Help and setup

Get CookieFlame Pro running in a few minutes, and find answers to common questions.

Install CookieFlame Pro

  1. Make sure the CookieFlame plugin, version 5.1.0 or newer, is installed and active.
  2. Download CookieFlame Pro from the Downloads tab on your account page.
  3. In WordPress, go to Plugins > Add New Plugin > Upload Plugin, choose the zip file, click Install Now, then Activate.
  4. Copy your licence key from the Licence keys tab and paste it into CookieFlame > Licence, then click Activate.
  5. Open the Cookie Manager and click Auto-Identify All.

Three ways CookieFlame finds cookies

Each one catches cookies the others can miss, so they work best together. Whichever finds a cookie, it lands in the same place: your Cookie Manager.

Free plugin

Watch for new cookies

As people browse your site, their browsers tell CookieFlame about any cookie it hasn’t seen before. Switch it on in the Cookie Monitoring tab.

Free plugin

Cookie Discovery

Uses your own browser. You click through your site and CookieFlame records the cookies your browser picks up along the way.

Pro

Automatic Site Scan

Once a month, and whenever you ask, cookieflame.com scans your site as a brand-new visitor and records every cookie it sets, including ones set by other companies’ services.

Tools in the Cookie Manager

Find these in CookieFlame > Cookie Manager in WordPress.

Pro

Automatic Site Scan

Your first scan starts when you click the scan button at the top of the Cookie Manager. After that, your site is scanned again once a month, and you can run one yourself whenever you add something new. The scan opens up to 40 of your public pages in a clean browser, accepts your banner and lists every cookie. New cookies are added to your Cookie Manager and identified for you. About the scanner.

Pro

Tidy up

After a scan, Pro compares what it found with your cookie list and offers to tidy it in one click. Cookies that only visitors’ browsers reported, and your site never set, usually come from browser extensions, so they move to Permanently Ignored. Cookies nobody has seen for 90 days, usually left behind by a plugin you’ve removed, come off your banner. Anything you’ve marked Kept is left alone, and you can undo a tidy-up.

Pro

Identify these now

If some cookies still say Not identified yet, a line above them says how many, with an Identify these now button. Click it and Pro asks the CookieFlame service what they are, then fills in each one as the answer arrives.

Pro

Lock as correct

Once you’ve checked a cookie and you’re happy with it, click Lock as correct. CookieFlame then leaves it exactly as it is, even when you re-identify your cookies.

Free plugin

Remove…

Remove… asks why first. If your site doesn’t use the cookie any more, it comes off your list, and comes back if it’s ever seen again. If it isn’t from your site at all, it’s hidden for good on the Permanently Ignored list.

Using Google Tag Manager

CookieFlame tells Google Tag Manager what each visitor has agreed to, so your tags can follow their choice. In WordPress, go to CookieFlame > Tag Managers, enter your container ID (it looks like GTM-A1B2C3D), then remove Tag Manager from your theme or other plugins so it’s only added once. (Or leave the ID blank and keep it where it is. Just don’t do both.)

  • Basic (the default): in the EU, UK and other countries that get the banner that asks first, Tag Manager waits until the visitor allows Analytics or Marketing. Your usual All Pages triggers work. In the US and countries with no banner, everything is allowed from the first page (Marketing stays off if the visitor’s browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal), so Tag Manager loads straight away.
  • Advanced: Tag Manager and Google’s own tags load before the visitor chooses, with consent set to “denied”, and send Google measurements without cookies while consent is denied, including after a visitor declines (AdSense and some Floodlight requests still wait for Marketing). Other page-view tags need a cookie_consent_update trigger to run on the page where the visitor agrees. If you moved a Google Analytics or Tag Manager cookie to a stricter category in the Cookie Manager, Tag Manager and Google’s tags wait for that category, even in Advanced mode.

In both modes, give every tag in Tag Manager a consent setting. Google’s own tags (Google tag, Analytics, Ads, Floodlight, Conversion Linker): choose No additional consent required. Every other tag: require ad_storage for advertising, analytics_storage for analytics. Not sure? Require ad_storage: the tag then runs only when the visitor allows Marketing.

Read the step-by-step Tag Manager guide, with each kind of tag, how to test in Tag Assistant and common mistakes.

Licences and troubleshooting

On the old website, open CookieFlame > Licence in WordPress and click Deactivate Licence. You can also remove websites from the Licence keys tab on your account page. Then activate the same key on the new website.

Open the Licence keys tab on your account page and choose View upgrades next to your key. You only pay the difference for the rest of your year, and your key stays the same.

Your cookie banner keeps working, tracking stays blocked until visitors agree, and the cookies Pro has already identified stay on your list. What stops is the automatic part: Pro no longer identifies new cookies, the Automatic Site Scan stops, and you won’t get Pro updates. Renew from your account at any time to switch it all back on.

Test sites running on your own computer do not count. Live websites, and test copies that anyone can visit online, each use one place on your plan.

If your website uses Cloudflare, turn off its Rocket Loader setting, because it interferes with how CookieFlame holds scripts back. CookieFlame shows a warning in your dashboard when it spots this. Then clear your caching plugin so visitors get the updated pages.

Usually not. When you change your blocking rules or tag manager ID, CookieFlame clears your caching plugin for you. That’s normally within a few minutes, or within an hour if it cleared recently. It relies on WordPress’s scheduled tasks running. If you use a CDN, or your host has its own cache, clear that yourself.

Showing the thumbnail would mean contacting YouTube before the visitor has agreed, so CookieFlame shows a play button and says what will load. The video loads when the visitor agrees or clicks the placeholder. Some players, such as Elementor’s video widget, reload the page once to start it.

When a visitor takes back consent they gave earlier, CookieFlame reloads the page once. That is the only reliable way to stop tracking tags that are already running. Their other open tabs pick up the new choice too.

Yes. CookieFlame looks up each visitor’s country to show the right banner. From version 5.4.3 it answers that lookup as soon as it loads, before your other plugins start, so a plugin that blocks the REST API for visitors doesn’t get in the way. The answer contains only the visitor’s own country, nothing about your website. If something else still blocks it, CookieFlame works out the country from the visitor’s time zone instead.

Developers who need every plugin to see that request can turn this off by adding define( 'COOKIEFLAME_EARLY_GEO', false ); to wp-config.php, above the “That’s all, stop editing” line.

Every order on the Orders tab of your account page links to a downloadable invoice.

Need a hand with something else? Send us a message.