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Cookie Consent Pro

Cookie Consent Pro is part of Brainrune Pixel Tracking Pro, a separate plugin that adds to the free Cookie Consent. Nothing on the free screens is locked, and the free plugin keeps working without it.

There are two ways to get it:

  • A Cookie Consent Pro licence: covers Cookie Consent only.
  • A Pixel Tracking Pro licence: covers Pixel Tracking Pro and Cookie Consent Pro, on the same sites.

See the prices.

Install Pro

Section titled “Install Pro”

  1. Make sure the free Brainrune Cookie Consent is installed and active, version 1.8.0 or newer.

  2. Upload Brainrune Pixel Tracking Pro in Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin and activate it.

  3. Open Cookie Consent > Licence. Paste your Licence key and click Activate.

  4. The new tabs appear: Blocking, Cookie scan, Regions and A/B test. Pro panels carry a PRO mark.

Updates for Pro come through wp-admin while the licence runs. Each release is signed, and the plugin refuses a package that is not.

Automatic blocking

Section titled “Automatic blocking”

The Blocking tab holds 45 known services until the visitor allows their category: analytics and ad pixels (Hotjar, Clarity, Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn and more), chat, forms and email tools, and maps, video, music, social embeds and Google Fonts. Payments and spam checks are known too, and left running so checkout and forms keep working.

  • Hold known services until consent: pages are checked as they are sent, and scripts and frames from known services are held.
  • Found on this site: services seen in your pages so far, each with its Waits for category. The list grows as visitors open more pages and after each cookie scan.
  • Your own rules: a domain, optionally with a path, and a category, for a service that is not in the list.

To keep one script running, add data-no-block to its tag. To check a page without blocking, add ?brl_consent_noblock=1 to its address while signed in. See Blocking scripts.

Section titled “Cookie scan”

The Cookie scan tab shows what your site really sets, before and after consent.

  1. Click Start scan. The plugin reads your pages at once (the quick scan), then keeps collecting on real visits until the end of the Collection window. Starting a scan clears the previous results and purges the page cache once, so the collector reaches visitors.

  2. While it runs, the tab shows Collecting on real visits and how long is left. Stop now ends it early.

  3. Look at Set before consent first. These appeared in visits where consent had not been given. Each one is a thing to fix, not to document. Block it holds the service until the visitor allows its category; run the scan again afterwards to confirm.

  4. Under Inventory, name anything Not recognised once: Name, Provider, Purpose, Category and Duration, then Save classifications. The answers survive the next scan.

A cookie seen by fewer than three browsers and not by the server is marked unverified, and stays off the cookie table until it is confirmed. Browsers of signed-in staff are not collected.

Scan on its own runs Every week, Every month or Only when I start one. Each automatic scan reads your pages at once, then collects on real visits. Results add to what earlier scans found, so the cookie table on your policy page only grows. Items not seen for 90 days are dropped.

The report email

Section titled “The report email”

At the end of each scan you get an email: what was found, what is new since the last scan, and what to do next, each linked to its screen. Preview the email shows it, and Send it to me now sends it to your address. If it does not arrive, check that the site can send mail, for example with an SMTP plugin.

Section titled “The cookie table”

Paste [brl_consent_cookie_table] into your privacy policy page. It lists each cookie, who sets it, why and for how long, with each provider’s logo, and rebuilds itself after every scan.

Section titled “The consent log”

Pro keeps a record of each choice: the date, an anonymous visitor ID, the policy version and what was allowed. It is your proof of consent for an audit or a complaint.

On the Dashboard, the Proof of consent panel exports it as CSV. Period: Last 30 days, Last 12 months or Everything kept. Click Export consent log (CSV).

The same answer from the same browser within a day updates its row instead of adding one.

Visitor choices and the cost of refusals

Section titled “Visitor choices and the cost of refusals”

The Dashboard gains two panels:

  • Visitor choices: over the last 30 days, how many accepted all, chose some or refused, and how each category did, week by week.
  • What the refusals cost: orders of the last 30 days whose buyer refused marketing. Ad platforms never see these sales, so campaigns look weaker than they are. A clearer banner, tested on the A/B tab, is the lawful way to lower this number.

Regions

Section titled “Regions”

The Regions tab, panel Ask only where the law asks:

  • Decide the banner by country: the country comes from your CDN or host. Cloudflare adds it. When it is unknown, the full banner shows.
  • Countries that get the full banner: two-letter codes separated by commas. EU stands for every EU and EEA country.
  • Everywhere else: The full banner too, or No banner, everything allowed (no choice is recorded).

The tab tells you which country your host reports for your own visit. If no country header arrives, it says so: turn on IP geolocation in Cloudflare, or ask your host for a country header.

A/B test

Section titled “A/B test”

The A/B test tab shows half the visitors a second banner. Each visitor gets A or B at random and keeps it.

  • Test a second banner: turns the test on.
  • Banner B uses your normal banner and changes only the fields you fill in: the title and text, the button labels, the layout, the position and the button styles. Empty fields stay as in A.
  • Results, last 30 days shows both banners side by side. The tab names a winner only once the gap is unlikely to be chance, and each banner needs at least 100 answers first.

Rejecting must stay as easy in B as in A. Test wording and layout, not a hidden reject button.

WPML and Polylang

Section titled “WPML and Polylang”

With WPML or Polylang, every banner text becomes a translatable string, so each language of the shop gets its own banner.

If the licence runs out

Section titled “If the licence runs out”

Blocking, the consent log, regions and automatic scans keep running with the saved settings, because they are a promise made to visitors. Only the Pro tabs wait for the licence. A notice on the plugin screens links to the Licence tab, and the site administrator gets one email when the licence goes off.