ConsentLab

About this Extension

ConsentLab is a lightweight cookie consent manager for Joomla 5 & 6. Display a fully compliant GDPR/ePrivacy consent banner with granular category toggles, block scripts until consent is granted, and log every decision server-side. No SaaS subscription, no bloat.

Key Features:

• Cookie Categories — manage cookie categories in the admin with a pre-seeded set: Strictly Necessary, Analytics, Marketing, and Preferences. Add, edit, or remove categories as needed.
• Consent Banner — system plugin injects a consent banner on every frontend page. Choose from five positions: bottom bar, top bar, corner left, corner right, or centre modal.
• Script Blocking — tag third-party scripts with a data-consentlab attribute and the extension blocks them until the visitor consents to that category. Server-side type-attribute swapping ensures scripts never execute prematurely.
• Granular Toggles — visitors choose exactly which categories to accept. Required categories (e.g. Strictly Necessary) are locked on and clearly indicated.
• Consent Logging — every consent decision is logged server-side via AJAX with timestamp, categories accepted, and anonymised IP. Export to CSV or purge old entries from the admin.
• Consent Versioning — bump the consent version number to automatically re-prompt all visitors when your cookie policy changes.
• Shortcode — use {consentlab manage} in any article or custom HTML module to render a “Manage Cookie Preferences” link.
• JavaScript API — public API on window.ConsentLab with methods to show preferences, check consent, and revoke consent programmatically.
• Style Options — configure banner colours, button colours, toggle colour, and border radius from the admin. All applied via CSS custom properties for easy template-level overrides.
• Accessible — focus trap in the banner, ARIA roles and labels, full keyboard navigation, and prefers-reduced-motion support.
• Lightweight — 5.7 KB gzipped frontend footprint (CSS + JS). Vanilla CSS and JavaScript with zero third-party dependencies.

How It Works:

1. Install the package and the consent banner appears on your site immediately.
2. Review the pre-seeded cookie categories in Components → ConsentLab → Cookie Categories.
3. Tag any third-party scripts with data-consentlab="category-alias" to block them until consent is given.
4. Configure banner position, text, privacy policy link, and style options to match your site.
5. Monitor consent decisions in the Consent Log and export as needed for compliance records.

Package Includes:

• com_consentlab — admin component with cookie categories CRUD, consent log, and configuration options
• plg_system_consentlab — system plugin for banner injection and script blocking
• plg_content_consentlab — content plugin for the {consentlab manage} shortcode

Built on Joomla’s native MVC architecture. No external dependencies, no SaaS subscription.