Everything about how the banner looks is on the Banner tab, and a live preview shows the real banner as you change it. This guide covers the switch, the shape, the colours and the preview.
Where to find it:
AiX Consent, Banner tab. The live preview sits near the bottom, under the Save the banner button.
The switch:
The first box, The switch, has one tick box: Show the banner and block trackers on this site. Until it is ticked, nothing is asked and nothing is held back. Everything else on the tab can be set up first, so you can design the banner in peace and switch it on when you are happy. Press Save the banner after ticking it.
Shape and place:
Choose one of three shapes.
- A box. Sits in a corner. The least intrusive, and what most sites use.
- A bar. Spans the whole width, top or bottom. Hard to miss.
- In the middle. Front and centre, over the page. Use it when the answer really must be given.
Then set.
- Where it sits: Bottom left, Bottom right, Bottom, centred or Top. A bar ignores left and right and uses top or bottom only.
- Corner rounding: from 0 to 30. The default is 14.
- Text size: from 11 to 20. The default is 14.
- Dim the page behind the banner: darkens the page while the banner is open.
- This is a dark banner: adjusts the dividing lines for a dark background. The colours themselves are set under Colours.
A good start is A box, Bottom left, rounding 14 and text size 14, which is how the plugin ships.
Colours:
Under Colours there are six one-press looks: Clean Light, Midnight, Soft Slate, Ocean, Forest and High Contrast. Pressing one fills in the six colour pickers and the dark banner tick for you, and you can change any single colour afterwards. Nothing is saved until you press Save the banner.
The six pickers are.
- Background: the banner and panel background.
- Text: the wording.
- Buttons: the Accept all and Reject all buttons.
- Button text: the words on those buttons.
- Quiet button: the Choose cookies button.
- Quiet button text: the words on it.
Accept and Reject are always equal:
Accept all and Reject all share one style on purpose, so there is no setting that makes one stand out and the other fade. The third button, Choose cookies, is the quiet one, because it opens the choices panel instead of making a decision.
On the What it says part of the tab, Show the reject button is ticked from the start, and the screen asks you to think hard before turning it off. Show a close X adds an X to the banner, and pressing it counts as rejecting everything, never as accepting.
The live preview:
The preview is the real banner. It uses the same stylesheet your visitors load, so what you see is what they get. It changes as you type the wording, pick colours, move the rounding or text size, and switch shape or position. The only difference from your site is that it sits inside the screen, so it cannot float over your admin.
Above the preview, the Light page and Dark page buttons put a light or dark page behind it, so you can check the banner against both kinds of site.
A real example:
Juniper Lane Pottery tried two other looks before saving. First A bar with the Midnight look on a Dark page, then In the middle with the Ocean look on a Light page. Neither was saved, because nothing is saved until Save the banner is pressed. They kept A box with Clean Light, which matches the cream and orange of their site.
On a phone:
On a narrow screen the box spreads across the bottom of the screen and the three buttons stack one above the other, so each one is easy to tap.
Step by step:
- Open the Banner tab.
- Under Shape and place, click A box, A bar or In the middle, and choose Where it sits.
- Under Colours, press one of the six looks, then adjust any picker.
- Watch the live preview, and try Light page and Dark page.
- Press Save the banner. Visitors see the change from their next page load.
Tips:
- Keep enough contrast between Buttons and Button text. High Contrast is a quick way to check readability.
- If your site has a dark header or footer, try the Dark page preview before you choose.
- Clear your page cache after saving if you use a caching plugin, so every visitor gets the new look.
Next steps:
Write the words in Banner Wording, Policy Links And Ten Languages, and see The Five Cookie Categories Explained for the panel behind Choose cookies.