This Week in WordPress #162

Paul Lacey: [00:00:00] Hello, it's time for this week in WordPress episode, one 62 entitled chickens are now legal in Chicago. It was recorded on Monday, the 10th of May, 2021. My name is Paul Lacey, and this week we are joined on the panel by Jewel from WP Manage Ninja, Donata and Hans from Termmageddon and regular guest and friend of the shape, Bernhard Gronau from Pods.
As we discuss some WordPress related current affairs and news. Including the page builders summit event and a new plugin classic widgets launches to help smooth the way for more block editor implementation inside of WordPress conversion, 5.8. We also took privacy policies in WordPress. We have Denato enhance and learn how Denato was able to get the law changed in Chicago to allow people to legally keep chickens.
We celebrate fluent CRMs, David versus Goliath triumph in the talk mag plugin madness tournament, and discuss how community can be your best marketing asset in as a plugin vendor. And finally, we learned about a designer from Argentina that managed to buy google.com.ai from none other than the Google domain store itself.
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I think, and hope we are alive. Can everyone hear me? Brilliant. Can you make a noise as well? As well as your films up,
Hans Skillrud: [00:02:38] I'll start this off. Hello everyone.
Paul Lacey: [00:02:43] It seems to be working fantastic. Hello. Welcome to this week in WordPress. It's just me without Nathan today. So Nathan is currently hosting along with the page builder summit, which we'll come back to that shortly and mentioned that in the news.
So it's just me today, which means that likely everything will go wrong because normally I rely on Nathan to press all the buttons, but we'll see how it goes anyway. So let's see if I can handle this all by myself. So anyway, so today we have myself and an esteemed panel of experts and we're discussing various current affairs in WordPress.
So let's introduce the panel. So first of all, we have a new sponsor for the show, turn mageddon to NATA enhance skill, right? If I said that right skill rod. Yup. Yup. Cool. And they are the two co-founders of termed mageddon, which is an auto updating website policies generator. Denato ptarmigans president is a licensed attorney who has provided us legislators with guidance on how to write privacy laws on behalf of American bar association.
So that sounds pretty awesome. On's is term of guidance. Vice-president overseeing agency partnerships, ensuring web agencies get a free set of term of guidance, auto updating policies, as well as the ability for agencies to resell licenses to clients. Also prior to term mageddon ans run a 12 person web design agency in downtown Chicago, which he sold in 2019 and outside of work, you can find a NATA and horns working in their garden, managing their beehive and making sure their chickens aren't falling in their neighbors yards.
I'm going to come back to this. I thought so. Can I I'm a chicken person myself, so I'll come back to that shortly before we start the Start the actual news. Also I'm really pleased today that we have a returning guest, but I wasn't here last time. He was on the show. We have Juul who is the founder of Dory P managed Ninja, which actually has nothing to do with recruiting Mahershala experts.
It's actually a WordPress product company that, and some of their main products are a very popular form. Plugin called fluent forms. Also their most recent plugin, fluent CRM and Juul actually wanted to be a scientist and has a degree in chemical engineering. Obviously, he's a very smart person compared to me, I had what's called a Mickey mouse degree.
Also recently though, we're very pleased because recently Joel's latest product, fluent CRM when the talk mag plugin madness competition, but we'll come on to that one shortly as well. And last but not least, we also have Bernard granola and Bernard. I asked you for an up-to-date intro and you wouldn't send me one.
And you just said you were just a guy emojis. So I don't know if you want to give yourself a quick intro to let people know who you are and what you do.
Bernhard Gronau: [00:05:35] Both of the regular Watchers should know me by now. I'm just working on websites occasionally helping out with pups and Eva buildup the plank, which integrates the bowls of, to selling hot chalk, Colette, and never sending it out because we all just had it in Austria.
Paul Lacey: [00:06:01] Thank you very much, Bernard. Yeah, so you, you probably undersold yourself there. I would say that Bernard's family businesses order the most prestigious chocolate companies in the world and also not. And Bernard also has an amazing plugin for BeaverBuilder, which integrates BeaverBuilder and pods together, which I've used on absolutely tons and tons of websites.
So again, I'll come back to the chickens in a minute, but if people want to get involved in the comments today, please go to dot com slash live. And there you can watch the stream, which you probably already watching if you're listening to this, but also you can comment via YouTube or you can go into the Facebook group and comment by there.
So hello, Christopher Hughes. I can see you already commenting on that. So anyway, before we get to the news Tell me about your chickens, hones and Donata.
Donata Stroink-Skillrud: [00:06:51] So we have two that are fully grown and then we have four babies in the garage. So we have a little setup for them in the garage. And yeah, they're a little firecrackers because they love walking across the street.
And you know, by the chicken cross the road, it's because of the bugs on the other side look better. Yeah, so they ended up in the neighbor's yards, unfortunately, they're good chickens. They just hang around and roll hall day and get themselves into trouble. And yeah.
Hans Skillrud: [00:07:24] Yeah. My, my favorite part of the chickens is that at one point in time, a neighbor complained about her chickens, I think.
And we had to move our shed into the backyard and it turns out there's a law that we can't have chickens and. It's such a good representation of Denada. What did she do rather than getting rid of the chicken? She got the law change. So now chickens are legal in our County. And like people are embracing it and tons of people are getting chickens.
Paul Lacey: [00:07:59] That is amazing. I always knew the two of you were pretty, naughty when it comes to the law and everything. And this chicken breaking the law of the chickens is really proving that, but does it's crazy, but I'm really, I'm super happy that you managed to change the law. That's pretty cool for the community as well.
We were talking in messenger just before and some people might know that I've got some chickens, but actually I've actually currently only got one chicken. I know. Yeah. One of the, one of them died about two months ago just of natural causes. And then the other one we had before that got the Fox, got them, which is obviously when you have chickens, I don't know if this has happened to you yet, but it just goes with the territory that one or some of them will get taken by a predator.
But we also had a neighbor who didn't like our chickens as well, but I don't think there's any laws as such, but we had very low fences and our chickens would constantly jump over it. She actually had a phobia of birds in general. Oh chickens. Yeah. And the chickens would come to her back door and she was really scared and we kept trying to put different fences up to stop it.
We've moved house now, and she's probably really happy, but we've currently got one chicken, but we've got two or three, I think on order coming next month. So we're looking forward to getting the new batch to to make friends with maybe
Hans Skillrud: [00:09:22] wants to kill chickens.
Donata Stroink-Skillrud: [00:09:25] So I don't know if you guys have these, but we have a lot of raccoons in our area. So they tried to kill the chickens and there was one time where one made it into the coop while the chickens were in there and didn't kill any of them. And Hans and I had to get it out and I was hiding.
You need a metal, trash can lid. And I had to pitch my hands and I was just trying to get it out. It was bad, but it's always an adventure.
Hans Skillrud: [00:09:57] You have like boxes.
Paul Lacey: [00:10:01] It's definitely hard being a chicken. It's not an easy article. People might think. They only
Bernhard Gronau: [00:10:07] place chicken sloughy around
Paul Lacey: [00:10:08] the kitchen. I do eat chicken as well, but I've to have changed. We will come back to this chicken point later, actually the chicken and food and the food industry.
I think Juul knows what I'm talking about here, but we should probably get into something that we should probably get something into WordPress to some extent anyways. So I'm going to share it. I'm going to share the screen or not. And our first our first article today. So as I mentioned earlier, let's see if we can pull this up.
Okay. There we go. Cool. Okay. So our first item today is the reason that Nathan isn't actually here and is it the page builder summit, which you can get to it. Page builder, summit.com is live and happening right now. So if you haven't signed up to that already, please go to page builder, summit.com after the show, obviously, and you can watch all of the Talks for free.
