Guide to use GDPR Cookie Scanner

The GDPR Cookie Consent plugin comes with multiple ways with which you can add the cookies to the plugin. Navigate to the GDPR Cookie Consent > Cookie Scanner from the WordPress dashboard.

The plugin lets you automatically scan the cookies and add them to the plugin. From GDPR Cookie Consent > Cookie scanner, Click on the Connect and Scan button.

Click on the Connect and scan button to connect with the CookieYes.

Existing users of CookieYes can enter the username and password.

However, new users will get connected automatically with CookieYes. Upon successfully connecting with the CookieYes, you can start the scanning process.

Click on the Scan website for cookies to begin the scanning.

Subsequently, scanning of cookies will be initiated. It might take a few minutes to a few hours to complete the scanning of your website. This depends on the number of pages to scan and the website speed. You can even switch between your screens while the scanning is in progress. Scanning can be aborted by clicking on Abort scan.

After the scan is complete, you can view all the cookies that have been scanned and the URLs that have been scanned from the Scan result. The result will look as shown below:

From here, you can add the scanned cookies to the cookie list, download the cookies into a CSV file, and perform the scan again.

When you choose to add the scanned cookies to the list, you are presented with three options as shown below:

• Replace old: In the first option, you can replace all the existing cookies in the list and add the newly scanned cookies.
• Merge (Recommended): With the second option, the plugin performs a check whether the scanned cookies are already present in the list and skip those cookies that exist. This is the recommended method to add cookies.
• Append (Not recommended): In the third method, you can append the newly scanned cookies with the existing cookies in the list. This is not recommended since it could result in duplicate entries in the cookie list.

After you select an option, click on the Start Import button.

All the scanned cookies and its related data will be added to the cookie list. The data added to the cookie list are the cookie ID, cookie-type, cookie category, and the duration of the cookies.

By default, the values in the cookie type field thus added will be persistent, all the cookies will be assigned to the non-necessary category or necessary category which are the two predefined categories of the plugin, and the value in the cookie-sensitivity field will non-necessary.

All these, of course, can be edited from the Edit Cookie by clicking on the respective cookie name from the cookie list page.

You can import the cookies into the plugin using a CSV file. You find the option to import cookies under GDPR Cookie Consent > Cookie List. Prepare a CSV in the required format, click on the Import from CSV button.

This will take you to the Import from a  file page.

From this page, upload the CSV to the plugin and import. All the cookies and their details can be seen on the Cookie List page after the import.

Click here to download the sample CSV.

The plugin also has an export feature that helps to export the cookies and its related details to a CSV file. To do that, click on the Download as CSV button from the Cookie List page.

This becomes very useful if there are websites using GDPR plugin that uses similar cookies or if you want to migrate the cookies you set up in the plugin from the development site to the production site. All you need to do is export the cookies of one website into a CSV file and then import them to the other.

To add the cookies manually, click on the Add New button under GDPR Cookie Consent > Cookie List. Add the cookies and the cookie details from the Add New Cookie Type page. The following is a screenshot of the Add New Cookie Type page.

The following are the fields in the Add New Cookie Type page.

• Cookie Title – Add the title of the cookie. This field is for audit purposes, so this field allows you to add the name of the cookie in a user-friendly manner.
• Cookie description – This allows you to add the description of the plugin so that you can explain what the purpose of the cookie is, what it does, what data it collects, etc.
• Cookie Category – Add the category that the cookies belong to.
• Cookie Type – This is to indicate the type of the cookie. The types include persistent, session, or third-party. Persistent cookies are those that generally persists even after the browser is closed. Session cookies are those cookies that will expire when the session is over. Third-party cookies are the cookies that are installed by third-party services being used on the website.
• Cookie Duration – This is the time duration the cookies will be active on the browser. The easiest way to find out the duration of a cookie is from the developer console of the browser.
• Cookie Sensitivity – Cookies are either necessary or non-necessary. The necessary cookies are those cookies that, as the name indicates, are absolutely necessary for the website to function in its intended way. The users do not have the control to disable this category of the cookies. The non-necessary cookies are those cookies whose scripts need to be added in the plugin and that the users can enable/disable.
• Head Scripts/Body Scripts – This is where the scripts related to the cookies are to be added. If the scripts are added in the Head Scripts field, the scripts, on user consent, will be rendered in the head of the website and the scripts will be rendered in the body if added in the Body scripts area.

The screenshot below shows an example of adding Google Analytics cookies to the Cookie list from the Add New Cookie Type page:

After all the details have been added as above, click on the update button and the cookie will be added to the Cookie List.