So, here is a condensed list:

My web site is using WordPress as the “engine” to build a convenient and efficient site. WordPress happens to be using “themes” to appropriately display the contents (that is what is differentiating each WP website from the others). This capacity has helped develop a thriving community of themes, some being free, some being purchased.

The main trouble is that themes like any other piece of software are susceptible to bugs and could be exploited by hackers. I recently noticed that my (previous) theme was clearly outdated (not updated in the last 24 months) and including some known security issues leaving it open to abuse.

Lesson learned: Do not use any piece of software (including a WP theme) if it is not actively supported.

Application: I decided to drop the free (and unsafe) theme I was using. I swithed other to one of the “official” themes from WordPress.org. And I am learning to configure it properly. Hence the changes you can currently observe.

• Worried about WordPress and GDPR? Start Here
• GDPR: What Does the New Data Regulation Mean for Your Website, Business and Data?
• How to make a WordPress website compliant to GDPR
• Automattic and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
• GDPR Compliance and WordPress Forms: Everything You Need to Know

Have a nice read!

Please, note: I am not a lawyer or your Legal Department, it all merely comes from my reading and my understanding.

Deployment

Cookies

First step (normally, this should be in place for quite some time already, since this started a long time ago): Add an informative message to inform visitors that you are collecting cookies.

I simply used a small plug-in (you can find others too) : Cookie Notice from dFactory.

Pros: It is working in various languges (and in English), it has been tested on more than 500,000 sites before mine, it starts in less than a minute.

Contact form

For many reasons, you will need to have a decent contact form (including to be able to answer GDPR-related requests). I recommend a simple and small (and free) forms editor like Ninja Forms.

In two minutes, you will have a working contact form. Don’t forget to add the checkbox with “By using this form you agree with the storage and handling of your data by this website” (This should be present on all your forms).

Then, you need to create a “Contact” page in WordPress. You will include the specific code to include the form you just created with the following shortcode:

Small GDPR support: Ninja forms allow you to setup forms without storing any data on the web site, reducing the load to comply with GDPR in simpler forms.

But, don’t forget to enable the sending of the confirmation message to the comment author (all the more because the post-form message includes mention of this confirmation – be consistent).

On top of this, if your web site includes a comment system (quite common fact), I recommend using a plugin to include the standard reminder checkbox: WP GDPR Compliance from Van Ons. Bonus: It makes some recommendations on various GDPR-related cases.

Data Protection Officer

Name somebody (with an email address) as the internal interface for all private data issues. It is not compulsory (for smaller teams) but it is so much clearer (and recommended) that somebody feels i charge of this (even the CEO). This person will be contacted bu visitors willing to know what data you collect and how to remove all their personal data from the web site (these are legal requirements).

Make sure that this person is reachable through a very easy interface (including the contact form or some other form).

Privacy policy

Above all, you must make sure that you can explain simply what are your intentions about private data you will collect (private data include email, name, IP address, etc.) and how you intend to comply with your legal obligations. This page must tell it all simply.

Try and write it right on the first attempt. You are legally bound to inform all your users any time you make a change (even simple ones)…

This is a WordPress page, rather than a poost (it must stay readily available and easily reachable by all even in the future).

I recommend to -more or less- follow the GDPR themes (it’s easier):

• Existence (or not) of a Data Protection Officer, in charge of the whole process of personal data handling
• Definition of data collection, handling, storing, transfer and removal processes
• Creation of a process to notify any data breach
• Explicit consent to data collection
• Right to access (and removal) of personal data

Access to personal data

You must give full access to any user’s personal data stored on the web site. This is realtively easy using a plugin (GDPR compliance from Scribit) and a specific page where you will only write the shortcode:

[gdpruserdata]

Of course, you can add some more details (refer to the plugin help information for more options).

Then, you can direct the requests to this page which will display the full breadth of personal data. As this is not a very nice page (rather dry reading), I recommend to keep it masked (I don’t feel it is necessary to show it permanently to all – answering requests should be enough).

Annoncement

Maybe not the worst or the most complicated, but I finally added a small message on the web site to announce the deployment of this whole process. Explaining is better than waiting for people to ask. And the message is positive: You care about your users and visitors.

Google Analytics screen copy:

As you can see, really, the million award came only because, last week, there was a sharp peak of more than 80,000 visits in a day (I kept oscillating between 900,000 and 1,000,000 visits but could not jump this symbolic barrier). And it comes with nearly 1.5 million printed pages (another deeply symbolic figure to reach).