All of the talks that are on every day are available for free for 24 hours as well, but you can also upgrade to something called the page builder summit power pack, where you can get access for a long time to all of those different talks. And I think that term mageddon and dopey management Ninja both or fluent CRM are both sponsors of the page go to summit as well.
I'm right. So again, thank you for that. So people go and check that out because it is an absolutely incredible schedule. Got it. On the screen at the moment, you can see the, one of the first things that is happening every day is that you can get one of the vaulted. Talk's available, which means basically one of the really popular ones from last year.
Sean tells talk here was super popular last year, so that ones one's are available today. And then we kicked off today. We have a little talk with Nathan and unshare followed by legend Lee, Matthew Jackson, doing the talk about how page builders saved his business. Then we have peach Neri who is a UX expert, and she's talking about typographic with page builders.
As we speak at the moment, don't compete with Gothenburg embrace. It is happening right now. So some of you might be a dual watching. I don't know how you do that, but you could obviously watch that one later. If you're watching this, then we've got Beth Livingston up next, followed by. I don't know how you say this.
I'm going to say Jake fol, who is talking about Google's core web vitals. We've caught some Berg followed by David Blackman, talking about e-commerce with Devi. And then Jonathan Jernigan is talking about oxygen builder and then a live networking session at the end, which I imagined Bernard might well be in.
Are you, is anybody attending the summit? I assume that you hopefully are beans as two of you as sponsors and Bernard you always turn up to these things. Yes.
Hans Skillrud: [00:13:01] Oh yeah. We'll be there for sure.
Bernhard Gronau: [00:13:03] Yeah, of course. Maybe I'm watching everything, but taking a look what's going on with people that are telling, Tom to talks, you already know the one from sometimes because she's great.
And she did the very nice top last year and I think,

The day or two there's the pot stock from Scott from last year, which is a very good watch too. So he just, he already built up the findings he had there with pots pro. So it's, it's interesting.
Paul Lacey: [00:13:35] I think one of the highlights of last year was the pods talk.
As if I remember rightly Scott played his ukulele at the end of the talk that he made a little song and played a song at the end. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. Maybe he'll do it. Yeah. He's not going to, obviously it's not doing a live talk this year, you can go and watch that again. One of the focuses this year though, does seem to be performance.
So you've got the block editor coming into play a lot in the summit and also performance. So there's quite a few talks about core vitals. I've got a talk and that is about BeaverBuilder and Caldwell vitals. We had the, what was, let's see, Jake's talk is about core vitals. I know Mike Oliver from January press.com is talking about his work and also co-ed vitals.
So performance definitely seems to be a thing in this year. In this shared schedule, but the thing that I would say about this event is that. It's a very polite event. So you can imagine that a page builder summit is extremely tribal. Everybody's this is my favorite. This is my favorite page builder.
This is my favorite page builder. And normally in Facebook groups and communities that can really go downhill quickly, these kinds of discussions, but Nathan Wrigley is involved in this and whenever he's involved, it means it's going to be super, super polite. So yeah exactly. Has anyone got anything they want to say about the summit before we move to the rest of the news items?
Or should we move on?
Donata Stroink-Skillrud: [00:15:07] I gotta say like when I go to online networking events, I definitely rec online events in general, different recommend going to the networking portion. Especially now I feel like I haven't seen another person except for Hans and like an eternity now, apart from like the grocery store.
So it's nice to interact with people in these events. So definitely recommend going to that portion as well as the talks too.
Paul Lacey: [00:15:32] Yeah, I can't agree more. I'm hoping that it's like a video chat based networking session. I'm not sure if it is, but it's absolutely right, because we obviously been starved from real events in the last couple of years to almost no, it's going to be almost like two years until we probably, from the time we went to an event with people until we go to another one and the relationships that you make it real events are long lasting.
Hans and I met at an event and that's why, I just thought today, I would love to have some people on the show today, who can I reach out to I've thought of hands. And then Nathan said, Oh, that's great. Cause he's a sponsor now as well. But you know, I think these ones that you have at the summits where you do have the video screens and you can talk to each other are really nice.
Last show actually went to a couple of those events, the digital ones. And specifically decided I need to try and make some new friends today, or I'm going to go here and, turn the camera on, turn the microphone on and just go out with the plant and meet a new person in the community and make new friends, even if it's just one, one person.
So I totally recommend turning your camera on if that is a possibility on this particular summit. And it's a
Bernhard Gronau: [00:16:53] private one just for tech buyers. So I don't know how it's gonna work because I didn't inspire them.
Paul Lacey: [00:17:00] You didn't buy it. No I've
Bernhard Gronau: [00:17:02] wanted for last year. And the, most of the talks are repetitive for me.
At least. I know my full course. I always look over the fans and come back to Beaver builder because it's the only one for me at least.
Paul Lacey: [00:17:20] It was, it was nice having Bernard on the show for a while anyway, but
the power, the power yeah, I think, yeah, the live one is just with the PowerPoint users. So I'm not sure how much the power pack costs, but I know it's a very reasonable price, but yeah, really good price. Yeah. Anyway Juul, have you got anything you want to say about the summit at all?
Or should we move on to the next one?
Shahjahan Jewel: [00:17:49] Yeah, I enjoy the online actually enhanced, sexually because I can go anywhere in the last year on and a half year or most and I, I miss the physical events especially art camps because we go toward camps just don't want to or the events or talks.
Okay. But also a talk with a real person. Meet with them know about their business or sharing ideas, those types of things. You know, I still miss those things. And I think in online we can't actually do that, but maybe what I do actually personally, that I joined. You know, Slack groups also discord and many fields book.
So basically I try to accommodate as many people as I can and then maybe talk with them. So yeah, definitely this is a very good, and I will be a big fan of this has been summit at great talks. Like in this event, I'm here interested to see the, web pedals, related talks. That is very important. So yeah, I am looking forward towards that. Either talks that I'm interested in actually.
Cool. I think it's definitelyPaul Lacey: [00:19:12] worth taking part and doing everything you can in these last, years to connect with people online. Because I think even when we are allowed to go to events and, we eventually get to you know, see each other all again and that kind of thing and meet new people.
It's so much fun when you meet someone who you've met online and then you meet them for the first time in real life. But the hardest part for me was when you go somewhere and you walk into a room and there's 15 people who you've met online and you just don't know who to speak to first, you're just completely overwhelmed.
Oh my gosh, who do I, I know I know everyone in here, but I don't know them. It's different than the life events because
Bernhard Gronau: [00:19:54] you stumbled into one group and talk with one than the other guy chow. And so that all do you know, Another way of introduction because you meet people and it's not like you can't do that because only one can speak in unless you have multiple rooms.
And then often in one room is empty because everybody's in the main room. And because it just, the indirection isn't the same.
Paul Lacey: [00:20:19] Yeah, absolutely. I missed you. I'm working on European art. I was going to go to that event, but I didn't, I think it was 20, 19, 2019, I think. And I saw the photos of you there. And I was like, Oh man, I was going to, it was really great talking
Bernhard Gronau: [00:20:33] with Nathan.
And then it's just, you get another feeling for the people and have a drink afterwards. And it's people don't have just blocked their one hour for the winter and then they have to work because they are physically there. They can't really do their normal work and focus on the event itself.
Paul Lacey: [00:20:55] Yup.
Exactly. All right let's move to the next item. So let's take a look. What we've got coming up next. Oh, that's just me. So here we go. I told you, I didn't really know what I was doing with this still. Okay. So the next piece we've got is a kind of WordPress core update. This is an article on WordPress Tavern by Justin Tatlock.
And it's announcing that there is a new plugin called classic widgets, which basically disables WordPress lock based widget system that is getting built into core in WordPress 5.8, which is I think the next major release. So I think this is a move towards the block editor becoming like the main user interface for kind of everything in WordPress.
