Blog

It’s been way too long since the last dev update to even begin listing everything that’s changed since. With that in mind, I’m only going to go into detail with what’s being released today. Maybe eventually I’ll get around to writing some posts about those previous updates.

This update has a heavy focus on compliance with the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In the background, us TechRats have been busy re-evaluating and updating our processes at every corner to ensure the private data we have collected from you is safe, secure, and most of all responsibly handled. Our first big step was moving our main web server, Cheddar, to it’s new home in Germany. Before the move, our web services were mostly hosted from Digital Ocean’s NYC1 data center, which is located in New York (go figure).

Today, we’re making our next big step towards full compliance with the GDPR, and are releasing a new rewritten Privacy Policy to better detail what we collect, and how we use it. With this new policy has come changes with our registration page, and we have moved both the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy to pages on the main website. This new Policy will go into effect May 13th (today), and existing rats should receive an e-mail about the update within the next couple weeks.

Phew! Well now that we’ve got all the serious talk out of the way, lets go into what’s all changing this update!

 ✨ What’s Changed

• New Privacy Policy – Among our efforts to comply with the GDPR, we have rewritten our Privacy Policy to better explain what we collect about you, and how we use that data.
• Updated registration process – New ratlings will now see our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy popup when accessing the registration page for the first time. This is another major step we’re making to ensure our services are GDPR Compliant.
• Removed Google Analytic Tracking – Originally, we had built analytics into the site to gain usage statistics to help development of the website. However, we long since stopped using this data, and felt it was unfit to continue tracking it. GA is now completely removed from our website.
• New Dialogs – Our dialogs (such as the login form) have been updated once again! This time around the focus is on better support for mobile, while retaining a familiar feel.
• Reworked navigation – Our navigation links have been redone with a more categorized approach. Blog pages are now grouped together, and our statistics page and leaderboard are now under a group called ‘Rat Stats’ (I thought it was catchy). Our “legal” and acknowledgement pages are now better displayed on the nav panel as well, which
• Even better mobile support! – Mobile users should now notice that the navbar works slightly differently, and pages and dialogs are displayed a little nicer.
• Updated paperwork wording – Recently some newer rats have been confused about the assigned rats field on our paperwork. Because of this, the label “Who arrived to this rescue?” now reads “Who was assigned to this rescue?”.

So whats next? Well I can’t go into specifics yet, but it involves some wonderful new work from the amazing Uvelius Sång! Stay tuned!