Showing posts with label Cookie Consent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cookie Consent. Show all posts

Sunday, June 11, 2023

Another Minor Update - New Blog and Another Cookie Consent Struggle

     It's been a while since the last post; that's getting to be a bad habit.  Lots of little things all up in the air at once.  Plus some annoying hurdles to get past.  I did finally resolve the cookie consent issue for the upcoming eBay Ephemera-focused blog.  I've been using CookieYes for Grace Notes, but they only let you have one free site.  If I wasn't on such a limited budget, I'd have been happy to sign up for the cheapest available paid service they offer.  It's only $10 per month, and allows up to 600 pages per scan.  Not sure if that's 600 "unique URL" sites, or literally 600 pages in total scanned.  Either way, the cost was very reasonable.  It's my income/living expenses that aren't reasonable.  Currently I'm on the Google Office plan of $12 per month, plus $12 per year for the custom URL.  Unless Monique and I can improve our finances significantly, I'm not willing to spend more on what amounts to a hobby.

    Instead of upping my game with CookieYes, I found another cookie consent site called "Osano".  Like CookieYes, Osano has a "first one is free" policy.  With restrictions.  And difficulties.  For some reason, this one was harder to get working.  Then I had a hard time confirming it was actually functional.  Finally ran into CookieBot.  Their site has an app that checks your site for cookie consent compliance.  They confirmed "Not Working" at first, and after some effort, I finally received positive confirmation.  

    So, after far too much effort, the Ephemera blog is ready to begin.  There's still a ton of set-up, design, and of course, actual blog posts to write... but it's ready to start now.  You can check out my progress here:  eBay Ephemera: A Page Out Of Time.  Still working on the next gospel song.  Haven't been as focused as I should be, so it's going slow.  Finished a personal project today, that should free me up to work more on the blogs now.  Hopefully that will include enough practice time to get that next song ready.

    Went to visit my folks yesterday.  Aside from spending a great day together, Mom decided to go through her old 'home video' collection.  We found three tapes that seemed like good potential.  They're on my desk in front of me at the moment.  Will get them transferred to computer, then fast-scan through the videos to see what's on them.  With luck, there might be some footage of my uncle playing piano.  Not quite so important, but one of them might have some footage from the early 90's of me playing.  I'm curious to see how my playing has changed over the years, but also hope to see one of my favorite pianos.  Back in the Missouri days, my final year or so in the Air Force, I had a vintage upright piano.  Not the best condition, but most of the keys worked.  The piano itself was stained a faded green.  Can't remember who made it.  Like any old beat-up upright, it had a strong honky-tonk sound, and was a lot of fun to play.  When I moved, it was too big to take, so passed it along to another family.  Fingers crossed, I'd be very pleased if that piano was on one of these videos.  I'd love to hear it again.


Sunday, May 21, 2023

Google Blogger Housecleaning: Customizing Blogger

    Writing kind of a trivial post today.  At least, it's trivial in the large scheme of things.  It was a big deal for me, anyway.  :^)

    Back in January when the idea of starting Grace Notes back up was gaining momentum, there was a huge speed bump that just about shut things down before it even had a chance to start.  The "cookie consent" situation.  There were a log of changes to manage, new things to learn.  Last time I was paying (a lot!) for hosting and using Wordpress.  This time we're taking the budget express.  Google Blogger is free, and you can have a BUNCH of blogs if you really want to.  Google charges $12 per year for the URL domain, and $12 for Google Office.

    The URL name is a compromise.  It's not the original one for Grace Notes, but it is my overarching URL ever since Galaxy Quest came out.  Crewman6 was the redshirt who lived, and it's always been an inspirational name for me.  Google Office gives me a custom email, more storage for whatever files I use on the blog.  Some other benefits I haven't looked into yet.  Pretty much, this is everything I need to manage Grace Notes.  WordPress was a great blogging platform, and was more versatile than Blogger.  But it was a heck of a lot more expensive to maintain, and the hosting company just kept leapfrogging the rates up every year.  As things stand, I pay about $156 per year for this setup.  The old Grace Notes, with Word Press, hosted on a proper site... was costing nearly $500 per year by the time I pulled the plug.  Blogger is far more cost-efficient for me.

    At some point I'll turn Adsense on, but it's not a big goal here.  Grace Notes cost much more to maintain than it ever made me last time around.  If it can pay the $12 per month fee this time, I'll call it a successful hobby and enjoy it.

