Some (very) basic HTML for editing GDPR things

While you work to bring your site into compliance for GDPR, you’re going to find out that you need to add extra info, links, etc. This has a good chance of requiring you to add some HTML, so I decided to do a quick how-to:

What is HTML?

There’s more to know about HTML, but for the purpose of this post:

• HTML is code that tells a browser how to display things;
• HTML code is always inside angle brackets, aka “<” and “>”;
• HTML is usually stripped out of WordPress’s visual editor, so don’t use it inside posts or pages; use it on forms (upcoming post will explain this), certain widgets, input boxes that accept HTML, etc.
  • Example: If you use a Genesis child theme and the Genesis Simple Edits plugin, you can add a link to your privacy policy in the footer override box…but you have to add it by using an HTML link.

The most simplistic, bare-bones basics of HTML:

• To make links: Write out <a href=”https://a-site-address-here”>Text to be linked</a>
• To add paragraph breaks: <p>Text in the paragraph</p>
• To add a single line break (not a paragraph break): use <br />
• Slightly more advanced: To use a particular CSS class (style) around a section: <div class=”class-name-here”>Text to be affected</div>
• NOTICE THE USE OF / …you must “end” each HTML element (</a>, </p>, etc) or else it’ll throw everything off on a site. This is where the my previous life as an English teacher comes out: punctuation is your friend, and it’s very important. 😉
• HTML is always going to be in the angle brackets…so if you’re asked to add code anywhere, notice when that code has HTML in it (to help you get familiar with it – don’t worry about what it all means, at least not yet).

I’ll be adding a post next about updating your Contact Form 7 form with a GDPR checkbox (guess what you’ll need to know…yep, this tiny bit of HTML 🙂 ).