Client Data on Websites

GDPR and your website

When you created your GDPR conformance policy, you should have given consideration to where data is located in your organisation. If you do not know where it is located, you cannot really claim to control it.

The websites I have created over the last 5 years do not contain a lot of user data by design. The data in the site, other than what is visible to the public is generally limited to the administrators and editors on the site, things such as email addresses and where subscriber lists are present there may be subscriber names and email addresses held in the site. But not much else.

This means if a hacker gets into a site, there is not really very much there which might be of value to them.

I am aware of some sites though that contain copies of forms being submitted through the site. This can occur if someone else has added a form manager that does this, or a database extension to collect and store user submitted information.

There is no value in keeping copies within the website if the email function is working and all user submitted data is sent to your organisation for processing. In fact retaining copies of previously submitted forms will likely contain sensitive information which could represent a data breach if the data fell into the wrong hands.

Check your website

It is worth checking your website to make sure there are no records of previous form data being retained in the website. If you find something and you know this data has been submitted to the organisation through an email account, you do not need copies on your website. So delete them all. It is worth considering whether it is possible to stop copies being retained, or if you cannot stop copies being retained, make a note to revisit your site and delete them regularly. A form manager that does not retain copies might ultimately be a better choice for the future.

← Plugin is crashing sites (11th July 2022) Beware of Phishing →

Home-Start Volunteer Diary Form

Over the years I have been asked several times if I can build a Home-Start Volunteer Diary form online. To do a one off is prohibitively expensive, and I have not bothered to look at it in any detail in the past.

I have had a recent request, and based on my experience using Contact Form 7 and the layout manager plugin I have built a demonstrator. You can try this form out for yourself. It will send a message back to your email address with up to 122 different items of data formatted in an email.

You can locate the page here: https://wingrove-media.uk/vol-diary/

If this is of interest to your organisation (most likely a Home-Start) then please send me an email letting me know, and I will keep you in the loop as it develops.

There is already 6.5hrs work in this form and over 870 lines of code. It is outside of mainstream website development and maintenance, but if there is significant interest, I can share the development cost across multiple organisations which would make it more attractive as a development project.

← Home-Start Resources Page Plugin is crashing sites (11th July 2022) →

Home-Start Resources Page

I currently host around 40 Home-Starts with a couple more in the pipeline. I also started working with Matt Hann and Tanya Freedman (HSUK) and look after another 40 sites there on a three month rolling contract. The additional 40 sites are based on one promoted by Rutland Online who are no longer developing sites for HSUK. These sites are also in the same hosting you are in, just in a different account. My role is to maintain them each month.

I have hit quite a few problems in the way these new sites were set up. To help people there is a page you can also use here https://wingrove-media.uk/hsuk/ which lists those websites, but of greater importance, at the bottom of that page are some self help guides. You are free to use these if you wish. Some relate to the way that the hosting works, some relate to specific issues in that design of website. Many are relevant to you as well.

#BehindTheMask

I have just added one which contains a specially built slider to add the existing slides used on the Home-Start home pages to help promote #BehindTheMask. Please do help yourselves and download your copy of the pre-built slider and the instructions. It only takes 5 minutes and I have done the hard work for you. Note that the dimensions of the sliders used on your sites are different to the ones used on the HSUK sites. I have done two sets, just take care to pick up the right one.

I also have a couple of posts prepared which you could also import and publish including the graphics. Contact me for more information.

← Page Redirect crashing some websites Home-Start Volunteer Diary Form →

Captcha Solution for Contact Form 7

I have been using contact form 7 on many websites for the past few years. I have noticed that there are some anti spam measures which are being defeated by spam bots (computers that post spam into forms).

I am reluctant to use Google Captcha because I think that while it is undoubtedly effective, it also presents a barrier to some users, particularly elderly ones. I have also seen preferential treatment (aka easy access) when a user is using Chrome, but other browsers they may be stuck answering questions makes bypassing it frustrating to say the least.

I have just found Contact Form 7 Image Captcha by KC Computing (Kyle Charlton) which is very elegant, simple and works fine. It asks the user to click on an image which matches some text. A user has to complete this step before submitting the form.

If your site is using Contact Form 7, you can load this plugin into the library and then insert the following shortcode into the form: [cf7ic “toggle”]

If your website uses the form in a dark coloured panel, the formatting of the text may not work very well. To get around that problem you can add the following text into the CSS for your site. For Divi users this can be found on the Divi settings page at the bottom. There is a space to add CSS in there. It will change the selected text to yellow.