And also I think widgets has been a clunky system of WordPress for forever, really, but it's something that we're all used to. So I'm I kind of welcoming that it's there, that this new thing is coming. But the funny thing for me is that as usual a new major feature gets released into WordPress core and the immediate response is a official plugin to turn this new feature which I know Bernard, do you find that particularly amazing as well?
So I don't know if anyone's got anything to say about this, or if anyone does use widgets or is welcoming the use of or the kind of slow phase out of widgets or something like that. It might not be something that anyone here has got too much interest in, but I think it's just knowing that things are moving forward.
But now did you have someone you wanted to say, sorry.
Bernhard Gronau: [00:22:31] I mean, if it comes to widgets using page builders, it's it, isn't a thing really. Barely a sidebar anymore. And I think even the concept of a sidebar is, is less and less used than many websites because it's becoming different. We don't have this.
Content block and tendon besides it the options. I think it's a good thing that there are tools to disable new stuff because some people won't use it or don't like it personally, I'm studying, using locking diff the cookbook for the classic editor because it's a pain in the ass.
If you're dealing with structured content and custom feeds and it's still not dealt with. And I hope every release, I hope they do something about it, but it's seems maybe to a smaller user group because it's great for content, no argument they are, if you writing blog posts and the thing will be great for the Wichita area, because you can now have a little bit more dynamic and more styling options, especially for inexperienced users.
It's maybe easier.
Paul Lacey: [00:23:42] Yep. Anyone else got anything they want to say on this particular one? Or is there,
Hans Skillrud: [00:23:46] There's pros and cons to it. Announcements like this, I mean the other side is that, that is, if you try to disable all the new things as WordPress releases updates, you're going to find yourself just disabled and stuck in 20, 20 or 2019 or before.
So I think it's just a balancing act of, staying on top of what's new and, embracing it to the best degree you can because, with something that is open source, that constantly improves on itself, like you have to go, you have to roll with the punches to a certain degree.
You have to take on the pros and cons of us all moving together with this one system. And, there might be some things you don't like there might be something to do. So I would say, it's great that features like this get released where people can disable certain things that they don't necessarily want, but also just keeping up, keeping in mind that, it's going to be, they're probably moving forward,
Paul Lacey: [00:24:43] ongoing.
Yeah, there's no stopping the momentum of this project moving forward, whether we like it or not, the block editor and full site editing is coming. So it's like I'm personally at the point where I guess I may as well embrace it having been in denial for some time, but jewel, you, you have a number of WordPress projects and plugins, and some of those are pretty big plugins for you just in general, not just the widgets cause the widgets is just a minor thing, but for you in general, in terms of what the WordPress core project is doing, is this affecting you in a positive or a negative?
Is it like opportunity or is it a headache?
Shahjahan Jewel: [00:25:25] I think the classic editor is, sole award and. I don't know, people are people up were solving problems, the classic editor with, custom layout, lots of metadata and those type of things. And I think you know, Gutenberg is a blessing, like for our use case we are using it, before high point tool. We were started, we already started using it as a plugin and now our content editors actually ideally, make the blog post uh, uh, build a blog post beautiful and more interactive. So I think, people should embrace it. And even I see that even someone actually like the classic editor, it's still, they can actually use it, uh, same thing.
They can actually use it as yet. Block as a classic editor, then have some problem with custom pills, those type of things. But I think, people should embrace that gendered. It's really cool. I am really excited about, Gutenberg, and, uh, for the plugin developers, I think this is a new thing, new opportunity, and, lots of companies that are actually building blocks and, uh, apart from mental ag, I love, uh, wooden bir, uh, our sites or big using Elementor in a bag, I think to them 15, 16.
Now we are trying to combat those, Uh, well, it's high in stool in a Gutenberg because this is fast. This is good. I don't think that I can understand why people are still using thick graphic editor.
Bernhard Gronau: [00:27:18] Okay.
Shahjahan Jewel: [00:27:18] I don't have any for that. So yeah. So I think, people should be studying it, maybe, uh, you know, if someone actually let me know why people are still using the classic editor,
Bernhard Gronau: [00:27:31] I can't tell you why I used it. And it's quite simple because of the user interface. If you're working with fields, like we have customers where I have not really blog, post type issue stuffs.
So just think about people think about I don't know, rooms or books or whatever, coming from parts. I've worked mainly on staff, which is, I always try to structure it. Like it has some custom fields because I don't know. If you have a person first name, second name, address, telephone number. And this stuff is poorly done in Google Brook because it's far below the custom fields.
So the people don't see that first. Most of the time it's any way a blueprint is not their design of because every person should look the same, like a directory or stuff like that. And down the meta fields in this small sidebar, it's so small on design. If you have categories or taxonomies and all that, that metadata that's poorly done.
Sorry. It's great. It's great to have your long form content, no discussions there. You can put your images in and you can have your texts and all that stuff, but everything around it. If you deal with most fractured sites, it's just, isn't there. It's, it's a nightmare for users to to deal
Shahjahan Jewel: [00:28:52] with it because.
Yeah. I told her to understand that, so I think that, people should, kind of, you embrace good embark past. Then if I'm on, has a custom post type, say people directory, then people think people should just have all the, Gutenberg in that they have that option actually.
So when you actually do this, you can actually just be able the rest API and it wouldn't, but we'd be teachable in that post. So it's you know, it depends on the requirements, most of the people, I see some people that they don't have this type of post type, they still try to build their blog posts in, uh, uh, classic editor. You know, say it's it's not, I think Dave did not try it or they try it before it was bought mastered, but it's still, we are trying to, use it, uh, no matter heart. So it's just you know, if a custom post type need like many infrastructural data post, uh, post meta then yeah.
That makes sense that you can, we can teachable that for specific that or state, but for page or, the post, I think it's a great Greenberg is great and I really love it. And I am also excited about the, 5.8, uh, that, I can still, the thing is actually that the, in the classical jet, I can actually do the same thing with the new, site builder interface. That is also in of cool. I don't know why or per sexually religious, via, uh, would jet feature. But I tried the beta of OD pres, 90 build and I see that I could do the same thing with a site builder.
Paul Lacey: [00:30:59] What were the widgets.
Bernhard Gronau: [00:31:03] Yeah.
Yeah.
Shahjahan Jewel: [00:31:04] You've got all that widget, actually all the widget in your side.
Yeah, I think one of the,Paul Lacey: [00:31:11] one of the benefits of this particular plugin, I don't know if we all need to use this or not, but one thing I did see in the Adobe Tavern article was it showed that on some websites, just the formatting of an existing widget might change very suddenly. But if you had your design perfect, and then suddenly, you manage 50 or a hundred websites for clients or something, and it might be something too for anyone who's managing multiple websites just to install just in case, and then do some spot checking on different sites to see, where.
Where problems are appearing and seeing if we need to keep, if the plugin needs to stay there for a while, they've said that they're going to support it for something like a year or two anyway. So there's plenty of time to migrate those kinds of things over, but it is another thing that we need to be aware of and not everybody's happy about it.
I'm on the fence. I would say we had Lee, Matthew Jackson on the show just of a day. And actually he's moving away from WordPress almost all together. As a platform, not necessarily leaving the community as such, he's just using, he's just decided that the platform isn't right for his business anymore.
And he felt that the PA the, the Gutenberg block editor and the way that my Mullenweg work for instance was thinking about this, the whole experience was very much, almost like a competition to something like Wix or Squarespace, rather than thinking about what people like Bernard are thinking about with custom fields and this kind of more of a database type of a website.
