on their website. They store the commenter's user ID, hashtag, and URL. These cookies are beneficial because the commenter does not need to insert their information repeatedly to comment on that particular site.
Here, the encrypted information in WordPress is stored for a specific time only as temporary information.
However, in some situations, these WordPress cookies are blocked, which often means that websites are unable to store the user or commenter’s information. This also makes the website's working or loading a bit slow.
Why are Cookies Blocked in WordPress?
Generally, cookies are blocked due to privacy, security, etc. issues, which over time led to them being blocked by WordPress.
1. Security Reason—Many times, third-party cookies threaten the encrypted data of the users visiting the website. So, to limit or control the accessing power of those third-party cookies on the website, the cookies are blocked online.
2. Impact on Website—When excessive or unnecessary cookies are made online, the website blocks them. This can indirectly or directly impact the website's speed and functionality.
3. User’s Privacy—Many times, it is recorded that the users visiting the website do not like or prefer to share their information with the visited website. At times, these things bring down the website's reputation on Google. Due to this, the website started providing options for cookies to be accepted, declined, or managed by the user.
4. These cookies can also impact the user experience. Cookies slow down the website’s speed and functionality.
How One Fix Cookies Blocked on WordPress?
On various WordPress websites, cookies are blocked, ultimately impacting the website's speed. Due to this, the website owner tends to unblock those cookies, but how? If unknown to them, let us now discuss the strategies an individual can use to unblock those cookies, bringing back their existence to the site.
1. First, open your website’s “function.php” file, which can be found in the theme folder.
2. There add this code at the bottom of your php file:
If (SITECOOKIEPATH! = COOKIEPATH)
{Setcookie(TEST_COOKIE, ‘WP Cookie check’, 0, SITECOOKIEPATH, COOKIE_DOMAIN); }
Note: Make sure you add this code before seeing, “That’s all, stop editing! Happy Blogging.”
3. After inserting this code, refresh our page, and you will be back to your website with cookies unblocked on your website.
- You can opt for other strategies if the above step doesn’t work.
a) You can try installing and adding a cookie consent plugin to your website; that way, your cookies will be available on your website.
b) Review the cookies on your website—Review the cookies available and see if they are excessively large or large. If so, try to minimize their size or quantity.
c) Secured Cookies – Check if the cookies on your website are authentic or secured; otherwise, they are the biggest reason for cookies being blocked on your website.
These are some of the strategies you can opt for, but if you are still not able to unblock the cookies on your page, you can contact us, and we will help you find the cause and the way to unblock the website on your website.
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