    Now we get to today's subject.  To properly manage the cookie consent requirements, I had to paste some code into the Blogger theme.  I also pasted in some custom lines for a couple of features that weren't easily available on Blogger.  Not really a skill of mine, but I did manage to follow a couple of guides.  Afterward, the initial menus for Theme management were gone.  There was a comment about some features not being available now.  I took that to mean I could no longer change the advanced features of my theme, without reloading the base version, making my changes, then re-inserting whatever custom codes needed to be done manually.  For a few months I looked for other theme templates off-Blogger, but didn't find any that seemed worth changing the whole blog for.

     With that in mind, I've been leaving a lot of 'tidying up' undone for months.  Mainly the link colors, and making a custom Banner. Woke up this morning, and it felt like today was the day to finally fix all that.  Found some websites that gave pointers on changing the link colors and sat down to puzzle them out.  The first one wanted me to start off on the Theme tab.  As usual, the first line read "Theme Preview is currently unavailable."

   


    If you're familiar with Blogger, at this point you've probably realized I've been mistaken this whole time.  The ability to customize my theme was always there.  As was the Advanced options.  Maybe something changed, maybe I just read it wrong.  I was clicking the down-arrow on the orange button to get the drop-down menu.  Took me ages to realize I just had to click on the orange button ON THE WORD "Customize!!" in order to get to the customization options. Now that I know, fixing the link colors was very easy.  

    It was a bit of work to get the banner done, but at least it was legitimate work, not a figment of my own imagination.  My previous keyboard was a Yamaha DG-640, and was a grayish-silver color.  That worked really well against the black background of the blog screen.  The Hammer 88 was more difficult.  A black body on a black background doesn't stand out a lot.  I played with it, even tried to use an external image for the background, but it didn't come out perfect.  It will stand for now, I do like it a lot.  But some day in the future, I'd like to have better lighting so the keys will be a clean white. Today's lighting was partly sunlight from a window, partly incandescent bulbs from a ceiling fan light, and the keys aren't consistently white.

    It's been a learning process, and a matter of finding the right software all over the internet.  I started with PixLR, used Irfanview, and tried several online tools before getting something that worked.  At the moment, I'm calling it a day, and an improved banner will have to be a project for another day.

Sunday, February 12, 2023

Finally Solved the Cookie Consent Riddle!

 I've been struggling with the whole European Union Data Protection (EUDP) Regulation... the Cookie Consent requirement, and by extension the California Consumer Protection Act.  It's easy to understand the need to protect everybody's privacy.  It's not so easy to understand the technical procedures to meet the requirements.  I'm a little more disgusted with government in general after all this.  If they're going to make a law requiring compliance, it should be built into the process.  Not laid on the end-user, many of whom, like myself, just want to write and lack all but the most rudimentary under-the-hood skills.  We're end-users, not professional programmers.

    I'm reasonably intelligent, but didn't want to spend weeks learning website code.  Especially when the advice on the internet is confusing, often incorrect, and overwhelming.  Or hidden behind a paywall, or a membership requirement.  Just at the time you think you learn something, you realize that's just one step, and then you have to learn more to implement another step.  Then you find out what you thought you knew was wrong, and you have to go back a few steps and start over.  It's been frustrating.

    In my last post, I shared a conversation with ChatGPT, asking for advice about how to comply with the cookie consent laws.  The chat occurred on Friday.  By Sunday evening (tonight) I've achieved conformity.  At least, as far as complying with the requirements.  Using the AI's advice as a springboard, I've learned what's actually needed, and how to approach it.  It's not that ChatGPT gave me the exact answers to my questions.  Rather, it gave me enough knowledge and understanding to find my own solutions.  And that's all I needed.  Just some honest, useful, advice.

    To begin, I wrote a Privacy/Cookie Policy page.  I learned the difference between writing a POST on Blogger, and writing a PAGE.  Learned how to use a widget under the layout tab, in the HEADER section, which gave the blog header tabs, in order to have my PAGES easily accessible.  Learned enough to follow (simple) directions from websites that provide the cookie consent popup.  Figured out how to access the HTML code from the Theme tab, and where to paste the popup code.

    Additionally, I learned that many of those "help" websites don't work.  It took trying several, and tampering with the HTML code for the site Theme (the look and feel of my blog, provided by Google).  I had to sign up for several services before finding out that the code they provided didn't function.

