Written for Cookie Rocks 2.11.0, checked on 6 November 2026. The current version is 2.11.2: some details may have changed.
Your first audit takes about 5 minutes. First you tell Cookie Rocks about your site. Then you read the Overview.
Open the Cookie Rocks menu. The Overview page starts with a Getting started card. It has three steps, each with a Start button that opens the right page. A finished step shows Done, and the card says how many are done, for example “1 of 3 steps done.”
Step 2: tell Cookie Rocks about your site
Your site and your obligations
- Click Start next to Your site and your obligations. The Obligations page opens.
- Under Where is the site owner based?, choose the country of the company, association or person who publishes the site. Cookie Rocks guesses it from the language of your site: check it.
- Under Who are your visitors?, tick the countries you address. The owner’s country is already ticked. The countries come in one block per region. To address a whole region, tick it under Whole regions of the world. For the United States, tick United States for every state, or open United States: only some states.
- Answer What kind of site? (click a tile) and Where is it hosted? Leave Law updates ticked: Cookie Rocks then keeps the rules of your countries up to date.
- Click Show what the law asks of my site.
Tip. Tick a country only if you address its residents. A language alone does not count. Prices in its currency, delivery there, a local domain or ads aimed there do.
You then see a list of points in three groups, each with a coloured label: To do (yellow) first, then Done (green), then Good to know (blue). Your answers count on every page of Cookie Rocks: they decide which laws apply. To change them later, click the pencil icon next to About your site, then Save the answers. See Legal questions.
Cookies
- Go back to the Overview and click Start next to Cookies.
- Click Scan my pages. Your browser opens up to 30 of your pages, one after the other, like a first-time visitor.
- Keep the page open until the scan ends. It takes about a minute.
Cookie Rocks then lists the cookies and browser storage it found, tool by tool, and what loads before the visitor chooses. Nothing leaves your site, and nothing changes for your visitors. The step is done after a first scan. Saving the settings of the page is not enough.
The scan cannot see what appears only after a sign-in, a payment or a change of language. Under Options, Also read the code of your theme and plugins helps find those cookies. It is ticked until you untick it.
If you see “No page of the site could be read”. Your pages may be behind a password, in maintenance, blocked by a firewall, or served by a cache that ignores the scan. Fix that, then scan again. The previous results are kept.
If you see “The analysis stopped. Try again.” Click Scan my pages again, and keep the page open until the end.
Your current banner
- Click Start next to Your current banner. The Consent page opens.
- Read Your cookie banner. It shows what Cookie Rocks could read in your banner, such as Choice kept for or “Reject” on the first layer. “Not readable from your site” means: check it in your banner’s own settings.
- Under Your policies, choose your Privacy policy page and your Cookie policy page.
- Click Save Changes. The step is done.
Your policies also has a Credit box: “Support Cookie Rocks: show a short credit at the bottom of the cookie policy”. With the Audit, it is unticked. Tick it to add one framed sentence under your cookie policy, with a link to Cookie Rocks.
If you have no cookie policy page yet. On the Obligations page, the point A cookie policy has a Create the page button. Cookie Rocks creates a draft called “Cookie policy”, with the [cookie_rocks_policy] shortcode, and opens it in the editor. Read it, publish it, then choose it on the Consent page. The shortcode lists the cookies found on your pages, their tools, durations and browser storage, in the language of the page once its language pack is installed.
Put a link to both policies in the footer of your site, so that they are on every page.
Step 3: read the Overview
- Open the Overview page.
- Read the summary at the top. It says “Nothing to fix among what Cookie Rocks can check.” or how many points are left, for example “3 points to fix”.
- Under To fix, take the points one by one. Each starts with a label: Alert (red) for a serious problem, listed first, or To fix (yellow). Each says what to check or to change, in your cookie banner or on your site. Its button takes you to the fix: the first one is the main (blue) button.
- Read Good to know, if it shows. These points need no fix: they say what to check or to mention in your policies.
- Look at Cookies. With the Audit, it has two cards: your Cookie banner and WP Consent API. Each has a short state and one sentence that explains it.
What “To fix” means. Only points that need you appear there. Information goes under Good to know, and points already in order are not listed. When the list is empty, the heading disappears.
If the “Cookie banner” line names the plugin of your banner. It reads “Your banner comes from …. The points above say what it does not do, or what to check in it.” This is information, not a problem. The points to fix, if any, are above it.
The same points appear in Tools > Site Health, in a test titled “Cookie consent needs attention”. When nothing needs fixing, the test reads “Cookie consent is set up correctly”.
Some points need a change in your banner itself, for example a missing “Reject” button, or a tracker that loads before any choice. Fix them in your banner’s settings if it allows it. If it does not, that is what Cookie Rocks Pro is for.
Next step: Adding Cookie Rocks Pro, when the Overview shows points your banner cannot fix. To fix the points one by one, see Fix what the Overview shows.