But then again, We know pods, there's a new version of pods over, out, or coming out, you've got talk a tool set as well. And to some extent, it seems like there is some embracing of the block editor there, even if it's reluctant, but I guess we don't really have that much choice we need to we need to move forward and unfortunately, and and all of us, I guess I've got some work to do, but Juul, I think you're right.
I think there is, there's a lot of stuff to be excited about in the future, but it does feel that like for some time we've been stuck waiting to see what's happening. And we're just about at the point now, I think where like the community of third party plugins will genuinely jump on and start moving things forward, but we'll see what the next year brings.
Really. Any other comments on this particular plugin or the block editor in general? Or should we can move. All right. Brilliant. Look at that. Look, we found an old article from the archives from term mageddon. And this isn't because you guys sponsors, this is just cause you're here and you're experts.
And I think that we it's a good opportunity to talk to you about this. So this is one of your own blog posts on termed mageddon.com. And it's called is your WordPress privacy policy compliant. And what's interesting about this article to me is that the actual WordPress system itself comes with a kind of basic template for a privacy policy.
And I think the problem with let's just say the positive thing about that is that it, it makes it visible. And this is one of the things that you said in the article. So you're aware that, your site should have a privacy policy and WordPress core gives you the option to have one. The downside is that your typical user is probably a little bit ignorant like me in that we kind of thing.
Okay. That's there. I assume that meets all the needs that I had privacy policy done. I can move to the next thing. See what's the next thing you need to worry about, but it's probably not the case. So while we've got you on the show, I was wondering, if the majority of people are assuming that if WordPress ships with a privacy policy, then that's good enough.
Surely first of all, is that the case? And second, if it's not a, what are the benefits of taking this more seriously or the consequences of not taking it seriously enough? Because I think that the standard reaction is. I will just try and ignore this.
Hans Skillrud: [00:35:26] Or I used to copy and paste privacy policies for my clients all the time. I ended up having to marry a privacy attorney to realize that's probably not a good strategy. Long-term
Donata Stroink-Skillrud: [00:35:40] do hopefully work for us to make a match for you with a privacy attorney, and then you'll be all set. So I think when it comes to the privacy policy template that WordPress comes with, the court team did a great job.
Their goal was to provide awareness for people that they need to have a privacy policy. That was the goal of the template. The goal of the template was not to comply with any privacy law. It's just to bring your attention to the fact that you need a privacy policy, which I think is great.
Unfortunately, the privacy policy that it came with. And you're welcome to read the blog posts and all of that. It's not compliant with any privacy law. So there's not a single privacy law that the template complies with. So it's really, I personally wouldn't use it, especially when it comes to like people who are not lawyers.
So some paragraphs are just like the paragraph title, and then you're expected to write the rest and, that's, that doesn't really work for most people unless you are a lawyer or a privacy lawyer. And then when it comes to writing a privacy policy, the way that every single lawyer will write a privacy policy and the way that a privacy policy should be read is the first step is figuring out what privacy laws apply to you.
Because each privacy law has a series of things that's required to have in it, right? So it has a series of disclosures that you need to have in your privacy policy. If you don't know my privacy laws, why do you don't know what those disclosures need to be. And then, your privacy policies not compliant.
You know, the goal of having a privacy policy is not just to have a privacy policy, to comply with the privacy laws that apply to you so that you don't get fined or sued. Right now there's over 20 privacy bills being considered in the United States as well. So when you use a template like this, it doesn't notify you.
When the clocks go into effect, it, doesn't tell you what changes you need to make. So it's just not a good compliance solution for right now. And it's also not a good compliance solution for the future. You know, some of these smaller businesses that are just starting out, it's a free template and you want to use that because it's free and you think that's fine.
But unfortunately if you get fined for privacy law, not compliance, we're processing gonna pay for that. They're just not and finds her privacy laws are actually calculated per website visitor. So starting out at $2,500 per website visitor. So let's say you have a hundred visitors, California, and have a contact form, but don't have a privacy policy.
That's 2,500 times a hundred WordPress. Isn't going to pay for that. That's going to be on you and the size of your business doesn't really matter either. So my suggestion would be to make at least the small investment into this. So you can pass that compliance threshold and then not have to worry about it versus using a free solution.
That's not compliant. And then you know, being a credible later on.
Hans Skillrud: [00:38:44] Where I personally stand is, someone who built websites for clients who, didn't necessarily, valued privacy, that other people may value of that. It's my message to agency owners is pretty clear, which is don't make decisions on behalf of your client if they want to comply with privacy laws or not rather allocate that liability to them, let them be aware of the fact that, Hey, we built a website with a contact form.
That means you're collecting personal information and you may need to provide it privacy policy with making specific disclosures, Hey, we installed Google analytics, same exact concept. So my biggest thing that I advocate for is don't be the one to make the decision for your client.
If they want to comply with privacy laws or not rather, have some privacy attorneys you can connect them with, or you could use a program like termin gutta in, It's the most comprehensive generator out there, but anyways, or find some sort of way to help your clients you know, get a comprehensive set of policies for the website.
Don't be the one to make the decision for them.
Paul Lacey: [00:39:52] Let's say, let's say you are an agency. I was an agency now more like a freelance, so these days doing different things, but I still have clients that I manage. And let's say one of your, so first of all, let's go to the agency situation. So let's say you're an agency and you tell the first step you get is that you, you stop trying to help your customers do the wrong thing by going.
I don't know. Don't worry about it. Let's just copy and paste this one. So first of all you'd never should do that. Number two, you put the responsibility with them and try and help them understand. What the situation is, what if they're not interested? What, as an agency owner, what's your liability as the creator of the website?
Did you need something in your own contract or something? Cool. Yeah.
Donata Stroink-Skillrud: [00:40:40] So really that's where your contract with your clients comes in. And your contract should say that you're not offering any warranties and that you're not promising that the website will be compliant with privacy laws or with accessibility laws or anything like that.
So make sure that your contract has that and then tell your client in writing that they need to have privacy policy. So what I would do is send them an email or have them sign like a waiver or something like that saying, your website is collecting personal information. We recommend that you look into having a privacy policy for your website is maybe required to have one five off.
And at that point, the client just signs off on it saying, yes, I do want to do this, or no, I don't want to do this. And then at that point, it's up to them like. It's their responsibility to make sure that their website is my client. You can't really shove it down their throats as much as we'd love to put, definitely make sure that you do this in writing and make sure that you check your contracts.
I know some contracts have, let's say uh, you know, this website will be compliant with all applicable laws, rules, and regulations. Make sure that your contract, doesn't say that, make sure that you're adequately
Hans Skillrud: [00:41:49] protecting yourself or make sure you're charging seven figures for each
Donata Stroink-Skillrud: [00:41:53] website. I wouldn't even do that.
I would not even do it. So
Hans Skillrud: [00:41:57] yeah that the documentation piece is what, I'm a huge advocate for. You can bring the horse to water, but you can't force it to drink. And that is a statement that I think every agency or freelancer, I use the word agency and I mean like anyone who builds websites for clients you know, everyone knows what that statement's all about.
And like with privacy law compliance with website policies in general, like rather than pretending, this is not real. Just embrace it and let them know they need to find a solution. So that in your objective is to get a response and there, it could be like, Hey, thanks. But I'm just not interested in website policies.
Awesome. Now you have a documented so that if they do get fined or sued for privacy law noncompliance, like you have a document you can fall or do you have a record? Yeah. You have a record. You said, I discussed this with you. And that's all that matters. Look, I get it. Small business owners. They have to put their budgets into things.
And maybe that they don't have the room to budget for, a generator or a privacy attorney. That's fine. But that doesn't mean you should be making that decision for that without.
Donata Stroink-Skillrud: [00:43:08] And I think that actually be surprised to have many of your clients are like, Oh man, I didn't know that.
