A frequently asked question by new Complianz users is ‘Why is my banner not showing on the front-end of my site?’. Quite the disappointment if you have just fully configured the Complianz wizard and beautifully styled your Complianz cookie banner. Luckily, the solution is often simple:
1. Check your Complianz dashboard
The banner will only start showing if the wizard has been completed. Even then, the answers you gave in the wizard may be such that no cookie banner is required. Please check the following:
- You have completed the wizard at least once.
- You do not have the option “disable cookie banner” enabled in the banner settings
- You have enabled at least one of the following:
- If you have selected no statistics tool, or configured it anonymously, you can answer the question “Do you want to ask consent for statistics?” with yes.
- Check if you have selected ‘yes’ on the question if you use third party services or social media. If you didn’t select a third party service or social media, you can answer the question “You have stated that you don’t use third-party services. Do you use plugins that might set marketing cookies?” with “yes”.
- Setting one of the above to yes should ensure a cookie banner.
You should now see on your dashboard a success notice:
“Your site needs a cookie banner, which has been enabled.”
2. Ensure that your browser does not send a DNT (Do Not Track) signal
You might have the option “Respect Do Not Track settings in browsers” enabled in the plugin, found under Complianz > Wizard > General > Security & Consent.
With this option enabled, and when the plugin detects a Do Not Track signal from the browser (which browsers such as Firefox have enabled by default), the plugin will automatically assume all your cookie preferences to be “denied”, and doesn’t display a banner as a result.
Disabling that option in Complianz, or disabling the “Send a Do Not Track” option in your browser (usually found in the Privacy or Cookies settings) will resolve this behavior and result in the Cookie Banner appearing.
You can verify whether the plugin detected a Do Not Track signal from your browser, by visiting your site and checking if the Console contains the message “Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track detected: no banner”.
3. Empty your site cache
If you are using a caching plugin, the old version of your site (without a cookie banner) is probably cached. Clear the cache(s) of these plugins and try again, if you use a CDN, please refresh this as well. While you’re at it, please use the below tip as well:
4. Visit your site in an incognito/private window
Just like your webserver can cache your site without our cookie banner, your browser cache can interfere as well! Using an incognito or private window (depending on the browser you are using) circumvents the browser cache. With most browsers, you can use command + shift + N, or for Windows: control + shift + N to open a private window. It is generally a good idea to use this trick while applying changes to a live site, to prevent looking at an ‘older’ version of your site.
5. (Premium) Are you visiting the site from a configured region?
This one is commonly overlooked by Premium users working from outside one of the supported regions. If you have enabled GeoIP (under Complianz -> Settings) and for example are configuring a site just for the CCPA/United States, you won’t see the cookie banner if you are working from Europe.
There are several ways to check how your banner looks in a different region:
- Use a VPN
- Use an application like Browserstack.
- Temporarily disable GeoIP (Complianz -> Settings) and other regions (Wizard -> General -> Regions).
To check if you’re using the correct region if the above is applicable is open your browser console (ctrl/cmd + shift + i) for Chrome, and under Console, you will find three options:
1. Opt-in (EU, UK, and sometimes Canada)
2. Opt-out (USA, and sometimes Canada)
3. Other region, no cookie warning. (e.g. Mexico)
The one specified in your console is the banner you should expect. With option 3, no banner will show.
6. Uploads directory write protected
If you see one of the following errors:
Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 404 (Not Found)
or
Refused to apply style from 'domain.com/wp-content/uploads/complianz/css/banner-1-optin.css' because its MIME type ('text/html') is not a supported stylesheet MIME type, and strict MIME checking is enabled.
The cookie banner css is not created. In most cases this means that the uploads directory is write protected. To resolve this, please read this article about folder permissions.
7. Check your console for errors
If you still did not spot your cookie banner from the front-end of your site, there could be some other problem. You can investigate by right-clicking on your site (front-end) -> Inspect -> Console. If you see any errors in red, this could direct us to possible causes of the cookie banner problem. If you need help interpreting console errors, please contact support.
In 90% of the cases, the problem should be solved by now. Though you could identify the following errors in your console:
- Rest API errors. Complianz uses the Rest API, so if you or a security plugin has blocked access to the Rest API the banner will not appear.
- Error with reCaptcha, or greCaptcha. Disabling the reCaptcha integration should do the trick. This is caused by a dependency issue in another plugin, theme, or compatibility issue. Please ask support for guidance.
- 404 error, this might indicate an installation issue or server-side problem. Try reinstalling Complianz, as the files might not be installed properly the first time.
- Nothing happening at all: if you don’t see functional cookies being allowed (“fire cmplz_event_functional), Complianz might not be activated at all or javascript is not allowed.
8. Your site uses high z-index values
Some themes (or developers 😉 ) use very high z-index values. Z-index is used to indicate which element should appear above the other. There might be nothing wrong with your cookie banner, but if your site uses very high z-index values, the banner could be ‘hidden’ below other elements. The default z-index of the Complianz cookie banner is 9999. There are two ways to solve this problem, or to test if z-index is indeed the problem:
-
- Lower z-indexes for other elements of your site (if you know how)
- Increase the z-index of the cookie banner. You can do this by enabling custom CSS via Complianz -> Cookie banner -> Enable custom CSS.
You can paste the following CSS in the window that appears, and increase the value:.cmplz-cookiebanner{z-index:9999;}
If your cookie banner still isn’t appearing, please contact support. We’re happy to help you solve the mystery!
9. You’re using GEO IP and IP Masking
When you’re using localhost or a server that is configured with strict privacy settings. It is likely IP addresses are masked and changed server-side to a localhost IP. This means all users have the same IP, 127.0. 0.1. This will result in a console log explaining the region is not available and no cookie warning is enabled. This log is available in your browser console if you want to check.
If this is the case on localhost, we suggest enabling a default banner for “other regions” in the wizard, the very first section and question. If you’re on a production site, the privacy settings are actually preventing specific consent management and fall under legitimate interest. Disabling these settings requesting the actual IP addresses is necessary.
