Fat Quarter
This Toronto-based Jazz band needed a site that helped them to connect with venues and fans.
Due to the popularity of the group, both privacy and security were high on their list of concerns for the website. Extra care was used when selecting plugins, analytics, hosting and newsletter distribution options.
Privacy features to note
Website hosting
For all of my clients, website hosting security is a top priority. I only recommend webhosts for clients if they use the latest tech stacks, have strong firewalls, and follow and encourage their clients to follow security best practices. Fat Quarter uses high quality hosting.
Analytics
In order to align with the privacy concerns of the band, we decided to go with an analytics service that is GDPR compliant, is Canadian and yet still provides some data to help us make great decisions about the direction of the site design.
Video hosting
Video content can be a security risk, if the video is uploaded to the same server where your website files are stored. Video file sizes are so large that they can be a target for DDOS (denial-of-service) attacks. I advise all clients to store their video content separately. YouTube and Vimeo both offer video hosting but since the band takes privacy very seriously, I recommended a separate, but secure CDN with a local server bank, so the video content can load quickly and securely.
Self-hosted fonts
Fonts can cause privacy breaches if they are hosted by a third party service. To respect the privacy of visitors, Fat Quarter hosts their own fonts, so that is never a risk.
Newsletter hosting
Something to consider, when privacy is a concern, involves how many outside services are being used to add functionality to a website. To facilitate the delivery of email, most sites benefit from using a transactional email delivery service. Since we needed to use one anyway, doubling up on that service to also deliver email newsletters, minimized the spread of personal data. Also, the best transactional email services take security and privacy seriously.
The band uses an email service provider that is encrypted and highly privacy-focussed. I helped them continue to use that email service but still create email addresses using the domain name that matches their website. No compromising required.
Domain WHOIS privacy
This is more of a footnote, but we were careful to ensure that WHOIS privacy is turned on for the band’s domain name.