Find out why visitors do not see an announcement after you edit a legal page

The Update Notices kit in TermsFeed AutoTerms announces a legal page only after a real edit within the chosen period. The bar lists published legal pages whose last change falls within "How long to keep the announcement bar", 3 days by default. A page you only published, an old change, and a closed notice hide the bar by design. So does a logged-in session while "Disable for logged-in users" is "yes", the default. Rule them out before you change any setting.

One request shows whether the kit has anything to announce to this browser. Close every private window, open a new one, open DevTools, type admin-ajax in the Network filter, and load a page of your WordPress website. Select the POST request, open its Payload tab to find action: wpautoterms_check_updates, then its Response tab. A response of {"data":[]} means the kit has nothing to announce to that browser, and a message inside data means the notice has content to show. No such request at all usually means the kit is off, or the page was built for a logged-in user while "Disable for logged-in users" is "yes". A red error in the Console tab that names wpautoterms.js means the notices script did not run.

Cause 1: The page was only published, or saved within 60 seconds of publishing

A legal page you only published, or saved within 60 seconds of publishing, does not get an Update Notice. The kit announces only the later changes to a published legal page.

Settle this cause with a controlled edit. The Last Effective Date column of the All Legal Pages screen shows only the day of the last save. A date equal to the publish date fits a page nobody edited, an edit in the first minute, and a real edit later that day.

Make a real edit after the first minute, then check the announcement as a logged-out visitor. Read which updates the kit announces in Announce Legal Page Updates in WordPress.

  1. Open the legal page and make the change you want to announce.
  2. Click the "Update" button more than 60 seconds after the page was published.
  3. Close every private window, then check the announcement in a new one, where you are logged out.

Cause 2: The change is older than "How long to keep the announcement bar"

The bar announces a change only during the period set in "How long to keep the announcement bar", so an edit older than that period shows nothing. The choices are 24 hours, 3 days, 10 days, and 30 days. A page edited 4 days ago has already left the default period.

Read the Last Effective Date on the All Legal Pages screen. A date earlier than the chosen period means the change is too old to announce.

Choose a longer period on the Update Notices screen.

  1. Open the Update Notices screen from TermsFeed > Compliance Kits and choose a longer period.
  2. Click the "Save Changes" button and clear the page cache.

For a change older than 30 days, edit the legal page again to start a new period.

Cause 3: You closed the Update Notice for this change

Clicking the "Close" link stores a cookie for each page the notice lists, and the notice stays hidden in that browser until the page changes again or 7 days pass. Each cookie is named wpautoterms-update-notice-<post ID> and holds the time of the change it dismissed. After 7 days, the notice returns only while the change still falls within a period of "10 days" or "30 days".

The Application tab of DevTools shows the dismissal cookies. Expand Cookies, select the domain of your WordPress website, and look for wpautoterms-update-notice- followed by the post ID of the page. The post ID is the number after post= in the edit screen address of the page.

Close every private window, open a new one, and load the page there, where no dismissal cookie exists yet. Each visitor sees the next real edit, whatever they closed before. Your normal window, where you are logged in, shows the bar again only after a setting change and a deleted cookie.

  1. Set "Disable for logged-in users" to "no" on the "Update Notices of Legal Pages" settings screen, and click the "Save Changes" button.
  2. Right-click the wpautoterms-update-notice- cookie in the Application tab of your normal window, and delete it.
  3. Reload the page.

Cause 4: You are logged in to WordPress while you test

The Update Notice hides from every logged-in user while "Disable for logged-in users" is "yes", which is the default. You test while logged in to WordPress, so the bar never appears for you.

Close every private window, then load the page in a new one, which starts logged out. The bar shows there and not in your normal window. In the page source of your normal window, search for wpautoterms_js_update_notice: a "disable":"1" value there points to this cause, and an empty value rules it out.

Run each later test logged out, after you close every private window and open a new one, so you see the page as your visitors get it. Change the setting to see the bar while logged in.

