Written 22/06/12

If your site uses Opus you're in the EU then you need think about the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 as amended by Directive 2009/136/EC. It calls for you to bother your visitors asking them if they are happy with you putting cookies on their browser.

You'll have seen this going around the web like a rash lately. It really is a horrible thing to have to do: it gets in the way and unless it really is necessary one shouldn't do it. And, in the case of Opus web sites, we think we can fairly easily get away without using anything other than session cookies at all and thus avoid all the pain.

We currently use permanent cookies for one purpose only: to track visitors on the site.

Now there is an open source technology called Piwik which can be bolted into any web site. It's similar in intent to Google Analytics although some way behind in terms of functionality, however it's still light years ahead of what Opus offers natively. Moreover, unlike Google Analytics, it can do a good job without using cookies. We've been using Piwik on lots of sites for some years now and we're very happy with it.

So, if you think you should make your site compliant, we recommend:

1. downloading the latest opus snapshot tarball from opuscx.org and installing that

2. turning off cookies in "Modify options for ..." in the author menu using the new option that you will find there

3. if you still want to track your visitors install Piwik

Alternatively, if you use permanent cookies for other purposes on your site, or you prefer Google Analytics which leaves a trial of third party cookies, then you are hopefully already looking at your cookie policy and how you are going to make your site compliant with the directive.

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