What does GDPR mean for your photography website?
Let me start this off with the necessary I am not a lawyer, and therefore can’t tell you if your site is GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliant. Now that I have statement out of the way, this is what I understand. I am hoping a plain words explanation might be helpful to my clients, other photographers and small business owners.
If you have a WordPress website you fall under GDPR.
So here is the thing, you are collecting data on your website whether you think you are or not. Sites by default have cookies. Most of us run Google Analytics to understand our web traffic. Many of us have blog posts with comments, and almost all of us have contact forms. Some of us also have opt in forms for a newsletter. All of these items collect data.
What do you need to do to secure these items?
- Get an SSL certificate for your site, install and implement it properly. I can not find a definite out there of any well known authority saying this is a must. However, here is my logic. GDPR includes collecting names and email, and says this needs to be done securely. Forms and comments do this so having an SSL gives your site security for this. Plus Google wants SSL for rankings so it’s a good idea anyway.
- Triple check your opt in forms for newsletters, downloads, anything like that. Clients must by default opt in, not have to uncheck to opt out. If you want to dive deeper into this, check out WP Beginner’s article.
- Be sure your newsletter audience knows they can opt out. You’ve probably received lots of emails from newsletters you subscribe to telling you how to opt out and sharing their privacy policy. I can’t find anything that says an email needs to go out but it seems like a good idea.
- Create a privacy policy and link to it on your home page.
- Make sure any plugins you are running are GDPR compliant. This one gets a little tricky but most plugins on your site can be googled to find out. For example, search “gravity forms gdpr compliant” and you should get your answer. Gravity Forms is by the way. I love Gravity Forms anyway, so one more reason to use it.
This is a very brief overview of action steps you can take without spending too much time. Read the article I linked above if you really want to understand this thoroughly. I’m not an expert by any means on this, but I do understand WordPress so I am sharing the steps I took for my own site.
Questions about SSL? Send me a note or stay tuned for a blog post on the topic.
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Disclaimer: We are not lawyers. Nothing on this website should be considered legal advice.