That's a great thing to know. A lot of clients feel that way and a lot of clients are thankful that, agencies bring this up with them.
Paul Lacey: [00:43:22] As well as privacy policies does offer things like terms and conditions for things like e-commerce stores and stuff like that.
Donata Stroink-Skillrud: [00:43:30] Yes.
Paul Lacey: [00:43:34] I think like a privacy policies, cookie policies are like the kind of classes, like a defensive thing that we have to do a search. I know that's possibly wrong, but I did listen to a podcast a few years ago that really made me rethink the concept of terms and conditions on websites, the terms and conditions.
So yeah, the privacy policy, that's there to protect your users as such and also the website owner from the law, but the terms conditions, especially if you've got anything e-commerce related. Is 100% there to protect the business. So when a business decides not to bother with terms and conditions, they're basically saying I don't have any terms and conditions.
If I get taken to court, I'm not stating which country I even get taken to court into and all that kind of stuff. So I think it's definitely a way of looking into the stuff that you guys do for terms and conditions. Because even if someone's not interested in privacy policy, they should be having a terms and conditions to protect their business uh, search from anything that can go wrong online because we know things go wrong online.
People getting fined as well for data and privacy policies and terms these days. Is it pretty, pretty common now in the States? Yeah. So
Donata Stroink-Skillrud: [00:44:46] for terms of service jumps to service can help limit your liability on your website. We definitely recommend it for any website. So for example, like if you have a link to your Facebook or your LinkedIn pages and somebody goes there and gets a virus or gets injured otherwise, you want to make sure that you limit your liability there potentially limit likelihood of lawsuits for copyright infringements on like images and stuff like that are uploaded on the site.
You know, in terms of conditions is a great way to protect your business too. We do in terms of the privacy policy, or actually in terms of the terms of service nobody's really getting fine, but government regulators, for their terms of service, unless it's like you're running some kind of a scam, right?
In terms of services, much more, much less government regulations and much more you know, protection for your business. If you're in the us, if you're in the UK, Canada and the EU, you need to have like consumer protections in there. That's very important. That's the way you can get fine for terms and the EU and such.
And then when it comes to privacy policies, would you see a lot of fines going around for GDPR, not applying specific EDU. That's huge. There's been thousands and thousands of clients that have been issued in the us. We are starting to see some movement in terms of California's new privacy law.
And we're starting to see a lot more lawsuits from California as well. And you know, as more of these laws pass, we'll see more enforcement. Some privacy laws, privacy bills are actually even suggesting a lot of consumers to suit businesses directly. Which I think will be interesting to see if
Hans Skillrud: [00:46:30] that passes.
Yeah. I like to look at it as, five years ago when SSLs were around, but let's be real, you got e-commerce stores and you didn't really think much beyond that, but nowadays when you go to a website that's not secure. Sure. You don't feel secure. I mean, I think everyone feels that way and that's how I feel about privacy policies.
Don't get me wrong to not as bright, like privacy laws exist right now and requires a civic disclosures to be made. But. There are bills like new York's New York has three bills, but one of their bills will enable citizens of New York to Sue any business of any size located anywhere for having as little as a contact form on their website, without a privacy policy, providing their specific disclosure requirements.
Uh, Canada's privacy law pipette out there proposing a change to that. And there's 28 other privacy bills in the U S. So what we see is I very much think of this as the proactive era where people can educate their clients about the growing importance of privacy, law compliance and propose a strategy, something like term of data or a privacy attorney or something like that, to keep those privacy policies up to date when New York passes, if New York passes that bill or the 28 other bills that are out there right in the last, I think five years from now in the future, we're going to look at this time and be like, remember when companies used to just collect all your data and.
Didn't really care about what they had, in terms of how they disclosed it. I think we're going to see the same thing, like how we saw the SSL certificates. We're going to see the same thing with privacy
Paul Lacey: [00:48:06] policies. Yeah. I can totally see that. Especially in the last, couple of, couple of years where, you know, COVID has meant that we've had to do what we're told by the government all the time, more than we would normally be used to doing.
I think people are more aware of that, that data is being collected. Then you've got Facebook and Apple fighting over data and, and, Apple advocating for their user's data. And I think that will trickle down. Like you said, hunts, and basically website owners will start to realize that having a really good disclosure on their website is not just something to stop them getting fine.
It's something to tell all of their users, Hey, we're really responsible. We really value you. And we're going to look after your data and nice. I like that. Bernard. That's really cool. It shouldn't have happened. So yeah, for anyone to own, only listening to this Bernard is playing again with his background patterns on his camera.
Okay.
Hans Skillrud: [00:49:14] The policies, we gotta be doing something entertaining. So yeah.
Paul Lacey: [00:49:18] Yeah. Bernard was clearly so engaged in that conversation and he started this
Bernhard Gronau: [00:49:24] one has had an update that has a new timer. Can we on the stop?
There you go. Look what Paul Lacey: [00:49:32] happened there. Well done, but not, you've disappeared from the stream now you'll keep me, you'll kick me again.
Kick you. You kicked yourself out this time. I don't know what you are now. You're just a rotating icon at the moment. You're back. Cool. Well, definitely then I think Anyone who's interested in this kind of thing, go to dot com and check out the different options there. And also you'll also find hands and nicer in all of the usual Facebook groups.
And also you've been really generous and supportive, lots of events and stuff that's going on of late. And I've met you hands as well at an event. And I can just say that you are a super friendly, approachable person. And to NATA, you must be as well. If if the two of you together say
Hans Skillrud: [00:50:21] we're opposite.
So she's on friends,
Paul Lacey: [00:50:28] you can see you must be good people.
Hans Skillrud: [00:50:30] I was just telling Donata some great stories about when we first met. That was a life-changing event for me. I had just sold my agency, went full-time term and got in and yeah, never looked back. It's been amazing because of people like you, that I got to meet.
Paul Lacey: [00:50:44] Yeah, I hope, I hope that we get to do that again.
I'm looking for, I know that there will be events like that again soon, but we, we effectively met onstage. So normally when Hans and I are speaking, we're either on a stage or a live stream of some sort. And but in the good thing in the real world, we're able to have, a beer after and everything as well and talk after.
But yeah, that was awesome. And I really enjoyed meeting you there as well. All right. Has anyone got anything else I want to say about privacy policies as such, or should we move onto fluent CRM?
Hans Skillrud: [00:51:20] I think we reached our quota in terms of how long we can talk about privacy policies. It's no longer a discussion we can have.
Paul Lacey: [00:51:27] Yeah. Yeah, sure. Bernard Bernard seemed to feel like he needed to move on so we can move on. So anyway, back in, when was this? When was this? When was fluent CRM, 2.0 released your which month?
Shahjahan Jewel: [00:51:43] Yeah, I think two weeks ago we released a fluent CRM 2.0, so it was actually a big update. So lots of things we integrate, in discussion the main feature was that the multipath that is you're seeing now multiple conditional automation panel.
So that was our biggest topic so far. And I believe this is the feature that, active campaign Hab. And I think it's a very powerful feature that you can run automation based on certain condition of your contact. If someone actually the package, your product, if did not patch it, then actually promote another product, something like that.
So that, uh, 2.0 and we also adde, lots of, other features too. Basically we delete, uh, new, uh, new update every month fluent CRM.
Paul Lacey: [00:52:42] Yup. Fluent forms came onto the market. This is your one, your over products, fluent forms. Yeah. It was a direct competition to gravity forms and has been really well received.
I think that, I don't know if I'm right with this, but you seem to answer all of the things that people were slightly frustrated with around gravity forms. You listen to that feedback from the community that wasn't necessarily being implemented for gravity forms like a solid product, but it wasn't moving very fast.
