Last updated: 20 September 2026
This page explains what is stored in your browser when you read this site, what it is for and how to change your mind. It is written by hand rather than generated by a plugin, so if you spot something that does not match what your browser shows, please tell me.
What a cookie is here
A cookie is a small file a site stores in your browser. The same rules apply to similar technologies such as local storage. This site uses two kinds and no more.
1. Strictly necessary
These make the site work and are used without consent, as the law allows. They include whatever my hosting platform needs to serve and cache the page, the record of the advertising choice you made, so you are not asked again on every page, and, if you ever log in as an administrator, the WordPress session cookies. There is no analytics on this site: no Google Analytics, no heatmaps, no visitor tracking of my own.
2. Advertising, only with your consent
The site is funded partly by ads served by Google AdSense. If you agree, Google and its advertising partners may store and read cookies on your device to measure ads, limit how often you see the same one, and personalise what you are shown based on your previous visits to this and other sites. If you refuse, ads may still appear, but as non-personalised or limited ads, without advertising cookies being used to build a profile of you.
The complete, current list of advertising vendors involved, and what each one asks for, is shown inside the consent message itself, under “Manage options”. That list changes over time, which is why it lives there and not on this page: what the message shows you is always the version that applies to you.
How consent is asked for
Visitors in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland see a consent message from a Google-certified consent management platform, integrated with the IAB Transparency and Consent Framework. It has three options at the same level, on the first screen: Consent, Do not consent and Manage options. Refusing takes exactly one click, like accepting. No advertising cookie is set before you choose.
Changing or withdrawing your consent
Use the Privacy & cookie settings link in the footer of every page. It reopens the same message, with your current choices, and lets you accept, refuse or change individual purposes and vendors. The change applies immediately to anything that happens afterwards.
You can also clear or block cookies in your browser: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge. Blocking strictly necessary cookies may break parts of the site; blocking advertising cookies will not.
Two further opt-outs that work across many sites, not just this one: Google Ads Settings for Google personalisation, and Your Online Choices in Europe or aboutads.info in the United States for a long list of advertising companies.
Links to other sites
When a guide links to a hosting provider or a tool, that company sets its own cookies once you land there, under its own policy. I have no control over them and receive none of that data.
More detail
What data is processed, for how long and what rights you have is in the privacy policy. Who is behind the site is on the about page.