Last updated: 4 Feb 2025
Deploy non-emergency global banner
A site-wide (global) banner can be activated to convey important information on GOV.UK which is not deemed emergency-level information. Unlike the emergency banner, we show a user the global banner no more than 3 times, by storing the view count in a cookie.
The configuration for the global banner is contained in the govuk_web_banners gem.
Activate the global banner
- Follow the instructions in the govuk_web_banners README.md
- Make a minor release of the gem.
- Update static with this version of the gem.
- Deploy Static. See the guidance on deploying Static.
As shown in the instructions the banner can be configured ahead of time - it must have a specified start date, but that can be the current date to deploy immediately.
Troubleshoot the banner
- Check that your rollout of Static succeeded, for example by checking when Static was last synced in Argo CD (staging, production).
- Make sure you are looking at the same environment where you deployed your change to Static.
- Use a fresh private/Incognito window so that your testing is not affected by browser state such as cookies or cache.
- Wait 5–10 minutes for caches to expire, then repeat the previous step.
If the banner is still not showing, there may be a bug or misconfiguration somewhere. You might be able to work around the problem temporarily until the underlying issue is fixed.
- Try clearing the frontend memcache. Log into the AWS web console for the appropriate environment, find frontend-memcached-govuk under Elasticache, Memcached clusters and press the Reboot button. The UI will ask you to confirm the request.
- Consider clearing the page from the CDN cache. Most pages expire from the CDN cache within 5 minutes so this is unlikely (though not impossible) to be the issue.