What is funny is that this load peak (perfectly handled by the OVH web server) just came a few days after the personal experimentations I was mentioning here to optimize Roumazeilles.net and YLovePhoto.com performance. As a matter of fact, the actions that I applied were really representative of what must be done to have a web site doing much more than the usual web business card:

• A small dedicated server (much better than the shared web hosting services which are really cheap but stay very limited in case of a sharp traffic increase);
• WordPress in a recent version (here, version 3.0.1);
• The W3 Total Cache plugin to optimize the cache and the performance of the WordPress web site (my analysis of W3 Total Cache);
• Reducing the less-than-important operations through the search for low performance using the performance analysis tool of your web site;

But on top of the technical face of the case, I am not a little proud of having received more than a million visits.

• You cannot avoid mentioning the Google webmaster tools. They do a lot of things and contain a performance evaluation but it is very crude and updated at frequency that you cannot control (several days if not several weeks between updates).
• Pingdom: Full Page Test has the enormous advantage of being precise and not requiring anything more than your browser. Give it an URL and it will tell you what happens and how fast. Great.
• Using Firefox, there is a nice plugin to observe the load times and the detail of what is loaded: Firebug. It will produce the graphic display below.



• But if you want to go even one step further, you should complete Firebug with the Google Page Speed extension, which will provide precise recommendations about what you could do to improve your page load times.

After testing/evaluating the load times of the pages of YLovePhoto.com because the administrative tools from Google were indicating that they were really too long, I discovered that there was a lot to improve there.

photo credit: Viernest

Through a small search for data, I discovered that there was already a set of WordPress plugins all devoted to this low-visibility task. In the past, I had used PHP_Speedy, but it seems that it does not work well with the most recent versions of WordPress (the plugin is probably no longer maintained by its author). I needed a much better solution.

I chose W3 Total Cache and this is changing the life of my web sites: Some loading times were simply divided by 10! It is probably already very perceptible by some of the visitors and it now makes glaringly obvious the next weakness: The slow behavior of some external inserts like Facebook badges, Flickr blocks or external ads.

The only drawback of this plugin (W3 Total Cache) is the sheer number of options (which makes it utterly adaptable), but as far as I could judge the default options are very inteligently chosen and the help information or the installation automated messages are really written to avoid novice web admins to stay locked or blocked on falsely optimized options. Strongly recommended since I deployed it on Roumazeilles.net and YLovePhoto.com.

photo credit: Marco Bellucci

So, as suggested, you used Yahoo! Answers to grab the attention of Yahoo! users (and Yahoo! search engine) and of people who have questions to ask. So, you thought that this was the end of it? Of course not. Even if Yahoo! has a great legion of followers (specially in the USA and in the less-geeky public), they are not the only place where you can go and quick attention to your great new web site. There are actually plenty of other locations on the web where people go to ask questions and get answers. You will be able to use the same tactics (already described on YWantVisits.com) to spread knowledge and knowledge about your site.

1. Yahoo! Answers – Ask. Answer. Discover.
2. Answerbag – Ask Questions, Share Answers.
3. eHow – How To Do Just About Everything!
4. Mahalo Answers – Share Knowledge, Learn, and Get Questions Answered
5. Howcast – How-to videos and guides
6. Fluther – Tap the collective
7. Stack Overflow – Collaboratively edited question & answer site
8. SnappyFingers – Relevant answers for your frequent questions
9. Fifty People One Question – Ask fifty people the same question
10. Answerly – All you have to do is ask!
11. Mosio – Mobile questions. Answers. People.
12. PicAnswers – Picture Question & Answer Site
13. AskMeGo – Get & Give Advices
14. ToAnswer – Get your questions answered
15. Tweet Answers – Ask Questions, Get Answers!
16. TripShake – Answers on the go
17. teksup – User Powered Live Support
18. BlabberMash – Ask questions and get advice from other people
19. Defuddle – Where Questions Go to Get Answered
20. folkstown – Get Answered by Ordinary People
21. QToro – Bite-Size Knowledge
22. Answers.com – Online Dictionary, Encyclopedia and much more
23. Plinky – Create inspired content on the web
24. TwttrStrm – Ask a question of your Twitter followers and easily gather all their answers in one spot
25. Whyzz – Kids Questions & Answers

If you have correctly filled your web site affiliation, this will count as a link back to your own web site too.

But don’t even think about spamming. Akismet and me are actively removing anything looking remotely like a spam comment.

Congratulations for Jeff’s participation.

