Cookie Cuttr

Show a cookie consent banner across your client-facing pages and keep a dated record of every accept and decline.

What it does

Cookie consent rules mean a visitor to your client area or public pages needs to see a banner before you can rely on cookies for anything beyond the essentials, and you need to be able to show that they were asked. Cookie Cuttr adds that banner to your Blesta installation without any template edits, and quietly keeps a dated log of every choice a visitor makes, so you have both the consent notice and the record that you asked for it.

Once installed, the banner appears automatically across your client area and any other public-facing Blesta pages (never inside the staff portal), asking the visitor to accept or decline. You write the wording, choose which buttons to show, and decide where the banner sits on the page. Every accept and decline is recorded with the date, the visitor's IP address, and the client account if they were logged in, on a page under your staff Tools menu that you can filter by choice.

Key features

• Consent Banner on Every Client-Facing Page: The banner appears automatically on your client area and public pages, with no template edits and no code to paste anywhere, and it never shows inside the staff portal.
• Your Own Wording and Buttons: Write the banner message yourself and set the exact text on the accept, decline, and reset buttons, or turn any of those buttons off, so the banner reads the way your legal and marketing teams want it to.
• Position and Overlay Control: Show the banner at the top or pin it to the bottom of the page, and optionally darken the page behind it so visitors answer before they browse on.
• Privacy Policy Link Safeguard: Point the banner at your cookie or privacy policy with a site-relative path or a full URL. Until you set one, the banner stays hidden rather than showing visitors a consent notice that links nowhere.
• Choose How Long a Choice Is Remembered: Set how many days a visitor's accept or decline is remembered before the banner asks again, so you can match your own re-consent policy instead of a hardcoded default.
• Cookie Consent Audit Log: Every accept and decline is recorded with the date, the client (or Guest for visitors who are not logged in), their IP address, and the choice they made, listed on a Cookie Consents page under the staff Tools menu and filterable by choice.
• Configurable Log Retention: Set a retention period in days and older consent records are cleared out for you on a daily schedule, or set it to zero to keep your consent history forever.
• Run Your Own Code on Accept, Decline, or No Answer: Attach your own JavaScript to each of the three visitor states, so consent can gate your analytics, remarketing, or chat scripts exactly the way your site needs.
• Advanced Options Passthrough: An advanced field takes extra banner options as plain key and value pairs and applies them after everything else, so an option not exposed as a field is still one line away without touching any code.
• Per-Staff-Group Permissions: The consent log is gated by its own permission, so you decide which staff groups can see it.

Contact Us

If you encounter any issues or have suggestions for improving the plugin, please get in touch with us. We are committed to providing robust updates and welcome customer feedback.

Installing Cookie Cuttr

Before you start

• If you are on the leased (subscription) licence, the Blesta Club Subscription Manager must be installed and your subscription active. The owned and owned-source licences have no such requirement.

1. Upload the files

Upload the extension folder into your Blesta installation so it lands under your Blesta directory at:

plugins/cookie_cuttr/

For example, on a typical install: /var/www/html/blesta/plugins/cookie_cuttr/

2. Install it in Blesta

1. Log in to your Blesta admin area with a staff account that has the Plugins permission, including Install Plugin and Manage Plugin (found under the Settings group in Manage Staff Groups).
2. Go to Settings > Company > Plugins and click the Available tab.
3. Find Cookie Cuttr in the list and click Install.

3. Configure it

There are no API keys and no external accounts to set up, and the daily cleanup task that prunes old consent records registers itself automatically on Blesta's cron. Two things are worth doing before the banner goes live for your visitors:

1. Set your privacy policy link. Back on Settings > Company > Plugins, on the Installed tab, click Manage next to Cookie Cuttr and enter the address of your privacy or cookie policy in Privacy policy link. The banner stays hidden until this is set, so visitors are never shown a consent notice that links nowhere. While you're there, review the banner message, the accept/decline/reset button text, and where the banner sits on the page, then click Save changes.
2. Grant the staff permission for the consent log. Blesta registers a plugin's permissions switched off for most staff groups, so at first only an account with full access may see it. Go to Settings > System > Staff > Staff Groups, edit each staff group that should be able to review consent history, tick the Cookie Consents permission, and save. Skip this and staff in those groups will not see the Cookie Consents entry under Tools.

You're ready to go - see the usage guide for a walkthrough of day-to-day use.

Updating Cookie Cuttr

Upgrading works just like installing: upload the new files over the old ones, then run the upgrade from the same page you installed it on.

1. Back up your current extension files first - good practice before any upgrade.
2. Upload the new version over the existing folder, replacing the old files.
3. Log in to your Blesta admin area and go to Settings > Company > Plugins, on the Installed tab.
4. Find Cookie Cuttr and click Upgrade to run the upgrade.