.captcha-image .cf7ic_instructions span {
color:yellow !important;
}

← Dangerous Spam in Circulation Social Media Strategy or just winging it? →

Spring Clean?

How is your website looking? Does it still do what you want it do? Is it being used how you anticipated it would be used? Do you know how it is being used?

Over time sites tend to end up with a few problems, it is inevitable, I have have many years experience building them now, and you are only going in maybe once a month or less and adding things in. You may have forgotten some of the editing basics, or carried out some significant editing on a page and created an imbalance in the columns.

Anyway I have a broom and a duster and my trusty can of Mr Sheen, so give me a call to visit your site and straighten things out for you again.

I have had a couple of calls over the past month to add in a Meet the Team page, as an example. Building that from scratch could be a bit intimidating.

Another angle here, is how are people using it? It is also worth stating how you hope people are using it, and I will go to Google Analytics and tell you how people are using it. Then we can figure out if there is a gap and how to close it.

Websites are never completed, things change all of the time, don’t let them pile up, I am generally around if you need help.

← Higher Specification Hosting Available Complex Referral Forms →

Evening Tutorials

Would you benefit from more training on your website?
Would you like to get some more of the cool features to work on your site?
Do you need a refresher on common problems?
Would you like to participate in a forum?

Just thinking outside the box here. I know from working with some of you, you have picked up the concepts behind editing your websites and have done really well. If you would like to become advanced users and learn how to do more,. why not consider signing up for a once a month (free) or ad hoc online Zoom Tutorial? I could run this as a forum and have multiple attendees.

Let me know if you are interested in going that extra mile. Use the contact us page to send me a message.

← From website referral form to CRM Need a bespoke CRM system? - Call Graeme Neale →

Coronavirus image for posts

For those of you with Divi based websites, your posts are best displayed with an image to conform to the newspaper layout you see on your news page. But where do you get an image from?

I originally thought this image was made from dried flowers inserted into a ball, but reading the small print it is actually a 3D generated image of a measles virus.

To use it, place your cursor on top of the image and right click and save the image to your local computer.

The image source is from https://unsplash.com and was created by CDC

Generic virus image

Here are some others so you can create your own. All of the links below go to the Unsplash.com website where there are thousands of free images covering all sorts of subjects.

https://unsplash.com/photos/bkc-m0iZ4Sk

https://unsplash.com/photos/w9KEokhajKw

https://unsplash.com/photos/rnr8D3FNUNY

← Coronavirus Resources page Ripping off Charities →

Custom Header and Footer

The Divi Template has had a few additional features added over the past few months. One quite important one is the ability to add a customised header, footer and content area. These are defined centrally. In fact multiple different headers and footers can be defined and applied to specific groups or pages or posts. I have started experimenting in this area on some of the new sites.

Application for Home-Start

I have received a few requests from Home-Starts (I host 34 of them) asking me to add a donate button to pages. I have in the past added this in as a separate block within pages. Now there is an alternative way of doing this.

As of 12/2/20 I have one design available. I am open to modifications to it, however there are certain rules that need to be observed in the way it behaves.

There are actually three headers, one for large screens, one for tablets and one for smart phones. They are all different. The desktop and tablet versions show the Donate (and Get Help) buttons. There is also a sticky menu available when the user scrolls down the screen. This “sticks” the menu to the top of the screen.

Please note these are all scaled to fit the page. Click on the desktop version to see it full size.

The images below are scaled. Please click on them to see them full size.

1). Wide Screen Version

2) Tablet Version

3) Smart Phone Header

I have not installed one of these on a site yet. If you are interested in this please contact me.

Questionable Advice?

I have had several requests over the past two months to add “DONATE NOW” buttons onto all pages on a website. One request in particular came via a voluntary advisor which seemed totally flawed to me. However I can appreciate that most of you are dependent on “external voluntary experts” of which I guess, I fall into that category too. So here is my take on it, like all gifts, you can choose to accept it or not. It is just an opinion.

When you look around the web, particularly on charity sites you tend to see the Donate buttons plastered everywhere. The advice given to my client was to add a link under the button which goes directly to a preferred fundraising portal. Say for example Virgin Money Giving. That sort of sounds ok, but I disagree, for several reasons:

1). Let us assume I have arrived on your website, I am not that familiar with it, I have looked around and now I wish to make a donation to help you. So I click on the Donate Now! button. What happens?

