The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European Union (EU) privacy law that will affect businesses around the world when it goes into effect on May 25, 2018. It’s intended to protect the personal data of residents of the EU. If you do business primarily in the USA, this doesn’t directly pertain to you, but if you happen to collect email list subscribers that live in the EU, for example, you are potentially subject to the regulation with regard to how you store and use any collected information.
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How to minimize WordPress project costs
Any business owner who has a website will begin at some point, to consider some website rehab work—or perhaps a complete overhaul. In the ever-changing world of online marketing, website aesthetics change over time and what seemed super-cool 4 years ago now seems a bit dated. That feeling is more than the changing tides of fashion. Over time, devices change, web hosting servers change, technical capabilities change, so if your website has not changed with it… it can begin to show its age. Fortunately, with a bit of forethought and prioritization, you can save big money when planning your next website redesign.
Tough-love takeaways from the Facebook fiasco
This week’s revelations that Facebook had leaked the personal data of nearly 50 million users to a third party data marketing company came as a shock to the press, but it really shouldn’t have been surprising to anyone. While it’s obvious that this shouldn’t have happened, the lurid details of this scandal can obscure some long-running features of the Facebook business model that made this “breach of trust” basically inevitable.
Does your website need a privacy policy?
While your business may not need to have an elaborate, printed and mailed policy, it’s a good idea to clarify what data is being collected about your website visitors, and what your practice is with any data you collect. Having a posted policy helps build trust with visitors and demonstrates your concern with visitor and customer data security. Think of a website privacy policy is a much broader version of your email marketing signup “no spam” disclaimer.
Keys to the kingdom: guarding your domain name’s security
It’s easy to overlook one of the basic building blocks of your online presence: your domain name. You register it somewhere for a nominal fee and maybe set up email or website and then forget about it. Besides keeping up with annual registration renewals, what’s to worry about? Actually, lots.
The pros & cons of DIY website builders
I’m often asked about the new DIY (do-it-yourself) website platforms currently available, among them Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, and some other web builder tools that may be offered by registrar companies like GoDaddy. The question is, what’s the difference between these services and WordPress? There are actually a lot of differences, not only in how they work, but what you can do with them.
Got SSL? If not, you should!
You may have heard that Google is starting to pressure website owners to transition to serving their sites with SSL (Secure Socket Layer). You know you’re on a secured site when you see a padlock in your browser’s address bar. While most are aware you need this to safely shop online, many are slow to adopt it, thinking it’s not necessary for a non- e-commerce site. This is changing fast. In the very near future, the Chrome browser (and most likely Firefox and Safari, too) will display a security warning for any site that is not secured with SSL. If you have a form (even a simple contact form) without SSL, your browser may display a nasty warning message.
Three reasons to disable your blog’s comment form
Whenever I build or update a client’s WordPress site, a question often arises about the blog comment form. Although WordPress is used mostly as a content management system for business websites, its roots are in blogging. All WP sites have a blog built-in – and with that blog comes with the capacity for visitors to post comments to your blog posts.
So, are blog comments necessary? The short answer is no. There are some WP users that are blogging for traffic and visibility and for them, visitor comments can help build community and serve as a SEO and traffic booster. But for most website owners, they’re unnecessary and can create messaging confusion. Here’s my three top reasons to simply disable comments: