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Consent plugins

How the plugin's consent source works, what fail-closed means, and how it relates to Google Consent Mode.

updated

Outline — facts still to be confirmed

This article is a structured outline. Its headings and scope are settled; the specific values, screens and steps are marked TODO(owner: verify) until they have been checked against the plugin itself. Blueprint §7 is explicit that no article may state plugin behaviour that has not been verified.

Two different settings

These are frequently confused and they answer different questions.

  • Consent source — where the plugin’s own consent decision comes from. Options are off, the WP Consent API, or a custom cookie.
  • Google Consent Mode — what is communicated to Google’s tags. Options are off, basic and advanced. Covered in Add Google.

Fail-closed

When a consent source is configured, the plugin fails closed: if no consent decision can be found, nothing is sent, browser or server. That is the correct behaviour and it looks exactly like being broken, which is why it is step 6 of Events don’t show.

If you are not running a consent tool, the consent source should be off.

Both halves, together

A consent decision gates the browser event and the server event as one. Gating only the browser half — which is the common failure in this category — leaves the server half running after a visitor has declined.

Outline still to fill

TODO(owner: verify) — confirm which of CookieYes, Complianz, Borlabs Cookie, Cookiebot and ConsentMagic are detected automatically, which require the custom-cookie option, and the cookie name and value format expected for each.

Buffering

TODO(owner: verify) — whether events that occur before a consent decision are held and released on consent, or discarded.

GDPR data requests

TODO(owner: verify) — what the plugin stores that would need to be included in an export or erasure request.

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