Understanding Website Cookies: Purpose and Functionality Explained

Hi Sara, You might never intentionally used cookies on a website but cookies are everywhere. Cookies are just a way to store information or data on a browser. Most of the cookies are super important for the UX of your website. For example, cookies might help with language selection, remembering some user’s input like password, and so on. Just like local storage, cookies are a handy way to store data. You can just access and store data with a simple Javascript line. Now, there are other services you add on your website and they also use cookies to share information with their own database. Those are 3rd party cookies are the main reason why in EU and some other countries we have cookies banners.

Here is a how you can see and understand what cookies are used on some website.

Thank you Sofian B.. I meant that I never added cookies to any sites that I have built

If it's a regular informational site that you don't enter information into do you need to have cookies?

Most of the cookies are not coming from you directly but by service your website is using. You can double check what kind of cookies are stored by following the steps I did on the relume website but this time, on your informational website. If your website is just simple, static, information page, yes, you could probably go cookie less (which is always an option)

Thank you Sofian B.. What about if is website with 2 languages? Then do I need to add cookies?

There are always option to not have any cookies on a website. Depending on the website, the language setting can be stored already in another place. Maybe to better help you, can you share with me what is the problem you have with cookies?

Thank you Sofian B.. No problem. I've seen the popup about cookies come up on many sites, but when I learned web dev I didn't learn anything about cookies, so I'm curious what they are where I should be using them

Long story short: Cookie are just storage on your browser. Nothing bad with cookies until companies like Google and Meta decided to collect more of them to improve ads personalization. They were so good at it that Europe and other countries try to regulate them to protect users. Now, every website must inform users if they are storing 3rd party cookies (the one from Google and Meta). If you use Google analytics, you need a banner. Today, most website owner prefer have a cookie banner instead of trying to use tools that are not shared with 3rd party (3rd party is just a fancy for other. 1st party, the user, second party, the business and 3rd party, everyone else)