This is the privacy policy for phpwebthings.org, last updated April 26, 2026. I run this site personally, which is the most important fact on this page. There is no marketing department behind it, no growth team, and no second department that I forward your data to.
I write about self-hosted, privacy-respecting software. It would be hypocritical to track readers in ways I’d object to elsewhere, so I try not to. The short version of this page is: I keep what I need to keep the site online and reply to mail, nothing else.
Who I am and how to contact me
Edwin J. Rice. Sunrise, Florida, United States. Email: edwinrice1977@gmail.com. The site is published as an individual; there is no company entity.
What this site collects automatically
This site is hosted on a shared LiteSpeed-based stack. The web server keeps standard access logs that include your IP address, the URL you requested, the time of the request, the HTTP user agent, and the referrer. These logs rotate within roughly thirty days. I use them only when I’m troubleshooting an outage or a security event.
For analytics I run Plausible Analytics, which is an open-source, privacy-first alternative to Google Analytics. Plausible does not use cookies, does not track users across sites, and does not collect personally identifying data. The metrics it reports are aggregate (page views, bounce rate, top referrers, country at the country level). If I switch this to a self-hosted Plausible instance later, I’ll update this page.
Cookies
The site itself sets no tracking cookies. If you log in (which only I do, as the author), WordPress sets session cookies for the duration of that session. The LiteSpeed cache layer may set a small cache-control cookie that contains no personal data. Plausible, as noted above, sets none.
What I collect when you write to me
If you email me, I keep the email. That’s the entire data model. I don’t sync your address into a CRM or a newsletter list. I don’t run a newsletter at the moment. If I start one in the future, it will be opt-in, double-opt-in, and run from a tool I can describe by name on this page.
Comments
Comments are closed by default on this site. The reason is the same one most blogs land on eventually: the signal-to-noise ratio of open comments isn’t worth the moderation time. If I open them on a specific post, the standard WordPress comment system applies, which stores the name, email, and IP you submit. I’ll spell that out on the post itself.
Affiliate links
Some outbound links on this site are affiliate links to companies whose service I personally use (Backblaze B2, Hetzner, and a few others; the full list is on the affiliate disclosure page). When you click those links a small amount of metadata (the referring URL, your browser, the timestamp) goes to the affiliate program operator. I receive no personally identifying information back from those programs, only aggregate counts.
Embeds
I sometimes embed a screenshot rather than a third-party iframe, on purpose. When I do embed something live (a YouTube video, a CodePen, a tweet), that third party will see your IP. I avoid this where a static screenshot would tell the story.
Where the data lives
The site itself is hosted in the United States on a NameHero shared plan. The MariaDB database, the WordPress filesystem, and the access logs are all on that server. Backups go to a Backblaze B2 bucket, also in the United States. Email I receive is held by Google’s Gmail; I’m aware of the irony.
Your rights
If you’re in the EU, the UK, or California, you have the right to ask what data I hold about you, to request a copy, and to ask me to delete it. The honest answer is usually “almost nothing”, but the request is yours to make. Email me at the address above and I’ll respond within thirty days.
Children
This site is not aimed at children under thirteen. I don’t knowingly collect data from anyone in that group.
Changes to this page
If I change this policy I’ll bump the date at the top of the page and, for material changes (new analytics tool, new third-party service), add a short note describing what changed and when.