At least it didn't seem like that as a customer, I was a customer of gravity forms. And then you had your product fluent forms, which we did really well. And then you moved into the area of creating a full-on customer relationship management software within WordPress itself, fluent CRM.
And then you also launched 2.0 a couple of months ago. Now I've got to say when I first heard about CRMs coming into WordPress, I was like, That is the wrong thing. We shouldn't be having CRMs in WordPress, but I have to admit that when I was thinking that way, I was actually completely delusional about something else in my business at the time.
So if you look at the people that you're aiming at web designers, agencies, business owners, yeah. I had something like 25 clients, so I could, I couldn't have no CRM and just call all of them over the space of one day. I could potentially phone call every single one of my clients in one day.
So I was always looking personally at CRMs of right. I need what, 2000 contacts, I need to be able to do all these automations or this kind of thing. And so when I realized later on that maybe I get two inquiries a week maximum. Yeah. And I don't need to have a massive You know, automation going on with Zapier connecting to 15 different apps.
Yeah. I realized that maybe is a good place to have your CRM inside WordPress, because you can have your forms collecting stuff in WordPress. And then next going straight into your CRM where you've got your automations, you might then be converting those people to woo commerce customers, which you can then interact with in the CRM.
And then definitely more recently, I did the talk I've done at the page builder summit was all about core vitals, right? And one of the things that I found in my research into that was that the more external scripts that you have on your website, the more delay in loading that you're having. So I started to think that if you are using something like active campaign and you're tracking users, then you've got a constant tracking script loading in the background, checking everything.
Wherever, but if you have that on WordPress itself, then it's not loading externally. So it really started to make sense to me that you could build your whole funnel within a CRM on your website, especially if you don't have 5,000 customers, if you, if you've got like 25 and or even a few hundred or something, it totally makes sense.
And I know if anyone's just listening to this right now, they can't really see it. But the thing I'm looking at the moment was what Juul was talking about, which is the multipath conditional automation funnel. And I can't believe that this is in WordPress. I'm looking here at this automation diagram that you can create within your WordPress website.
And it's, this is the kind of thing that used to really turn me on with SAS software. I would buy any software that had a diagram in it like this. So it's, why don't you guys build in this straight into WordPress, but The thing is as well. The actual article we want to discuss is that fluent CRM has one and congratulations has one talk, mags, WordPress plugin madness competition for 2021, which is a community voted competition.
And you've got previous winners of this competition. Cause it's been running since 2016. You've got advanced custom fields. Sorry, Bernard. You've got dopey smash one, two years in a row. You've got elemental when two years in a row. So these are huge known plugins. And this year fluent CRM won it and you are the youngest plugin to win it as well.
As far as I understand. So you are a new product come into the market here and you've won. This competition. And I know that this competition is just a bit of fun. Yeah. But it is prestigious and people do take notice and it is super impressive to have won it. So first of all, congratulations.
Yup.
Second, how did this all happen? Like how did, how come you entered? And because I sought at some, you got some influences really bad. Yes. Yeah, definitely. I'm really interested to see what happened there.
Shahjahan Jewel: [00:57:46] Yeah, definitely. So I, I, I would like to share actually, so I don't know how we got into that competition actually.
So maybe someone from our team or someone some of our, one of our customers actually here you know, into, uh, give them permission to talk Meg actually. And then in the past Brown, I don't know how we, on the first round because, you know, I did not, uh, did not focused on bat.
So after the fast found someone actually. She already in our Facebook group that, Hey, you are in the second round. So then I actually poke us. And then I see that lot support customers actually talking about it. And the first of all, actually our customer beds or how we operate our business that is be different than other companies.
Basically we build our products around our community. So we have a Facebook group for, from farms, agile as another group or friends CRM. And we, our team actually talk our customers directly and we discussed lots of things or feeds or should be in our next portion or in this quarter. And basically our customers give us idea what needs to be implemented, same for, from farm Sam, for, fluency.
And, so basically we have a very strong community and we. We listen to our users and then implement those features that our customers uh, on. So they are like our partners. So when we are in the second round, then the our customers actually they have, and give me a moment, sorry. Yeah. Yeah. He actually shared uh, competition to their own community, say MarTech, w uh, uh, double picked after.
So they have a huge audience. So like WP Keppra has four, uh, users. And, my tech has like intelligent plus users. So they are also allow us our company, and basically they deported for us. And without their support, we could not do that. So on, we are in the likes the same final there, how are our customers actually got more excited than us?
So basically then we finally, we own that. So it's not a full of our credit, or it's not, we have a very big numbers, but the community, if we, uh, with cohort that all's actually pretty big. Like I think some people will put it as even, they did not use friends, CRM, maybe they were our, for informs users.
So we have 70,000 Flint from soldiers. So they also, put it for us because they did not use Korean CRM, but they know the company and they want to help. So I think it was like a network effect and that's actually, we won it was actually pretty exciting. So it was like you know, affluent CRM in this market, actual in this competition, plants are almost like the underdog.
Paul Lacey: [01:01:08] Yeah, totally. I did it when you won the competition. Did they send you anything like a trophy or a certificate?
Bernhard Gronau: [01:01:17] So
Shahjahan Jewel: [01:01:18] actually they are saying that, okay, they are working on a trophy and they will send to send to me. ,
Paul Lacey: [01:01:26] that's cool. That's cool. That is very cool. It's funny on the screen at the moment, we have a comment from someone in one of the one of the communities that, and this is the who I actually remember this guy from the communities.
When I used to buy a lot of software all the time, I had to leave a lot of these communities because honestly, I was, I became part prob properly addicted to buying software for awhile. So I had to have left all those communities for now, just so I can control myself basically. But this guy here, you work.
I remember him and he is the hardest person to make happy about any software. If you release some software and there's anything ignorant about the way you're releasing this, or you're trying to trick the community or something like that, this guy would tear you to pieces. So you've got a positive comment here from YWAM and that's really good.
And you can see up here this I, a comment from Atlee here from the Martec group and there is Adam Price. Are there supporting you? And he's got a huge YouTube channel as well, which I know that you can go and check out his channel actually, because he's got some content about he's covered your CRM a couple of times on there, so you can go and find out how that all works.
So what's next for fluent CRM then? You need to probably have a rest first.
Shahjahan Jewel: [01:02:52] Yeah, definitely.
and yeah, it was the best I live. We have uh, Team for a specific product. Like we have a separate team for front, from separate team from CRM and also needs to develop a lot of products. So we have a very big team XLE and the fluency CRM team. They are kind you know, working with some other parts.
So our product name is actually French CRM, but actually it only, currently it only, automate your kind of email marketing. Okay. And some other automations, but it does not do other things like a real CRM to our target is actually to make the, bill other modules for how a true CRM should have features.
And we will build those and we will release those component to. So th that is you know, our goal for, for NCRM, one of the component that w, currently, we are working, that is the support. So we have, lots, uh, most of our actual customers are agency and they need to manage the support ticketing system for their clients.
And currently they are using you know, SAS services. So they were asking if we want to, if we can, uh, provide the support from our operas too, because we have the CRM in OD press all that data here. So we get more insight from it support system, it, it makes sense because when you will see a support ticket, you can actually see all your data in your, in your, just beside your support system.
Uh, maybe in the next quarter we will release our support, support ticket system. And then we have a plan for, for offline businesses, with a plan for like sales pipeline system to build on top of a French CRM. So that is another thing that we are actually planning now.
Paul Lacey: [01:04:59] Nice. Charlie, there you go.
There's your answer. Charlie had a comment that jewel, are you bringing out a support system? Plugin? I heard a rumor. So is that confirmed then you guys are at least in a support system
Shahjahan Jewel: [01:05:12] actually, because we are using it. I think last two months we had to Eugene in order site. So we are giving all the support ticketing, replies and managing every query from our own plugin.
