OK. Now let's see what do you need to do to make sure that your Wordpress website is GDPR compliant.

Well - as you have seen - there are many different types of personal data, so that really depends on your specific site. And due to the dynamic nature of websites, no single platform, plugin or solution can offer 100% GDPR compliance. The GDPR compliance process will vary based on the type of website you have, what data you store, and how you process data on your site.

But let's see some common areas. And let's start with the core Wordpress software.

Yes, as of Wordpress 4.9.6, the core software is GDPR compliant. It’s important to note that when we are talking about about the self-hosted WordPress.org.

With that having said, let's see the default Wordpress GDPR enhancement tools ...

Comments consent

By default, Wordpress used to store the commenters name, email and website as a cookie on the user’s browser. This made it easier for users to leave comments on their favorite blogs because those fields were pre-populated.

Due to GDPR’s consent requirement, WordpPress has added a comment consent checkbox saying: "Save my name, email and website in this browser for the next time I comment".

And of course, the user can leave a comment without checking this box. In which casem, they will have to manually enter their name, email, and website every time they leave a comment.

If you cant see the comment privacy checkbox, make sure that you have the last version of Wordpress and you are using the latest version of your theme. And of course, you need to log out in order to test the checkbox.

If the checkbox is still not showing, then most likely your theme is simply overriding the default Wordpress comment form.

Data export and erase feature

Wordpress offers site owners the ability to comply with GDPR’s data handling requirements and honor user’s request for exporting personal data as well as removal of user’s personal data.

The data handling features can be found under the "Tools" menu:

Privacy policy generator

Wordpress comes with a built-in privacy policy generator.

It offers a pre-made privacy policy template and guidance in terms of what else to add, so you can be more transparent with users in terms of what data you store and how you handle their data.

If you click the "Create New Page" button under Settings => Privacy, Wordpress will automatically generate a new privacy policy page for you:

Basically, these three things are enough to make a default Wordpress website GDPR compliant.

But, usually a website has additional features that will also need to be in compliance.

Let's check them out together ...