‍Wordpress has gone through some major changes in 2018. With the release of Wordpress 5.0, the editor itself has had a facelift with the launch of GUTENBERG.

Although most of the attention has been on this new update, the European Union released a regulation in May 2018 called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This has pretty serious ramifications for website users, developers and designers. If there is even a small chance that a user from Europe will visit your site then you need to know exactly what this GDPR thing is all about.

What is GDPR?

According to ZDNET, GDPR is a new set of rules designed to give EU citizens more control over their personal data. These rules need to be complied with on any given website otherwise there are pretty substantial fines applicable. GDPR revolves mainly around the use of cookies.

What is GDPR Compliance?

According to Wikipedia:

Compliance is the action or fact of complying with a wish or command.

In this case, it is complying with the rules set out by the EU in the GDPR. To be compliant, you will need to ensure the following:

• Users viewing your site will have to have a choice whether they will allow you to use cookies
• They will need to give consent to their information being captured on a contact form
• They will need to have greater access to their data. They will need to be able to modify the info or delete if needed.
  ‍

Going forward - in order to do any business within the EU or a company based in the EU, these above criteria will need to be met.

How Do I Get Compliant?

At Pathfind Media, we have placed a lot of emphasis on GDPR and have taken the time to ensure that our website is up to speed with all the GDPR regulations. We build all our websites in Wordpress and its really important we achieve compliance as our client base is not limited by country.The beauty of Wordpress is PLUGINS. You can do pretty much anything with plugins. We used the following plugins on our site for GDPR:

• Cookie Notice - this gives your website visitors the option to allow you to use cookies to enhance their website experience
• WP GDPR Framework - This plugin will go through your whole website and take you on a step by step wizard to help you achieve compliance. It will help you set up a Privacy Notice (Which is very important), set up a privacy tools page (where users can delete or modify their data if needed) and also a terms and conditions page.
• Gravity Forms - We use Gravity Forms on a lot of our sites and we input a consent checkbox in our forms so that website visitors can choose to have their information stored.

As you can see, the value of GDPR compliance cannot be overstated. What we need to stress is that this article is just a helpful guide to being compliant. It is not the complete guide and we cannot promise you that your site will be compliant if you follow the above steps.

To be completely compliant - you need to get legal advice. There are a lot of fantastic lawyers now offering GDPR compliance as a service as it is a legal issue. DRS is one such company offering GDPR compliance.

In saying that, we definitely hope this has helped and cleared up any confusion around the GDPR.See you online!