And we, I think we we. Have 24, they are helping us in the beta and actually they started using it. India or yellow sites is still in beta.
Cool. Cool. Check it out.Paul Lacey: [01:05:42] Look at this. That is the actual trophy that they're going to send to you. I hope that trophy is as good as that one. That looks like champions league stock level
Hans Skillrud: [01:05:56] wizard tournament.
Bernhard Gronau: [01:06:02] So it's not
Shahjahan Jewel: [01:06:04] there in San, something like that. But I think part of what this end, that will be really fun.
Yeah. Yeah. Make sure Paul Lacey: [01:06:13] you post it in the dopey builds group when you post a photo of the fee when that comes through. So yeah, all well done. He wants to know when he's launching, he wants to play the lifetime deal, which he assumes, I assume you'll be setting a lifetime.
I did actually see people were talking in the page, go to summit. It's what's your best lifetime deal? And CRM was one of the top ones.
Shahjahan Jewel: [01:06:40] Yeah, so basically when we launch the product, we give a lifetime deal for people. So getting that initial customer base in Israel supporter because our customer sexually is one of the part of our or part of our future development.
Because we want to have them, what they like or dislike or fees our, it should be there. So for us initial customer beds, that is very important for us and very helpful for us. Uh, it really helps eh, uh, LTD users. And so it feels it's good. And I can have I, uh, I can say that our, uh, it's eight months of fluent CRM and we have really a good err and our monthly sales use really looks cool.
It's even it's like we are in eight months, we are in big break. Even point is still, we have uh, many developers in this project, but we are, we are in breakeven. So I think from the next month this project will be actually the profitable itself.
Paul Lacey: [01:07:52] Yeah, I think you're doing great.
And I think Adam Price, or what did he say? He said in his words you crushing it is what he said. So obviously you're doing pretty well. Just while we've got Hans and Denitra on the show. So if you have a CRM built into WordPress, if you've got a CRM outside of WordPress, then it's, I guess it's the same.
But is there anything extra that, if you were advising your customers that their clients had websites using a CRM, do you, is there anything special people need to know or is it just, you need to disclose that and how you're using the information as usual and there's nothing extra special there.
Yeah.
Donata Stroink-Skillrud: [01:08:34] So a privacy policy is built of three main parts I received. There's a lot more specific disclosures that are required based on the laws that apply to you, what you need to let people know what information you're collecting, what you do with that information and who you share it with. So for CRM, if you're using that, you'd say, all right, we collect names and emails.
We use that information to manage our interactions with you and to track you as a customer of where you are. And then you also need to say that you share it with a CRM. And a lot of people are very confused by this. When talking about what, who you share personal information with number one, almost every website shares personal information with someone.
So sharing personal information, the fact that you disclose that isn't going to cause consumers to gasp and leave your website. Everyone shares information that's completely normal. And then another issue is that people will list the name of the CRM or they will say we share your information with the CRM and both of those are completely correct.
But one of requires can require a lot more updates to your privacy policy than the other. So for example, Let's say you're sharing information with an email marketing system, and right now you can share it with MailChimp. So you can list, I share it with MailChimp, or you can say, I could share it with an email marketing system.
So if you say I share it with an email marketing system and you change from MailChimp to constant contact, you don't need to update your privacy policy, but if you list MailChimp, then you need to update your privacy policy every time you you share that information with a different vendor. So we personally recommend doing it as to the category.
So saying it, I share it with a CRM or share it with an email marketing vendor. So you don't need to make that updates every time you switch vendors, especially with clients who don't tell you that they switched vendors either. Um, so that's basically what you would need to disclose. And I do see a question from Charlie, his term again, and cover the UK law.
Yes, we do. And that is for the privacy policy on the terms.
Hans Skillrud: [01:10:43] Yeah. When you're, now that you're ready, everyone listening now that you're ready to leave HubSpot and go to fluent CRM. That's a great example of why we go the route of disclosing with whom do you share data with? Just say CRM, that way you don't have to change out the actual names with who you need to share with.
So a very common misconception. We hear time and time again is people saying, Oh, I thought you have to list the actual names of the companies with whom you share data with. No, you do not a perfectly compliant alternative as to what's the categories with whom you share data with and because of GDPR and the UK data protection act, which are mirror copies of each other uh, because of the fact that they disclosed also that you should keep your policies as short as possible.
That's yet another reason to focus on listing the categories with whom you share data with rather than names of the companies. I'm sorry.
Paul Lacey: [01:11:39] That's my thoughts. First of all, that's great to get that confirmed about the categories because. I get that question a lot and, or I used to anyway, but secondly, I didn't realize you were doing UK lawn now.
I thought that I don't know if that was relatively recent, that you've started.
Hans Skillrud: [01:11:59] Yeah,
Donata Stroink-Skillrud: [01:12:01] four months back. It took a while because UK has very specific consumer protection laws. You're doing business online with consumers. Your terms of service actually needs to be completely different than when you do business with other businesses.
And no other generator covers that. So no other generator will actually include the consumer protection rules. And if you break those rules, then it turns to services, not enforceable or you can get in trouble with consumer protection authorities, things like that. So it's very important to make sure that your terms of service covers consumer protection laws.
If you do business with other consumers online, especially in the UK, because you guys have some really nice rules for consumers and some really nice protections that I'm very jealous of living in the,
Hans Skillrud: [01:12:46] also in Ireland, we just launched Ireland a few months ago and the consumer protection laws in Ireland are insane.
Donata Stroink-Skillrud: [01:12:55] I want to move there just for the consumer protection role like King as a consumer
Hans Skillrud: [01:13:01] in those countries, you can buy something and then return it seven years from the date when you bought it for a full refund, seven years.
Bernhard Gronau: [01:13:11] Great.
Paul Lacey: [01:13:12] As
Bernhard Gronau: [01:13:12] a consumer crazy, I'm used to crazy because I know if especially if it Austria and Germany are existing, special plugins to make your online shop compliant with laws we have here.
So
it's, it's
crazy as hell and things you have to do. I mean, I always tell it's funny, but I always feel like, because Austria telling me, you have to list the details about the
Shahjahan Jewel: [01:13:40] product, even in the check.
Bernhard Gronau: [01:13:42] So it's if it goes to the cashier in the supermarket and the kitchen is okay, you're buying one liter of milk or.
Because I just stupid. I don't understand customers needs protections, especially against the big companies and things, but I think it's only the small ones because they now need to apply to all those laws and all those details. And there's it don't list. I don't know that the Texas in the right place, you can be find in Germany.
That's, that's, that's bullshit. Sorry.
Hans Skillrud: [01:14:13] Look, let's be real. The reason why privacy laws exist is because of all the big companies harvesting data and making decisions based on that data. When, but now all small businesses have to comply with the same level of laws. Now, some laws, like CCPA only apply to bigger companies, but for the.
Grand scheme of things. It's you're any business. Now you have to make all these disclosures as a human being. I love the fact that we have a right to privacy and as a human being I don't get too cause I'm from Chicago, but a lot of companies get rid of my data and they have to like, that's something worth fighting for, but in the same breath, as a lover of small business owners, my career is based on helping small business owners out.
Like I find it to be a nightmare that they not only need to make those disclosures, but they also have to have a strategy to keep up to date with the ever-changing privacy law landscape. And let's be real, most people, most small business owners don't have 40,000 pounds or euros or dollars. Sitting around every year to have a privacy attorney monitor all 29 privacy bills in the us, the changes in the UK or in Canada and just the EU and UK is privacy laws that have been in place.
