If you are reading this, chances are you've been hearing a lot about cookies, GDPR and ePrivacy. And yes, it can be confusing and even frustrating at times, we know. But if you have a website these days, you should be familiar with those terms and there's no way around it. That is why we did our best to collect everything you need to know on the subject in a single, simply written article. Hopefully it can help you make more informed decisions about your website.
You have probably noticed that since May 2018, a notification shows in nearly every website you visit for the first time. It informs you that the website collects information using cookies and asks you to allow that. But what exactly does that mean?
Cookies are small text files that websites place on your device as you are browsing. They are processed and stored by the web browser. Cookies are essential for every website to function properly, improve user experience and collect data for marketing and statistics purposes. If you consent to the Cookies policy, you agree on being tracked while browsing or having your data saved for the next time you visit the website. However, by law every website user must have the right to choose their “cookie preferences”. Besides some exceptions described later in this article, user data can't be collected or used without the user’s consent.
There are three classes of cookies, depending on their specifications:
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) does not say much about the cookies:
“Natural persons may be associated with online identifiers provided by their devices, applications, tools and protocols, such as internet protocol addresses, cookie identifiers or other identifiers such as radio frequency identification tags. This may leave traces which, in particular when combined with unique identifiers and other information received by the servers, may be used to create profiles of the natural persons and identify them.”
Simply put, this means that companies do have a right to collect and process personal data, as long as they get consent or they have legitimate interest.
As a website owner, violation of GDPR may cost you a fortune, so it is essential that you don’t collect data illegally.
The purpose of the ePrivacy directive, also known as the Cookie law, is to secure the user’s privacy through data protection. It is all about what companies, website owners and service providers can do with your consent and what they are not allowed to do without it.
Unfortunately, a lot of the websites only inform you that they use cookies and the single choice left to the user is “OK”, meaning that your data will be used in any case.
If you are a website owner, you must make sure that the following requirements are covered by your website’s cookie extension:
Many companies have already suffered the consequences of cookies not being compliant. While some websites only get a request for adding the cookie pop-up, others get fines which are not to something to underestimate. Besides, your website’s visitors thrust you when they visit your website - why punish them by stealing their data?
Now that you’re aware of how important cookies and their proper use are, you have no excuse but to make sure you are all set cookie-wise. The good news is that we at boldit.studio have a solution to that and if we are going to build your website, it will be 100% cookie-proof. Because, well, we love cookies 🙂
“People have got to learn: if they don't have cookies in the cookie jar, they can't eat cookies.”
~ Suze Orman, personal finance expert
On this day 18 years ago WordPress was released for the first time. Let’s look at some interesting facts about the world’s most used website building software.
You probably haven’t heard of b2/cafelog - a blogging tool created by the French programmer Michel Valdrighi in 2001. It was designed for writing blogs by generating pages dynamically, which was a major innovation 20 years ago. Besides that, b2 is both the predecessor of WordPress and the reason of its existence.
In the end of 2002, Valdrighi stopped maintaining b2/cafelog without any notice. Matt Mullenweg, who was actively using Valdrighi’s software for his travel blog, was concerned about the lack of developer’s support:
“My blogging software hasn’t been updated for months, and the main developer has disappeared, and I can only hope that he’s okay... Fortunately, b2/cafelog is GPL, which means that I could use the existing codebase to create a fork, integrating all the cool stuff that Michael would be working on right now if only he was around…”
~ Matt Mullenweg
On May 27th 2003, WordPress 0.7, the first version of WordPress was released by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little
As a student, Matt studied jazz saxophone. His love to jazz music resulted in the famous “Hello Dolly” demo, which can be seen in every release since 2004. The plugin serves as a tribute to Louis Armstrong:
“Hello Dolly symbolizes the hope and enthusiasm of an entire generation summed up in two words sung most famously by Louis Armstrong.”
~ Matt Mullenweg
Today, 18 years after its first release, WordPress is powering 41% of all existing websites. With its countless features and plugins, it has become the most preferred website builder all around the world. WordPress has won a number of awards and is continuously extending its functionalities and support.
Here at Boldit Studio we follow the latest trends in web design and do our best to create unique online identities for our customers, making sure their presence will not be left unnoticed. This would've been much harder and not so much fun without the flexibility, reliability and user-friendliness of WordPress. So cheers to that and happy 18th birthday, WordPress!
If you are tired of all the undesired information you are slammed with every day, you might already know why less is actually more. Minimalism is aimed to bring pleasant, effortless and time-saving experience to your website visitors, by eliminating useless visual elements and focusing on flat design.
Simple websites with fewer but meaningful options can bring much more value than a page full of non-functional distractions. A minimalist website is elegant, contains only essential information and is easy to navigate.
An important principle of minimalism in the web design is focusing on the main content. This means that when a user enters your website, they should instantly understand what is its purpose. You might have already experienced that when entering our boldit.studio website.
One common element of the minimalism is the negative space. This is literally the empty space between elements. By using negative space, the most important features of your website can easily be recognised by the user.
The less is more rule is also valid when it comes to the choice of colours. While it might be difficult to stick to just a couple of colours out of the vast variety we have at hands, that is a crucial part of the minimalist approach. Like images and graphics, colours can add visual satisfaction and bring attention to your content. Moreover, we have to choose carefully and focus on high contrast and excellent content readability.
Images are a great way to present a product, idea or just to engage your audience by bringing certain emotions or memories. However, according to the minimalist ideology, images should be picked wisely. They have to be consistent with the overall style and purpose of the website and must not dominate over the rest of the content. You don’t want your visitors to overlook important information. Too many images can also slow down your website’s performance.
No matter how awesome your website design is, inappropriate font can easily damage the good impression. Typography can grab even more attention than images when combined with the negative space, so we should not undervalue its power. Needless to say, the font should be readable and not too sophisticated. A good example of minimalistic font is Helvetica - one of the most widely used.
While we follow the above-mentioned (and more) minimalism guidelines for our designs, there are multiple other factors that need to be taken into account. At boldit.studio, we build unique minimalist designs tailored to your needs, following the latest web design trends.
