Where has the cookie notice gone?

[flygoldfish]

Please help! 

My cookie notice has disappeared from all my Weebly sites (about 10 days ago). Is anyone else experiencing similar?

I've tried toggling EU and All visitors options but no change.

One site is: https://www.isleofwightguru.co.uk/

Many thanks to any superstars who can help me stay out of GDPR prison.

[Adam7]

Thanks for your post, @flygoldfish.

As I'm in the US I don't know whether this is working because I can't test it with your current cookies setting. @seicolegwr, do you see a cookie popup if you visit? I'm fairly sure that it should show for someone in the UK regardless of brexit and the status of the UK.

[flygoldfish]

Thanks for the reply Adam.

I've changed it to all visitors, so it should show up for you. I've tried viewing it in Incognito mode and it's not showing up.

[Adam7]

If you temporarily switch to the standard version of that theme and publish again, does it work?

[flygoldfish]

Hi Adam,

Thanks for the reply. 

I'm a bit reluctant to do that as I've found that doing so messes up a zillion different ones at once! I know it probably shouldn't but it seems to confuse all kinds of formatting things.

Is there any other option?

[Bernadette3]

Unfortunately, it's not possible for our teams to troubleshoot a site using a custom theme. Is your custom theme saved under Theme > Change Theme > Custom? If so, you can always revert back to the custom theme after you check the site on a standard theme.

Right now it looks like the site is only showing the banner for EU visitors. 

[flygoldfish]

Thanks Bernadette, I'll try resetting the theme. 

I've toggled it between EU and worldwide to see if it kickstarts it, but that doesn't seem to have worked.

[flygoldfish]

Hi,

I tried changing the theme on another Weebly site which I manage which is having the same problem (this one is a much smaller site so I figured it would have been a much simpler job to sort it out if changing themes caused issues).

It seems to have the same problem with no cookies notice.

I didn't know which theme was originally used so I just changed it to a random official theme, published it, then changed it back to the custom one which was saved and published again. The cookies notice doesn't seem to be showing on that one either.

The URL is https://www.best-cruise.co.uk/

Any help would be gratefully received!

[rac24]

Hi I have the same problem on all my sites. I am in the UK, and the Cookie notice has disapeared from all my sites. It's happening on all of my published sites in my Pro-account. I also have a standard account with a free site in it, and it's not working there either. It makes no difference whether the cookie banner is set to display for EU visitors only or for Everyone. It's not working. Any help from Weebly to resolve this issue would be greatly appreciated. (As it stands we may be breaking GDPR law).

Thank you.

rac24

[flygoldfish]

Slightly relieved to hear it isn't just me! (Although hope you get it sorted asap!)

I just tried adding a third party cookie notice from within the Weebly apps section as a test. It worked fine, but I want to use the official one, as a) it's free and b) I am concerned that the cookie notice not firing could be causing other problems we are having with the site.

The problem seems to have started on April 1 for us. Prior to that, our Google Analytics data was skewed as it only included people who had accepted the cookies notice.

[rac24]

Yes, I also notice Weebly have changed their Cookie banner on their main site. You now have the option to choose what type of cookies you want to set, whether it coincided with that change or not, I'm not sure, but it's been like it for a couple of weeks I think. Hopefully Weebly can help us. Thank you for posting this in the forum, by the way. I was just wondering what to do myself.

[flygoldfish]

I have found they are very helpful through this forum so hopefully they can get to the bottom of it!

This cookies change has coincided with one of the Weebly websites I manage seeing a notable drop in traffic. I suspect they are unrelated issues as other sites are seeing stable traffic but I am trying to eliminate every possible cause.

[rac24]

Hi

On our St Michael's site, on the Weebly dashboard the number of unique visits has increased by about double, but the number of page views has fallen by about a half. So something is a little bit different (I think). To be honest, I'm not clear whether the Cookie banner issue means that we are tracking visitors without their consent, but just to be sure, to cover us, I've temporarily removed our Google Analytics tracking code from the sites I manage. (Just to be safe and sure).

[Bernadette3]

Thank you both for all of your input. I'm still trying to get some more information about this, but @flygoldfish do you mind sharing the third party banner you used? I recommend both of you adding your own banner until we know the status of the Weebly internal option. 

[flygoldfish]

Hi Bernadette. Thanks for your help with this. The app I used was called Owids which is in the Weebly app center. 

[rac24]

Hi Bernadette,

Thanks for looking into this for us...

I've just been looking at some other great examples of Weebly websites:

https://www.baamboostudio.com/weebly-website-examples/

Out of the 35 examples, only number 29 has a cookie banner displaying (for me) (and that doesn't look like the standard Weebly one). I'm wondering if this issue could be affecting all Weebly websites?

[sailingteam]

I have the same issue. The cookie notification bar has disappeared from all my websites. In the Chrome browser I can also see that _ga and other Analytics Cookies are set. This means Weebly tracks my visitors without consent. I also visited other european weebly sites and found out that a large number of them have the same issue. I also found out that all those sites place Google Analytics cookies without consent. That could become a huge problem for Weebly. 

For me personally this issue is not a big deal because the function of my site does not depend on whether a customer accepts cookies or not. But surely this could be a legal (GDPR) problem for Weebly in Europe as ist seems to track customers without their consent. I hope this issue can be fixed soon.

[Adam7]

Our engineering team is looking into this, @sailingteam, but it might be simplest to add a cookie banner app from the App Center, or use a third party widget instead.

[sailingteam]

Hi Adam,

thanks for caring!

The implementation of an external tool (Cookie notification bar) is only an optical solution.

The built in Weebly cookie notification bar has a technical function that we cannot override by an external tool:

By default Weebly does not set cookies when a Weebly site is accessed from/in europe. With Weeblys built in cookie notification bar gone a visitor can not "accept" cookies.

If a visitor hits "accept" at an external tool (cookie notification) this would be of course a legally correct opt-in. But technically not. Because cookies will remain suppressed by Weebly by default. Weebly will only set cookies if the "accept" button of the built in tool is hit (what will not happen because its gone).

I hope you could follow my explanations, sorry my english is not really sufficient for this technical stuff 😉

Hermann 

[sailingteam]

I want to add once more that for me this issue is not a big problem. But maybe other website owners are in need for a functioning technical opt-in because they need some cookies to be enabled.

Thats why I want to help by describing the technical side. The simple problem is: Weebly blocks cookies by default (in europe) and the only option to opt-in (allow cookies to be set) now is gone - (as the built in cookie notification including the accept button is not visible any more)

Weebly originally did a good job in reacting to the strange european regulations which allow no cookies to be set - before a visitor actively opts in. Maybe over the years someone in the development was not aware that the cookie notification is not only an information but an active technical tool to activate cookies. 

Hermann

[Bernadette3]

Thanks for the added information here, Hermann. We'll touch base with the team to see what the next steps will be.