Understanding cookie banners

A cookie banner is a website pop-up that gives site visitors the option to give or deny permission for the website to track their activity using cookies. Some types of cookies are necessary for the operation of the site, while others, like analytics or marketing cookies, help organizations gather data on user behavior.

All cookies that are set by NationBuilder directly are strictly necessary for site functionality. If you connect a payment processor, the processor will also likely set cookies that are required for its operation.

Other embedded features or tools you might add to your site, like externally hosted videos or analytics tracking, will add marketing or analytics cookies. Typically, site visitors should be able to opt out of these types of cookies. Using Cookiebot's "Explicit consent" setting (described below), no optional cookies will be tracked until the site visitor has provided explicit permission for them to be tracked. If they opt out, this data will never be tracked for them.

Set up your Cookiebot account

Create a Cookiebot account

In your NationBuilder control panel:

Under Website > Site settings > Cookie banner, select the Cookiebot cookie banner radio button
When you enable this radio button, you will see a banner message with a link to "Create a free Cookiebot account to get started." Click this link to sign up for a new account.

Please sign up directly through the link in your control panel to create your Cookiebot account. This will allow our customer support team to assist you with any questions you may have about your Cookiebot account.

📌 Note: Cookiebot accounts are free up to 100 live pages. For larger websites, please see their pricing tiers here.

Configure your Cookiebot banner settings

In your Cookiebot account:

When you create a new account, the first section you'll land on is Domains. Add your website's domain (ex: www.awesomeorganization.com) to this field.

With a free account, your website will automatically be scanned for any cookie updates on a Monthly cadence.
Under the Dialog section, you will be able to determine where you would like your banner to appear on your website, how you would like the consent options to be displayed to your users, and which Accept/Reject buttons you would like to display. Please refer to your regional legislative requirements for cookie consent if you are not sure which format(s) will be compliant.

You can click the first "Preview" icon in the sidebar to see preview your cookie banner layout overlaid on the Cookiebot setup screen.

📌 Note: The settings on the Declaration tab are only accessible to you if you subscribe to a Premium Cookiebot account (which requires payment). Please see the FAQ section below for further information.
The Content section is where you determine what text you want to display to site visitors, including the names of your buttons and general cookie information. You will return to this section after you've configured your cookie declaration page.

All content will be pre-filled for you, but please consult your legal team and/or regional legislation for guidance on cookie consent language.

Do not proceed to the next step until your scan is complete.

Give Cookiebot time to audit the cookies on your website. This process may take up to 24 hours. The Cookiebot interface will tell you when your scan is complete and you will receive an email notification.
Once your scan is complete, go to the Cookies section where you will see a list of all of the cookies that were identified on your website. Here, you can reclassify any "Unclassified" cookies. You can find a list of the necessary NationBuilder cookies you may see loaded on your site here.
Back in the Settings section, you will find the Domain Group ID from the Your scripts tab required to add your Cookiebot cookie banner to your NationBuilder website. Copy this ID number

Enable the cookie banner on your site

In your NationBuilder control panel:

Paste this ID exactly (make sure you don't add any spaces!) into the Cookiebot Domain Group ID field in your NationBuilder account.

📌 Note: Leave the "Cookie-blocking mode" set to Auto. This is the setting that allows Cookiebot to automatically identify all of the cookies that are being loaded on your website .
Click the "Save cookie banner settings" button to add your Cookiebot cookie banner to your website. Depending on what format you've selected, the cookie banner on your website should look something like this:

Create a cookie declaration page

Get the declaration script from Cookiebot

In your Cookiebot account:

Under Setting > Your Scripts, copy the second script provided on that page. You will never need to use the first script; this is loaded for you automatically in your NationBuilder website.

Create your declaration page

In your NationBuilder control panel:

In the website where you've added a cookie banner, create a new Basic page named something like, "Cookie Declaration."
Once you've created your page, navigate to the Template tab and click the "Create a custom template" button.
Delete all of the content in your page's template, and replace it with the cookie declaration script you copied from Cookiebot. The result should look like this:

📌 Note: In some themes, this may result in the content extending out past the typical margins, to the edge of the page. Instead, you may need to replace the entire content block with this script which will look something like the following:
```
        {% if page.basic.content.size > 0 %}
          <div class="page-content">
            {{ page.basic.content }}
          </div>
        {% endif %}
```
Save and Preview the template to preview the page's appearance, and the Publish the template when you're ready for the page to go live.

The appearance of your live Cookie Declaration page will automatically match your website's theme.
Copy the URL of your published cookie declaration page (ex: https://www.awesomeorganization.com/cookie_declaration)

Add a cookie declaration hyperlink to your banner intro

In your Cookiebot account:

Under Settings > Content, you'll find a section entitled, "General cookie introduction." This text will appear in the "About cookies" section of your cookie banner, and references "the Cookie Declaration on our website" by default.

While you can edit this language, we recommend retaining a reference to your cookie declaration page to make it easy for users to find your Cookie Declaration page.
You can add a hyperlink to your "General cookie introduction" text by highlighting the text you would like to link, and clicking the chain link icon that appears in the toolbar above.
When prompted, paste in the link to the URL of your cookie declaration page as the web address destination for the hyperlink