• chasseur francais poussiere reflex (in English: French hunter SLR dust): I did not have in mind that we had so many readers interested in photo hunting in the most basic technological meaning: hunting the dust on the SLR sensor;
• nero burner 8 dovnlod free: I am surprised this reached any target with such a typo;
• appareil photo nicon 8 mega: Some people are unsure about the name of famous photo brands (Nikon or Nicon?)
• microsoft office for mac for free illegal: This one really is looking for the illegal version of MS-Word. Not even thinking a minute about getting it free legally
• w.w.w.roumazeilles.net.: so many dots!
• rechercher thepiratebay.org (in English: Search for thepiratebay.org): This guy is looking for one great web site. He has the exact address and is directed onto my web site. I would advise him never to press the “I’m feeling lucky!” button of Google search…

Thank you, Xtian.

This is time to start your own blog in order to earn some revenue protecting you against the current recession.

Be warned.

• YLovePhoto.com (site specializing in digital photography)
• YLoveBigCats.com (about felines and other big cats)
• YLoveIllusions.com (optical illusions)
• YWantVisits.com (SEO, traffic optimisation and web site revenue maximization)

Your opinion will be welcome, but -remember- this is beta-test. So, it is full of bugs, problems, issues and don’t come back and complain if your significant other dumps you because of it.

Note: Most (if not all) of the photo-related news here will be applied to YLovePhoto.com as soon as I feel free with this new web site.

Good

• Somehow, the performance is the same, but the administration panel has been improved with a logic more task-oriented (important and common things are more immediately accessible).

Bad

• Unfortunately, in the administration panel, I lost most of the direct visibility onto the posts scheduled in the future (I prepare a lot of articles in advance to free myself from the tyrany of web site updates).
• The “Write Post” page is organised differently, but I lack the flexibility of re-organisation that was in version 2.3 (dragging the elements where I wanted them to be). But, maybe it’s because I still don’t know how to do it… Apparently, people think it was a regression in v2.5.x, but what the heck? It was working fine before.

Conclusion

I have no difficulty working with WordPress 2.6 now. Even if a few things keep annoying me and I feel that it was not all change-for-the-best, I would easily recommend it (even the newest v2.6.1).

I had a few difficulties to ensure that images where correctly aligned and displayed after the improvements in their presentation in WP2.6. For those really interested, I ended up adding the following to my CSS file:

/*************************************/
/* Align code for WP2.6 compatiblity */
/*************************************/
.aligncenter, div.aligncenter {
    display: block;
    margin-left: auto;
    margin-right: auto;
}

.alignleft {
    float: left;
}
.alignright {
    float: right;
}

.wp-caption {
    border: 1px solid #ddd;
    text-align: center;
    background-color: #f3f3f3;
    padding-top: 4px;
    margin: 10px;
    /* optional rounded corners for browsers that support it */
    -moz-border-radius: 3px;
    -khtml-border-radius: 3px;
    -webkit-border-radius: 3px;
    border-radius: 3px;
}

.wp-caption img {
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    border: 0 none;
}

.wp-caption p.wp-caption-text {
    font-size: 11px;
    line-height: 17px;
    padding: 0 4px 5px;
    margin: 0;
}

Thanks to the support of the WordPress.org forum.

Normally, there is a solution. You can modify slightly your website to ensure that if this happens, the image served is not the original one, but a modified one (either a big red X, or a message to the reader). But it is a little difficult to do by hand. A wbe site tool comes handy for this: HTMLbasix – Htaccess Disable Hotlinking Code Generator.

Don’t worry, I may post something on Roumazeilles.net every day, but it does not mean that I am in front of the keyboard every day. Far from it. I am using one small advantage of WordPress (the software package supporting my web site). I can write posts and schedule them for future publication.

That way, I have no limit to my inspiration. For example, I have currently scheduled weekly posts about optical illusions for the coming 6 months, a full week of feline-related news (daily posts next week), a full week of daily videos titled “when XXXXX get bored” in a couple of months.

Cliquer sur le tableau pour le voir en plus grand.

Best Guest Post Thanks to xo-fashi0n-x0 for her post of “La Cigarette“. A welcome poetic distraction from the routine of this web site.

Best Commenter This one was easy since ted is a persistent commenter with interesting insight and providing detailed information and feedback (both for the author and the readers). By the way, his web site is quite interesting too.

Best Linker Delphine Dumont, while staying attentive to what is happening on my web site, has been providing some significant and meaningful links and trackbacks. And all french-reading people should try and stop to read her blog.

Thanks to all readers, linkers and posters who made it possible. 2008 is certainly going to be even better and this will be reflected in the 2009 Roumazeilles.net awards.