  1. Open the "Update Notices of Legal Pages" settings screen from the "Configure" button in its box on TermsFeed > Compliance Kits.
  2. Set "Disable for logged-in users" to "no" and click the "Save Changes" button.
  3. Clear the page cache.

Cause 5: The Update Notices kit is off

The Update Notices kit is off after install, so no edit produces a notice until you turn it on. A page cached while the kit was on still sends the check, which returns {"data":[]} while the kit is off.

The Compliance Kits screen shows the kit state. Its Update Notices of Legal Pages box shows "Disabled", and the page source does not hold wpautoterms-update-notice-placeholder.

Turn the kit on, then make an edit for it to announce.

  1. Click the "Enable" button in the Update Notices of Legal Pages box.
  2. Clear the page cache.
  3. Edit a published legal page, close every private window, and check the notice in a new one.

Cause 6: The legal page is a draft or private

The kit announces published legal pages only, so a change to a draft, a private page, or a scheduled page does not show an Update Notice. Visitors do not see those pages, so there is nothing to announce to them.

Read the Status column on the All Legal Pages screen. The column shows draft, private, or future instead of publish, and the Shortcode column shows "N/A".

Publish the page first, then make the change you want announced. Publish and update legal pages with Edit and Publish WordPress Legal Pages.

  1. Open the page in the editor and publish it from the Publish box. Click the "Publish" button on a draft. On a private page, click "Edit" next to "Visibility", select "Public", click "OK", and click the "Update" button. On a scheduled page, click "Edit" next to the scheduled date, set the current date and time, click "OK", and save the page.
  2. Make the change you want to announce more than 60 seconds later, and click the "Update" button.
  3. Close every private window and check the notice in a new one.

Cause 7: A firewall or security rule blocks admin-ajax.php for visitors

A page served from a cache asks your WordPress website for the current notices, so a firewall or security rule that blocks admin-ajax.php for logged-out visitors does not show the bar. The same request runs on the first page view of every visitor. Allowing the request for every visitor is safe, because the response holds only notices that a visitor sees anyway.

The Network and Console tabs show the blocked request. Close every private window, open a new one, open DevTools on the Network tab filtered on admin-ajax, and load the page. A status of 403 or 503, or a response that is an HTML challenge page, means a rule blocks the request. The Console tab shows [WPAutoTerms][UpdateNotice] Query error or [WPAutoTerms][UpdateNotice] Response is not an object.

As the site owner, allow the admin-ajax.php request that fetches the notices for logged-out visitors.

  1. Allow POST requests to /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php with action=wpautoterms_check_updates from logged-out visitors in your firewall, security plugin, or content delivery network (CDN) rules.
  2. Clear the page cache, close every private window, and open a new one. Open DevTools on the Network tab filtered on admin-ajax, load the page, and confirm that the request returns status 200.

A developer confirms the fix from the command line. Replace example.com with your domain, and expect a JSON response that starts with {"data":.

curl -X POST -d "action=wpautoterms_check_updates" https://example.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php

A cached page shows the bar a moment after it loads, because the page waits for this response. Check how the bar works behind a page cache in WordPress Caching Plugins.

How to verify that the Update Notice appears

A working kit shows the bar to a logged-out visitor after a real edit, and hides it once that visitor clicks the "Close" link. Make the edit yourself, so you know its time.

  1. Open a published legal page, change its text, and click the "Update" button more than 60 seconds after it was published.
  2. Close every private window, open a new one, open DevTools on the Network tab filtered on admin-ajax, and load a page of your WordPress website.
  3. Confirm the bar. With the default message, it reads "Our Privacy Policy has been updated on" and the date, with the title of the page you edited in place of "Privacy Policy". Pages changed on the same date share 1 message from "Message for multiple updated pages".
  4. Select the admin-ajax request in the Network tab and confirm that its response lists the message under data.
  5. Click the "Close" link, reload, and confirm that the bar stays closed and that the Application tab holds a wpautoterms-update-notice- cookie.