How to Add a Cookies Popup in WordPress for GDPR/CCPA

Did you know that your WordPress site may be setting cookies on your visitors’ browsers? Different regulations, like the European Union’s GDPR, require websites to get user consent before setting any cookies on computers.

The good news is that in WordPress, you can easily set up cookie consent using different plugins. We’ve tested multiple tools and implemented them on our own websites, and we’ve found that the best options are WPConsent and Cookie Notice.

In this article, we will show you how to add a cookies popup in WordPress.

Why Are Cookie Popups Necessary?

Browser cookies are small files containing data sent by a website to store in a user’s browser. Most WordPress websites set cookies for various purposes.

For example, by default, WordPress uses cookies for authentication purposes to store session information for logged-in users. It also sets a cookie when someone leaves a comment on your site.

Apart from these, WordPress plugins can also set their own cookies to store different information or recognize repeat visitors.

You can learn how your site uses cookies by checking our guide on how to know if your WordPress website uses cookies.

While cookies are extremely useful, they can also be used to collect information about a user and share it with third-party advertising platforms.

That’s why, in Europe and a few other countries, website owners are required to let users know about their usage of cookies. If your website targets audiences in those regions, then you need to show a cookie consent disclaimer.

The easiest way to do that is with a WordPress GDPR plugin. WPConsent and Cookie Notice are two of the most popular cookie notification plugins and are compatible with many other popular WordPress plugins.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily display a cookie consent popup in WordPress.

Method 1: Add a Cookie Popup with WPConsent (Recommended)

The best way to add a cookie popup to your WordPress website is by using WPConsent.

WPConsent lets you easily create custom cookie consent popups and banners to match your website’s design.

Plus, unlike most cookie notice plugins that only display warnings, WPConsent actually protects user privacy by automatically blocking all tracking scripts and cookies until visitors give consent. This helps to ensure your site properly follows GDPR legislation.

To get started, you’ll need to install and activate the WPConsent plugin. If you need help, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once the plugin is activated, it will launch the easy onboarding wizard. Go ahead and click the ‘Let’s Get Started’ button to set up the plugin in 5 minutes.

First, you need to copy and paste your license key into the ‘License Key’ field and click the ‘Verify Key’ button. You can find your license key in your account area on the WPConsent website.

After your license key has been verified, click the ‘Scan Your Website’ button.

WPConsent will then scan your entire website for known 3rd-party scripts, core features, and WordPress plugins that may be using cookies.

When the scan is finished, WPConsent will notify you of how many services it found that set cookies. Click the ‘OK’ button to review them.

Now, you can see which services are using cookies on your website. On our test site, it shows that WordPress comments and WPForms are using cookies.

Click the ‘Auto-Configure Selected’ button to automatically import and configure all the cookie and privacy information for the detected services, including their descriptions, cookie durations, and data policy URLs.

Now that the cookie data is configured, you can choose the layout and position of the cookie popup or banner to display on your website.

When you select a layout, you can scroll down the page to see a preview of how it will look.

From here, you can click on the ‘Save & Complete Setup’ if you’re happy with the cookie banner design. Or, you can select ‘Further Configure Banner Styles’ to customize your cookie popup, which is what we’ll do in this tutorial.

Customize Your Cookie Popup Notice

Clicking ‘Further Configure Banner Styles’ will take you to the WPConsent » Banner Design page.

From here, you can change the style of your cookie popup, including the background color, text color, font size, button type, button color, and more.

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button to store your style setting changes.

Then, you can click on the ‘Content’ tab to customize the cookie popup message. You can also scroll down the page to edit the button text, change the button order, and upload a logo or icon.

When you’re happy with the design, click the ‘Save’ button.

Now, you can visit your WordPress website to see how your cookie popup looks live in action.

Add a Cookie Policy to Your WordPress Site

You should also add a cookie declaration to your website’s privacy policy. If you haven’t already created a privacy policy page, then you can follow our guide on how to create a privacy policy page in WordPress.

