Happy New Year!
This month we're doing a deep dive into privacy. Privacy for website owners, privacy for you, privacy for the world. To cap it all off, we have a special Privacy Tune-up offer to make sure your privacy policy is accurate and covering your assets...
And if that's not enough, it's a big week for Drupal -- see below for why!
What website owners need to know about Privacy
Owning a website in 2025 is not as freeform a thing as it was a couple decades ago. Much like the owner of a store or an amusement park ride has to pay some attention to safety hazards, now site owners can't simply neglect caring for the privacy of their visitors. If they do choose to neglect privacy concerns, they can be quickly driven out of business by fines under various privacy legislation, which can amount to thousands of dollars per site visitor!
This month we have an interview with an expert on privacy policies, Hans Skillrud, a co-founder of Termageddon:
Privacy Big Picture: 6 ways privacy is changing
It's the end of 2024, and compared to 10 years ago, there's a lot of changes when it comes to privacy. Back in 2014, social media might have been near its worst point, with so many people enthralled with Facebook and Twitter without necessarily understanding how they were being manipulated -- since then, we've seen a bit of backlash and a bit more understanding that you can't always trust what you read -- we know there's active manipulation of facts there.
Here's our take on a grab bag of trends, technologies, and changes in the past decade that impact your privacy.
The privacy dilemma: 6 ways to improve your privacy online
Ask a teenager these days about why privacy matters, and they will say it doesn't -- there is no privacy anymore.
But would you willingly put your credit cards out on a bulletin board, inviting anyone to buy stuff on your dime?
Those of us with a little history behind us get concerned about putting anything health-related out in public, no matter how insignificant -- in case an insurance company reads that mole as a pre-existing condition and a reason to deny paying for skin cancer treatments.
Special of the month: Privacy Tune-up
Every business website needs a privacy policy -- it's mandated by law in a bunch of countries and states. Your privacy policy needs to disclose what personal data you collect, how you use it, and what you retain. And it's not just your website -- it's also what services you use that might be able to access that data.
Now is a great time to make sure your privacy policy -- and your website -- is up to date! Now through the end of January, we're offering our new Privacy Tune-up package at a reduced rate! For $750, we will go through Termageddon's privacy policy wizard with you and generate a privacy policy with the proper disclosures. We will also set up a Cookie Consent script so your users have the ability to opt out of data collection, and tailor it to your site. This includes a 1 year Termaggedon license, which also provides access to other legal notices. Contact us to get started!
Drupal 7 reaches End Of Life
Last Wednesday, after a solid run of 14 years, Drupal 7 reached end of life. The Drupal community is celebrating the end of an era, with the most popular version of Drupal so far. What does this mean, if you're still running it?
Well, it's not going to just stop operating. We're still maintaining a Drupal 5 site -- we can continue to support you on Drupal 7, and our protection plan still covers applying security updates we have access to. We are participating in a group that provides extended Drupal 7 support, which is backporting security fixes for certain modules as needed.
This is a stopgap measure, however -- the future is Drupal CMS, and it's a great time to contact us to get an upgrade going!
Introducing Drupal CMS
Hot on the heels of Drupal 7 EOL, is the official launch of Drupal CMS, which happens tomorrow! (January 15, 2025). What is Drupal CMS? It's really just the same Drupal we've been using and evolving since the launch of Drupal 8 in 2015, with a bunch of recipes that encapsulate best practices developed by a bunch of Drupal agencies around the world. It's a great starting point for spinning up a new CMS website, with a bunch of options in the form of "recipes". There are recipes for SEO. Event management. Privacy. Artificial Intelligence. The entire goal is to show how easy it is to get really sophisticated functionality using Drupal -- a few clicks when you install, and you've got a powerful site that does far more out of the box than pretty much any other platform out there!
But I already have a Drupal site -- do I need to upgrade?
Only if you're on Drupal 7 or older. Nearly all of our clients that have been on maintenance with Drupal 8 or later are up to Drupal 10 now, and the good news is, most of these recipes are things we can install on your existing Drupal site!
This month's Special, in fact, was inspired by the Privacy recipe for Drupal CMS. We discovered the Klaro cookie consent manager because it was polished up as a recipe for Drupal CMS.
There is so much great stuff in Drupal CMS, it's hard to know where to start -- but that's why we're here, to focus on one thing per month and break it down into just what you need to know about everything there is to know about running your website.
So for this month, let's focus on privacy and making sure the thought of expensive fines due to trolls sending mischief your way doesn't keep you up at night.
Next month, we're taking on Artificial Intelligence, and what you need to know as a site owner. Hint: Drupal already does AI -- and we have a bunch of examples of how to make AI work for you. If you don't want to miss it, be sure you're on our list!
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