So, starting a privacy blog, shouldn’t be too challenging. I have kept a blog before (a food blog called The Fat Judge, in reference to English restaurant The Fat Duck and my own legal background) and I write about privacy on a daily basis. Recent trips to the US have also provided plenty of inspiration to make that Transatlantic link. I will mostly be writing for Audittrail group, my employer. But I decided that I wanted to publish not just on their website, but also, foremost, on my own site. But that meant setting up my own website and, since this is a privacy blog, setting it up in such a way that it collects an absolute minimal amount of personal data. I was also curious to see if I could get by with little or no cookies.
My food blog was created via Wordpress.com, which is easy to set up, but has limited possibilities and comes with automatic statistics and hosting on the WordPress servers. Not quite what I am looking for.
By using Wordpress.org, however, you can download website design software on a server of your own choosing, which allowed me to opt for a local trusted party that is ISO 27001 (an international information security standard) certified. So far, so secure. But since I cannot code my way out of a paper bag, I have to rely on pre-designed themes and plug-ins. And thus began the search for contact forms and page view counters that use no cookies and were compatible with the design theme of my choosing. The good news is that there has been enough GDPR buzz out there, which has led developers to promote their plug-ins as GDPR proof. The bad news is that this has mostly led to many very silly consent forms and very annoying pop-ups.
I ended up with WPForms Lite and Statify as form design plug-in and page view counter respectively. Neither collects personal data and so far they seem to be doing their (basic) jobs. The search continues for some form of Twitter integration and of course a Facebook like-button (just kidding). To be continued..