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Last updated: 5 Apr 2022

Deploy non-emergency global banner

A site-wide banner can be activated to convey important information on GOV.UK which is not deemed emergency level information. Unlike the emergency banner, by default the global banner disappears after someone has seen it three times (controlled by a cookie).

The content of the site-wide banner is contained in app/views/notifications/_global_bar.html.erb in Static.

Activating the global banner

In app/views/notifications/_global_bar.html.erb,

  1. Update the variables title, title_href, link_text and link_href with the relevant info where applicable, otherwise set to false.
  2. Update the show_global_bar variable to true
  3. Optional: set the always_visible boolean to true if banner should not disappear after being seen enough times.
  4. Deploy static

The usual Static deployment rules apply.

screenshot

Add the target page to blocklist

The target page linked to from the banner will automatically hide the banner. Add any other pages that don’t need to show the banner to the urlBlockList in app/assets/javascripts/global-bar-init.js.

Versioning the global banner

The number of times a user has viewed the banner is stored in a global_bar_seen cookie. Once the view count reaches 3, a user will not see the cookie again, even if the banner is re-deployed. The only way a user will see the banner again is if:

  1. the global_bar_seen cookie expires, or
  2. the global banner is versioned

To version the global banner, increase the BANNER_VERSION in global-bar-init.js by one.

Removing the global banner

In app/views/notifications/_global_bar.html.erb:

  1. Update the show_global_bar variable to false
  2. Deploy static