Yes, I may have actually edited the in-game image for a stupid featured image for one post.
As much of the internet has since realized and meme’d to hell and back, there was a major disturbance in tubes in the form of the EU’s GDPR- a new privacy regulation that is changing how websites are to operate across the net.
While for sites like Geofront, this is not a massive change, it is a change that I’ve been eyeing carefully for quite some time now, as this is my real life work, too. So in an effort for my websites on esterior.net to maintain a particular ‘professionalism’ to them, I’ve not only drafted up a privacy policy for it, but I’ve sought out methods to ensure all four sites hosted on it are GDPR compliant, much like other commercial sites that are required to do so.
This has also driven in a bit of an overhaul of the backend of the website, on top of some new additions- especially one that had been in the works since the day the site opened and never finished: a page about the team as a whole, revealing everyone who is involved and has been involved in the game’s translation. You might have noticed this being added and something missing from the menu.
So without further ado, jump into the cut to see the details of changes that have happened to the page in the past few weeks.
esterior.net Privacy Policy
As stated at the start, there has been a privacy policy put into affect onto all of the sites located on esterior.net. You can find this policy linked both in the header, the footer, and in anything that the socializer plugin that’s used deems necessary. This is part of a necessity to make the site GDPR compliant.
I feel that it is my responsibility to identify one area that is on the line of being compliant or not, and that is the usage of a WordPress plugin known as ‘Shortcodes Ultimate.’ This plugin draws in assets from FontAwesome, which does toe the line of compliancy with GDPR, since certain methods can involve FontAwesome getting some of your data, such as your IP address.
If you’re not interested in the work to go to the menu and find the link, you can read the Privacy Policy here.
That About Us Page
As stated, the draft for the About Us page had been in the works, but never finalized. Zerker finally settled in and finished the page like the writing beast that he is. There are additional items to add to it, but for the time being, we’re good with it as is. You can finally see the names of everyone involved on the project, and not just those of us who are chatty on here or other forms of social media.
bbPress Deactivation
Yes, there was a forum on this site. No, you probably didn’t know about it. I mean, even we kept forgetting about it.
As a result, I’ve deactivated them and removed them from the site entirely. My reasons for this are threefold.
- The forums are a potential security risk, as bots can attack them in an attempt to inject links to the site.
- To add to this, the developers behind bbPress, the plugin used for the forums, have not updated it in about a year. Which contributes to the former reason.
- Because they’ve not done any updates, this has also made the plugin not compliant with GDPR requirements.
It’s common practice to remove unused plugins to a WordPress installation to help prevent bot breaches of the site, and to ensure the smooth operation of it as a whole. For these reasons, I’ve made the decision to remove them from the site entirely.
But don’t worry. You are still able to comment on posts. We’ve not removed that avenue, nor do we intend to.
WordFence Security
With the removal of bbPress, I’ve also installed a piece of software that I run on my other WordPress sites: WordFence. I’ve used this for the better part of two years for Endless History and Delicious Crack no Kiseki. As such, as I’ve shut down some other rarely used plugins that were security related, and also super outdated, I’ve installed and activated WordFence to the site.
For the first week or so, WordFence remains in ‘learning mode’ where it can learn the activities and natures of the visitors of the site. Its primary use is to prevent spam bots and malicious attacks on the site to keep it secure so that it remains secure and safe to use.
WordFence can sometimes be a little overbearing and sometimes gets upset with surprising locales and other things- if you run into an issue with the suite being overbearing, please let me know via email, contact form (you can even use Endless History’s if you can’t access Geofront), or twitter, and I’ll do what I can to clear up any issues with it on the back end.
(You can also find more on its GDPR compliance via the privacy policy)
Other Miscellaneous WordPress Updates
I mentioned that another plugin was removed. As a few others are slated for removal as well. I’ve also performed some backend work on things, and I have finally linked this site to Google Analytics, which is something I also intended to do when the site opened. There are also some tiny little CSS changes here and there to make the site look better. You might not notice them, but I certainly do.
Regardless of all of this, there will be an actual translation update coming soon from Zerker, so you don’t want to miss out on that!
Happy browsing, and thank you all for keeping up with us and supporting us.
Very cool. I heard a little about this EUBSWTF thing, didn’t know it would require work from people. Frigging regulations, man. Still, thanks for all the work you all put in!
I love ‘EUBSWTF’ and may end up using that at work in the future. 😉
this is not the update i expected, but its ok i guess….
I mean, I can just remove stuff from the website and not explain that things have been removed if that’s what people want.
Additionally, as I promised at the end of my post, Zerker has an update coming out soon as well.
Man, I had no idea even regular blogs like this one would need to keep an eye out for the changes. I mean, I totally get the “We want to keep things with a degree of professionalism” but still. Sucks that on top of having a Life, trying to carry out a big ass translation project you guys also have to keep an eye out for regulations and BS pertaining to the Interwebs~.
Sorry if some of us are too anxious and are dismissive of anything that isn’t Zero related but trust me, even the schmucks don’t mean ill. We *really* appreciate the monster task you took out of pure love for the franchise~.
Thankfully, for sites like Geofront, Kiseki Crack, and Eidenyaku, the GDPR regulations aren’t a big deal, since they’re not commercial sites. However, I’ve been seeking out to have Endless History viewed in a slightly more competitive market, and have earned money from it. So my working on the GDPR task of this has driven me to do the same to the other sites on the domain as well, because I don’t want to risk anything whatsoever.
Additionally, I work in web dev because it’s fascinating and actually properly a hobby of mine, so after doing the work at my actual job, I felt inspired to do the same for my own sites, as it’ll probably make people happier in the long run. Less tracking = good things, at the very least.
And it’s okay on the other aspect of people- I don’t have much to say outside of the fact that I’ve spent two weeks to remove stuff and add new stuff to make the website better, which is actually my primary task as of this point, outside of image editing and some other aspects of the project itself.
I just wanted to thank you that’s all