Ever tried an update, often for a plugin, on your WordPress site and the “Briefly unavailable for maintenance” page is not brief?

I will spare you the uninteresting details of why you’re stuck, 50% because boring and 50% because don’t completely understand.  I am dumb but honest, like a large Newfoundland dog.  Per the nice people at WPBuffs, basically, you need to stop clicking the update button too fast if you didn’t spring for fast hosting.  And let’s just get right to fixing your problem!  You need to delete that .maintenance file.  Try going through your cpanel to your root or your public html folder and find that sucker, right click and delete.  If any of this sounds confusing, please call me or some other nerd and let us do it.  Then go back in time and do your updates on a staging site.  There’s so many times in life when we have to swing without a net, why would you chance your website you worked so hard on it when it’s so easy to test things first on an unsuspecting staging site?  It’s like if you had an identical twin you hated and your surgeon could practice all operations on him first before working on you, so everyone sees how it will turn out.

That’s kind of gruesome but you get the point.  Updates can and do sometimes go wrong and best to test things out first.  If you do get stuck during an update, don’t panic, just delete that pesky .maintenance file.  Good luck!

Here’s also the rundown on how to do this trick also from the nice folks at kinsta, with some additional helpful advice.

So generally, once you have a privacy policy (which so many of us don’t, but oughta), you just make it its own page and call it a day. But you need a way for your visitors to find it. There are considered to be two different methods – browsewrap and clickwrap. From the irrepressible folks at Dash Farrow:

Browse-wrap Agreements

A Browse-wrap agreement is one where the terms of an agreement are located on a website, but are often connected to the main web page of the product by a hyperlink to another web page that contains the contracts terms and conditions. Normally there is no affirmative manifestation of assent necessary to agree with the terms located on the linked web page. The customer must also affirmatively click the hyperlink to even access and become aware of the terms of the agreement.

Clickwrap Agreements

By contrast a Clickwrap Agreement is one where the website requires the customer or user to affirmatively review the terms of an agreement through a series of pop-up windows that ask for the customers to click a button showing that they agree to the conditions. Under a Clickwrap Agreement the website puts the terms of the agreement directly in front of the user and requires them to show that they affirmatively accept the terms by clicking a button.

They go on to say, by going the clickwrap way you are doing more to have your visitor or customer actively assent to your privacy policy for their information by forcing them to agree to it, and therefore are more in compliance with the law.

What that means is that you probably should have

• a separate page with your privacy policy on it
• link on your footer to that page (which would usually therefore be visible on every page of your site)
• a check box on any contact form or CTA pop-up form that is required before your visitor can submit the form (ie, they can’t give you their information until they’ve clicked the box saying they agree to your privacy policy and/or terms of use)

What are you doing for your site’s privacy policy?  How have you found the best way to handle this?  And…how soon do you think the GDPR will come to our shores?  I think 3 years.

There is of course lots of info on the GDPR on the internet, and filling up your inbox.  If you’re like me, you’re a little (see: a lot) intimidated by this new law.  It seems so serious!  And I’m not a criminal – I’m not that tricky!  But rest assured, it’s not actually meant to be that difficult or intimidating, especially if you are on the right side of things.

For most very simple brochure sites, or even smaller e-commerce sites, you need to update your privacy policy and terms of use (if, like me, you didn’t have one until today, that’s okay.  I won’t judge you.).  And you need to add two opt-in check boxes to your site, which for most folks is best done on their trusty old contact form.  Your visitors need to explicitly give you permission to use and keep their information.  Yes, I know they are filling out the contact form willingly, so you can, you know, contact them.  But ours is not to reason why, ours is to update and opt in or die.

So, first thing – here is a good place to get some boilerplate Privacy Policy stuff.  And…hold on while I get a privacy policy…