It takes me to a completely different website, it may have your logo there, but it has someone elses logo there too, I am not sure if this is a scam or not, so I leave. Did you get your donation? No.

There is a web standard called WCAG2.1 which states that a link that opens in a new window, or takes the person off of the website needs additional text to advise the user before they click. Think of it as a best practice. You cannot do that here. Let us look at another case:

2). I am familiar with your organisation, I have visited several times, and I can read (!). I want to make a donation. If I want to make a donation, which page would I go to? Chances are you have a Fundraising page at the top of your menu. That is where I would go. I did not need a button plastered everywhere.

The Donate Now button is not dissimilar to someone on the street asking you for money; they have not established a compelling case why you should give them money, but they are asking anyway. Chances are most people will ignore it.

It is much smarter to sprinkle Donate Now buttons within the content on your site AFTER you have just made a case for why it might be a good idea to donate. It is more subtle, less “in yer face”. While I have no firm evidence to support this, I suspect it will be more successful than the former method which has the subtely of a sledgehammer.

If you must, do it this way…

If you must put a Donate Now button everywhere, it should really link to the fundraising page, or the page in your website which lists the various methods of raising funds. In this way the user is still on your website. So within the page you can explain that by clicking on a link or icon on this page you will be sent to the fundraising partner page, specifically to your account on that page, and it will open in a new window.

By doing it this way, you conform to best practices in WCAG2.1, and you are holding the hand of the donor and reassuring them as you take them to the appropriate website.

I personally would be more likely to donate that way rather than the sledgehammer approach.

Why the sledgehammer approach…

I am being disingenuous really, I don’t think people really mean to use the sledgehammer approach, but I think there is a reason why they propose to do it this way. Fundamentally the person making the recommendation is making an assumption: they love your charity, everything about what you do, and as such they are already bought into the value you provide. So in their case you do not need to engage into a sales pitch, they are already sold. So the button is all they need. Well that is fine for them.

But your adviser is not your average donor!

However the people you are hoping to donate to your organisation are not bought in yet, so you have to do that as a separate activity. Taking them to the fundraising page first is vitally important. Of even greater importance, sprinkle those donate now buttons within your content, say after a moving testimonial from one of your clients, or a case study. I think you will have much greater traction with your market.

← Do you have a Social Media Editor? Processing Form Data →

Do you have a Social Media Editor?

From a marketing angle, you may consider social media to be very important to your organisation, and it is of course. However it is a bit like preaching to the converted if you think about it. It is not likely someone will find you on social media unless they already know about you. So that means the audience you are sharing your social media stories with are already fans and followers. It is a way of keeping in touch.

Many organisations I work with have strong social media presence, but not such a strong presence in the news on the website. Is this a problem? Well yes, I think it might be. Here’s why:

Do you want more people, or the same people?

Ask a marketing professional and they will always want more people exposed to a story or message. Particularly that group that is not currently engaged with the organisation. Within that group might be future; donors, contributors, volunteers, members etc. That is really what is important. Of course you do not ignore those people that have signed up or following you already. We are talking about a superset of people, not just regular engaged fans.

Work smarter not harder

So, let’s be clear here, this takes a little more effort, but over time it will be much less effort, and you will reach far more more people.

Without exception, if I look at the statistics of those sites that have a rich and varied news feed, they also have high numbers of visitors. There are some technical reasons for this in terms of how the website works. But let’s keep this simple.

Here is a new strategy

Get your social media guru to add things to the website first. Do what they were intending to do in a post on your website rather than Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

That in itself gives you an advantage over twitter because you are not restricted on your content. When you have added the item to your website post. Display the post in isolation from the news page. (When you view it on the news page with other posts, you need to click the image, title or read more link to open it). Now copy the URL or web address for the item in your website.

Next go to Twiter, and paste it there. Then go to Facebook and paste it there. Both systems will try to grab something from your website. So you don’t have to rebuild it all in Facebook, Twitter et al.

Now you have met the requirement to keep your fan base in touch with what is going on. However it will also drive up your website visitors as a result. For those people that happen to come across you while surfing the web, they can see it too. They would have missed it before if it is exclusively on social media.

Check your results

Most of you have a Google Analytics panel on your dashboards, you can see and monitor the results of this change if wish. The net result in terms of effort, is you create it in one place only (your website) and do not need to recreate it any where else. Everywhere else including feeds you simply add to, you just paste the URL. When you do this, you will see a big spike on the number of visitors to your website. Many of those will be first time visitors. Some of those will also become fans too.