Knowledge
GDPR cookie banner requirements for WordPress
A cookie banner is more than a notice at the bottom of your site. European regulators look ever more closely at banners that push visitors toward Accept all. These are the requirements a good banner meets, and how to handle them in WordPress.
In short
- Rejecting must be as easy as accepting
- No trackers before someone makes a choice
- Keep proof of consent
Equal choices
Accepting and rejecting should be equally easy: the same size, equally visible and in the same layer of the banner. A bright accept button next to a hidden reject link is a well-known example of a banner that does not comply.
Granular categories
Visitors must be able to choose per purpose, for example necessary, statistics and marketing. Necessary cookies are allowed without consent, the rest are not. Pre-ticked boxes do not count as consent.
- Necessary: always active
- Statistics: only after consent
- Marketing: only after consent
Nothing loads before the choice
Things most often go wrong with scripts that load before anyone has chosen. Spark Cookie Consent scans your site for trackers, pre-fills the categories and keeps scripts blocked until the matching category is accepted. Rejected cookies are cleaned up automatically.
Provable and in your own style
The GDPR requires that you can demonstrate consent. An exportable consent log records who chose what and when. And because a banner that looks like a foreign element inspires less trust, Spark Cookie Consent automatically adopts your site's colors and lets you set everything up with a live preview.
Tip: Test your banner in a private window: open the developer tools, check which cookies are set before you choose, then click Reject. Only necessary cookies should remain.
A GDPR-compliant banner that fits your site?
Frequently asked questions
No. Non-necessary cookies require consent, and consent is only valid if rejecting is as easy as accepting.
If your site has multiple languages, yes. AI copy generates clean banner texts and translations in any language, which you can refine yourself afterwards.
Yes. All Google signals stay on denied until consent is given and are updated as soon as a visitor chooses. This works with GA4 and Tag Manager.