Your existing banner settings and consent history carry over unchanged.

Version-specific notes

• 2.0.0: Adds a structured settings form for the banner - checkboxes and fields for every option - with a raw JavaScript field kept as an advanced escape hatch, and makes the privacy policy link required: the banner stays hidden until it is set. If you are upgrading from a version before this one, open Manage next to Cookie Cuttr after upgrading and confirm your privacy policy link, since existing installs are migrated with the link left blank. This version also adds a cookie consent audit log under Tools > Cookie Consents, gated by a new staff permission that Blesta registers switched off. Go to Settings > System > Staff > Staff Groups, edit each staff group that should see the log, and tick the Cookie Consents permission, or staff in those groups will not see the new page.

No other changes are needed outside of updating the files. Any breaking changes will be communicated to clients.

Contact Us

If you encounter any issues or have suggestions for improving the plugin, please get in touch with us. We are committed to providing robust updates and welcome customer feedback.

Using Cookie Cuttr

For your staff

The Manage settings page

Settings > Company > Plugins, Installed tab, then Manage next to Cookie Cuttr opens the settings form. It is organised into three sections.

Banner Settings controls what visitors see:

• Privacy policy link is where the banner's policy link points - a site-relative path (/legal/privacy-policy/) or a full address both work. Leave it blank and the banner does not appear at all.
• Analytics-only message switches the banner to a short message about analytics cookies instead of linking to your policy - use it only if that is genuinely accurate for your site.
• Show accept button, Show decline button and Show reset button each turn that button on or off. The reset button does not appear in the initial banner itself - it takes the banner's place once a visitor has already accepted or declined, so they can change their mind later.
• Darken page with overlay dims the rest of the page behind the banner.
• Show banner at the bottom moves the banner from the top of the page to the bottom.
• Remember choice for (days) sets how long a visitor's accept or decline is honoured before the banner asks again.
• Banner message is the text shown in the banner; write your own or leave the built-in default.
• Accept button text, Decline button text and Reset button text set the exact wording on each button.
• Cookie domain lets you set the cookie's domain explicitly, useful if your client area and main site share cookies across subdomains. Leave it blank to use the current domain.

Consent Log holds one option: Retention period (days), which decides how long a recorded consent choice is kept before the daily cleanup task removes it. Set it to 0 to keep your consent history indefinitely.

Advanced (raw JavaScript) is an escape hatch for anyone comfortable with a little JavaScript:

• Additional CookieCuttr options takes extra option key/value pairs in raw JavaScript, applied after everything above, for a setting that is not exposed as its own field.
• Cookies Accepted, Cookies Declined and Hasn't interacted yet each run a JavaScript snippet you write, fired once per page load depending on the visitor's current choice - useful for gating analytics, remarketing, or chat scripts behind consent.

Click Save changes when you are done.

Where the plugin appears in your navigation

Cookie Cuttr adds a Cookie Consents entry to the Tools menu in your admin navigation. This is the only nav link the plugin adds - it does not add anything to the main sections of the admin (Home, Clients, Billing, Packages, Support).

The consent log

Tools > Cookie Consents lists every recorded choice, newest first, with columns for Date, Client (a link to the client's profile, or "Guest" for a visitor who was not logged in), IP Address and Choice. Open the filter panel (the funnel icon at the top right of the box) to narrow the list by Choice - Any, Accepted or Declined - and click Submit; the list updates without reloading the page.

Reviewing what the plugin has registered

Settings > Company > Plugins, Installed tab, then Settings next to Cookie Cuttr opens three read-only tabs describing what the plugin has set up: Automation shows the daily task that prunes old consent records past your retention period, Actions shows the Cookie Consents navigation link described above, and Events shows the page-load hook the banner uses to inject itself into your client-facing pages. Each can be switched off from here if you need to disable it without uninstalling the plugin.

For your clients

The cookie consent banner

The banner appears automatically the first time a visitor reaches your client area or any other public-facing page (it never appears inside the staff portal), once you have set a privacy policy link. It shows your message along with an Accept and a Decline button (whichever you have turned on), positioned and styled the way you configured on the Manage page. Choosing either one records the choice and dismisses the banner; it will not appear again until the number of days you set in Remember choice for (days) has passed. If you turned on the reset button, a small link takes its place afterward so a visitor can change their mind at any time.

Good to know

• The banner is per company. On a multi-company install, each company has its own settings, its own privacy policy link, and its own consent log.
• A visitor's choice is recorded against their client account only if they are logged in at the moment they click; otherwise it is recorded as a Guest.
• The banner and the JavaScript hooks you write on the Manage page load as three independent pieces on the page, so a mistake in your own JavaScript cannot take the banner itself, or the consent log recording, down with it.