The site that worked for me, CookieYes, required a signup as well.  They offered paid services, but lucky for me they have a free service that worked nicely.  And included a tracking page, so you can track the consent record by IP address and date.  (Yes, apparently you have to provide this in case Big Brother wants proof that you're properly getting consent.)  To be honest it did a lot more than I expected, automatically.  I had to sign up first, making sure I chose a FREE service, not a TRIAL OFFER.  (Yeah, I picked the wrong one at first.)

Since I have some old blogs on Blogger, I'm not sure if they fall under some kind of umbrella, or if I'll need to do each one uniquely.  But there's no pressure, because I don't plan on using AdSense on any of the others.  I'll figure all that out another day.

Unlike some of the sites that offered free popup services, CookieYes' popup actually... you know... popped up.  I had to give my own consent to view my blog with the cookies.  For added confirmation that it's working, their stats page actually tracked when I clicked the approval button.  It's SUCH a huge relief to finally understand what needed to be done, and know that it's actually working!


Saturday, February 11, 2023

Jump-Starting Grace Notes: Surprising Solutions

 In the previous post, I was (honestly, ranting) explaining about the difficulties of installing a cookie consent widget into Google Blogger.  I've learned a lot about how to do it, but the more I learn, the more it seems there IS to learn.
    The solutions I've tried so far haven't worked.  But even minor progress is still progress, and I'm still trying to figure it out.  Yesterday, a good friend (Thanks, Eugene!) gave me the most amazing suggestion... ChatGPT.

    I'd never heard of it.  If you haven't either, it's an AI that you can freely talk with (like talking with someone on a forum, but more polite).  Ask questions, and in a reasonably natural writing style, it will do its best to answer.  It felt like I was talking to a very smart, and very polite, person.  The suggestions it offered seemed useful and well-thought out.  If you're curious, below is a transcript of the conversation we had:

    I asked, very specifically, how to add a cookie consent widget to my Google Blogger website.  Here's the result.  (My comments are bolded to make it easier to follow)

Jump-starting Grace Notes: Unexpected Difficulties

     My last post may have been overoptimistic.  In assuming everything was converging and the rebuilding would begin, I didn't think (or really even KNOW) about Cookie Consent.  On the surface, it seems like a great idea.  Protect people's privacy.  I'm all for it.
    What I'm not for, is making it so darned complicated to do, that I came close to giving up on Grace Notes.

    A decade ago, all a blogger had to worry about was having a decent privacy policy.  Now, you also need a Cookie Consent policy, and some kind of widget to prevent people from viewing your website until they:

A - acknowledged and approved cookies
B - chose to block cookies entirely
C - or left your website.

    This assumes a LOT of technical ability that I lack. I used to be pretty good on computers, but this overwhelmed and depressed me.  The more I learned, the harder it became.  You can't just post an info page for people to read.  It has to be some kind of blocker, that stops people until they decide what to do.  Technically, there's apparently a requirement to track the names and identifications for everybody that clicked "I Understand" on my blog.  
    Honestly, isn't that ironic?  They want me to maintain a list of private data, of people who allow cookies to track their private data.  Maybe a better word would be redundant.

    Anyway, I've been stuck on this for over a week.  In the old days, there were plenty of friendly bloggers and guides that helped me figure out every complicated issue, because they learned how, and wanted to share.  Now, the web is full of professional sites that require you to sign up, to get their solutions.  Some are free, but still, it's discouragingly rare to find a helpful soul just sharing their knowledge.
    To top it off, the few I've found aren't offering working solutions.  They're outdated, or incorrect, or maybe they're just skipping steps that they assume I already know.  The even fewer guides I've actually been able to follow, either haven't worked... or made disconcerting changes to the blog.  Like the one that turned all my text the wrong color.

    First off... why isn't there a standard widget for this?  So many other functions have been 'widgetized.'

    Beyond that, and a much bigger question, why aren't the companies who CREATE the cookies being held responsible?  Instead of leaving it to a hodgepodge of more or less (or MUCH less) internet savvy folks sitting at home trying to figure this out... Why doesn't the cookie itself include the "click to acknowledge" button? 
    Then, compliance wouldn't be up to millions of independent web-owners who may or may not understand how to accomplish the task.  It would be up to the company that already knows how to program the cookies and make them work!!  It would be problem/solution in one transparent solution.  

At this point, I think there's light on the horizon.  More details coming in the next post.


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