WPConsent makes creating a cookie policy easy. It automatically scans your website to detect all active cookies, then generates a detailed cookie policy that documents each cookie’s purpose, duration, and type.

To configure the cookie policy, go to WPConsent » Dashboard from your WordPress admin area and click on the ‘Configure’ button next to ‘Cookie Policy.’

This will direct you to WPConsent’s ‘Settings’ page. From here, scroll down the page to the ‘Cookie Policy’ section.

You can select which page you want to use for your cookie policy from the dropdown menu. In this tutorial, we’ll add the cookie declaration to our privacy policy page.

You also need to copy the shortcode that WPConsent provides.

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom of the page.

Next, you just need to edit your privacy policy page and insert the shortcode where you want to display the cookie declaration.

To see the cookie declaration, you need to save and preview the page. This is how the first few paragraphs look on our test website:

Method 2: Add a Cookie Popup with Cookie Notice

You can also add a cookie popup to your WordPress site with Cookie Notice. It’s a free plugin that’s easy to use. However, it’s not as feature-rich as WPConsent.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the Cookie Notice & Compliance for GDPR / CCPA plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, the plugin will start displaying a basic cookies popup to your visitors immediately without any additional configuration. The default message is suitable for most websites.

If you’d like to customize the notification, then you need to visit the Cookies menu item in your WordPress dashboard.

From here, simply scroll down to the Notice Settings section.

On this page, you can customize the popup message and button text.

You can also add a link to your privacy policy page. If you haven’t already created one, then you can follow our guide on how to create a privacy policy page in WordPress.

After that, you can select that page from the Privacy Policy dropdown menu.

The WordPress cookie plugin also gives your visitors the option of refusing and revoking consent.

To do that, just click on the ‘Refuse consent’ and ‘Revoke consent’ checkboxes. The default settings will work for most websites.

If you scroll down to the Notice Design section, then you can choose the position, animation, button style, and colors of your cookie consent popup.

You can also set a button class to add custom CSS for your popup.

Once you’re finished, click on the ‘Save Changes’ button at the end to store your settings.

You can now visit your website to see your cookie consent popup in action.

Bonus: Improve GDPR Compliance with MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights is the best analytics solution for your WordPress site. It’s also the simplest way to improve compliance with GDPR and other privacy regulations.

That’s because MonsterInsights offers an EU Compliance addon that works out of the box. It will automatically change your analytics settings to help you stay in compliance with privacy laws.

The EU compliance addon is included in the premium plan. The best thing is that it automatically integrates with both Cookie Notice and Cookiebot.

You can read our complete MonsterInsights review for more details.

The first step is to install the MonsterInsights plugin and connect it to your Google Analytics account. For more information, see our guide on how to install Google Analytics using MonsterInsights.

Once MonsterInsights is installed and set up, you’ll need to install and activate the EU Compliance addon.

You can do that by navigating to the Insights » Addons page in your WordPress dashboard. Next, find the EU Compliance addon and click on the ‘Install’ button.

The addon will be automatically activated.

You can check this by going to the MonsterInsights » Settings page and switching to the ‘Engagement’ tab.

When you look at the EU Compliance section, you will see that the addon has been turned on.

If you click the down arrow on the right side of the screen, then you can see a detailed list of the configuration changes the addon has made to your website.

For instance, you can see that it automatically anonymizes IP addresses in Google Analytics, disabled demographics, interest reports, disabled UserID tracking, and much more.

Next, you can scroll down to see MonsterInsights compatibility with different cookie plugins like Cookie Notice and CookieBot.

MonsterInsights will automatically change the Google Analytics tracking code if any of the plugins are installed on your site. This way, it will wait for consent before tracking users in Google Analytics.

We hope this article helped you add a cookie consent popup to your WordPress site. You may also want to see our step-by-step guide on how to create a yes/no optin for WordPress and the best popup plugins for WordPress.

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