So
Donata Stroink-Skillrud: [01:15:27] yeah, it's an actually EU consumer protection laws are changing the summer. Uh, I've been meaning to ge, you know, to get us into the EU in terms of pricing policies for EU customers, but I'm waiting for those rules to finalize so that I can do the engineering. Cause it doesn't make sense for me to do all of it and then change it all once the rules change.
But I'm hoping that this new change will be like a permanent ish change that I have to keep going back and forth, but I think that's cool that, consumers get all these rights and abilities,
Hans Skillrud: [01:16:02] I think it's very smashed it. We'll be able to tell companies, humans or privacy to me means humans are more important than companies.
And I think that's something. We got lost. We lost that kind of message. I really think the founding statement that people can tell companies, get rid of my data and they have to, and I do believe that is for
fighting
Bernhard Gronau: [01:16:24] locally important and necessary. Uh, because it's, you never know what happens is with data.
And if you connect multiple databases and then the government changes and the, no, we don't deploy because at 45% probability you are, I don't know, going to Rob somebody because people will, if your office has the same behavior and that's just the not the
Shahjahan Jewel: [01:16:50] right thing, did they do.
Donata Stroink-Skillrud: [01:16:52] Exactly. And some companies a lot for those rights to everyone, like we had turned to get offered GDPR rights to everyone, regardless of where you're located from.
And I think that's probably going to be the next trend and privacy. We're just going to stop hearing about where you're from. You're just going to get those rights because I don't want to deal with figuring out where you're
from.
Shahjahan Jewel: [01:17:11] So I, I have a question actually. So hands-off, that is on thing that in our group there had a discussion actually about uh, for your company that it needs to be decided in the You you, data centers.
And for that, I think we are seeing lots of new customers from , especially for Germany, Austria disrepair countries. And so is that, what's that law actually, I don't know, because that was discussed in our group, say for a business, if they're CRM that doesn't also need to be like in EU, is that right?
Or something that you are,
Donata Stroink-Skillrud: [01:17:59] so it depends on what privacy laws apply to you. So different privacy laws have different standards on transfers of data. But you know, when it looks into GDPR, so first of all, you would need to disclose the fact that you're transferring data to another country. So if you're transferring from the European union to the United States, you need to say that.
And then there are certain standards that you need to meet when it comes to the actual transfer. About a year ago in the United States, we used to have an agreement between us and the U. You called the privacy shield and privacy shield basically allowed companies to transfer data. If you met certain requirements and the privacy shield was recently validated by max Schrems, there's a huge case about it.
You can no longer use it as a consensual data transfer mechanism. I believe he is German, right? Okay. He's from Austin. Really cool guy, like really interesting guy. Who's brought up all these cases and stuff. So basically if you do end up transferring data from the EU to the U S now you can't use that privacy shield framework.
You can potentially do it. If the consumer could sense to it, or you can do it under what's called standard contractual clauses. So it was basically a contract between you and the people that you're transferring to. So for example, like a data center or something like that, that basically requires the data center to meet certain standards when it comes to privacy and all of that stuff.
So it's complicated, but there is a way to do it. You just have to be really careful about it. But because that's such a hot topic right now, because you have to meet so many different rules to do it, so many different things that you need to do. A lot of people end up just getting bad data in the EU, so they don't have.
So that's the short,Shahjahan Jewel: [01:19:53]
one of the reasons John we are, you people are doing self hosting, hosted using Salesforce to suppliers. And so I think, self hosted softwares are getting popular nowadays.
Donata Stroink-Skillrud: [01:20:06] Yeah, sort of data is a nightmare now because of all these rules that are changing.
And it seems like there's some movement at the U S of trying to establish new privacy shield type of framework. But if they do establish it, I'd be very careful using it because the students back shrugs wakes up and decides he doesn't like it.
Bernhard Gronau: [01:20:25] Yeah. Yeah. He's, he's very busy on that end and I think it's a good thing,
although it's annoying for us to deal with, but the law behind is important. So that, uh, people are secure and can have their data deleted and stuff like that. And there's a reason why in Europe, most of the people try to have that data stored somewhere in Europe. And that's the reason why the data centers are local.
And while that Microsoft stores European data in Europe and of the others, because they know it's just easier to avoid the confrontation and uh, possible edges. And then it's always like this feeling in Europe. If, if in America, somebody breaks along that there i, th they want the data and stuff like that, then it's far easier for the American government to get the data and stuff like that.
And I think it's, it's the right thing to do. And then you
Shahjahan Jewel: [01:21:30] never know.
Paul Lacey: [01:21:32] Yeah. We're actually, I think our time, I'm not sure what happens after the time that we go over. So we're going to have to leave it there. But the the big takeaway I've got to say to people first of all like you said, is the people are more important than companies, but the even bigger takeaway is that if you are in Ireland, you can go to Bernard's family chocolate store.
Buy some chocolate and send it back to him in seven years and ask for a refund. So that's what I recommend you all do and see what happens. Before we, before we sign off, there is one super quick article that we can look at here. And this is just a fun little one that some of you might have already heard about that.
A designer living in Buenos Aires in Argentina, managed to snap up the google.com.ar domain after the domain temporarily became available in the Google, in the domain registry. I think that if you want to go and check this out, just go to the guardian or just search for this. If you just search Argentinian buys, Google domain, I'm sure there'll be lots of articles about that, but how that happened.
I don't know. And but I think it's quite funny anyway, so I'm not sure what he put the Yoshi put there after. But I'm pretty sure that, when he bought it. He knew stuff was going to happen. That was going to kick off straight after that. And it's going to I'm just going to do this.
I'm going to buy it. And then I'm going to sit and eat the popcorn. And
Bernhard Gronau: [01:23:09] I wonder if somebody got fired for
Paul Lacey: [01:23:12] letting that slip? Maybe, yeah, maybe. That's yeah. The thing is that, this does happen the mines to get due to expire, but it's usually when you know that. The janitor of the company bought the domain, then moved to Australia or something.
And no one knew where the domain was, but come on, man, this is Google. This is the company we trust with our personal domain data. And they didn't forget to renew
Donata Stroink-Skillrud: [01:23:37] that too. It's every once in a while, I think a couple years back, a guy also bought a Google domain for whatever five euros or something like that after it expired.
And what's funny is that every time this happens, the person that ends up buying the domain is like the nicest person of all time. Like they don't ask for billions of dollars, which they totally could. I think the guy asks for a Google hat and a tour of their facility and that was it. And then he was like, all right, now I'll get this domain back to you.
Hans Skillrud: [01:24:10] Cut a check for that person. Cause he just gave it back to them. Google ends up writing a, donating, a check in his name. And they wrote the check amount was Google, but in like phone, convert like numbers, yeah, you did it. They did it in G O G L dot. And then in pennies it was, L E and th that was the check them out.
They wrote on behalf of this person as a donation somewhere and like story. If you ever have any, your domain expires you can always reference this, like even Google, this even happens to Google people like we'll get over it.
Paul Lacey: [01:24:53] Yeah. Yeah.
Shahjahan Jewel: [01:24:54] I think that actually passes that domain from google.com. Google domains.
Paul Lacey: [01:25:00] What was that again? Sorry.
Shahjahan Jewel: [01:25:02] That parts on the google.com that you bought from google.com. Yes, that's
Hans Skillrud: [01:25:08] right. Yeah. Just bought it on Google domains. He bought
Google.
Paul Lacey: [01:25:13] Thank you everyone today. Thanks Hans. And Denato Bernard and Juul and everybody who's coming. Listen to watch today. And we've got to do the the way thing now. Bernard knows all about this, but basically I need to press the end broadcast button. And what we have to do is wave awkwardly until we think it's gone off.
So if you could all start waving even you at home kids, you can do it too. Goodbye.