Our Hometown Blog

Our-Hometown is happy to introduce a small but important new feature to help websites on our platform comply with GDPR and CCPA Regulations: the Privacy Policy Popup!

The Privacy Policy Popup is a popup bar that docks to the bottom of a visitor’s screen with a message informing the reader that by continuing to use the site, they are thereby accepting the Privacy Policy. Two options are presented for the reader: “Accept” for the reader to acknowledge that they’ve consented to the privacy policy and close the popup, or “Privacy Policy” to view the website’s policy in full on the dedicated Privacy Policy page.

You’ve probably seen this feature on many of your favorite websites, as the Privacy Policy is a critical piece of GDPR compliance. While all of our websites have a Privacy Policy page in place by default, it previously required readers to actively seek it out in order to view it. Using this new technique, website visitors are immediately presented with a link to the policy and prompted to accept it. Most importantly, though, it is noted that by continuing to use the site at all, the user is thereby accepting the policy. This means that no reader could argue that they weren’t aware of the policy or that they never agreed to it.

And don’t worry about annoying your readers! Once accepted, visitors won’t see the prompt for at least another 30 days, or until their browser cookies are cleared.

The Privacy Policy Popup can be fully customized, allowing you to adjust both colors and text, and setup is a quick and easy. Like most of our plugins, you’ll need to reach out to Our-Hometown’s Support Team by e-mailing ops@our-hometown.com to have this feature enabled on your website. Once it’s activated, though, you can access the settings under the Settings -> Cookie Notice link on your dashboard menu.

Here, you can adjust the text of the message itself and the two buttons — the “Accept” button and the “Privacy Policy” button. You’ll also choose where the “Privacy Policy” button should link to, which will be the page on the drop-down list titled “Privacy Policy.”

Further down the settings page, you can choose whether you’d like the notice to appear at the top or bottom of your site, and can select which colors you want to use for your popup. There is also a field to enter a custom CSS class, which you can then use in the Customizer Tool’s CSS area to further customize your buttons.

It is important to note that these changes may take up to 24-hours to take effect as the cache clears and refreshes itself.

Once again, if you’re interested in enabling this feature, please reach out to our support team at ops@our-hometown.com and we’ll get it set up for you right away!

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