This site uses cookies – small text files that are placed on your machine to help the site provide a better user experience. This cookie text file consists of information sent by a web server to a web browser, and stored by the browser. The information is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server. This enables the web server to identify and track the web browser.
As a rule, cookies will make your browsing experience better. However, you may prefer to disable cookies on this site and on others. The most effective way to do this is to disable cookies in your browser. We suggest consulting the Help section of your browser or taking a look at the About Cookies website which offers guidance for all modern browsers.
WordPress Cookies
This website has been built in WordPress. WordPress uses cookies to store information about visitors who comment on the blog. This is purely a convenience, so that the visitor won’t need to re-type all their information again when they want to leave another comment. Three cookies are set for commenters:
- comment_author
- comment_author_email
- comment_author_url
The commenter cookies are set to expire a little under one year from the time they’re set.
Another cookie is set by wordpress as a test of the browser’s ability to set cookies:
- wordpress_test_cookie
WordPress also uses cookies to store information about users who log in to the website. As login details are only provided to a controlled, small group of people, these cookies will not be used for most people who visit the site:
- wordpress_[hash]
- wordpress_logged_in_[hash]
- wp-settings-{time}-[UID]
All the data in the cookies is stored hashed. It is very difficult to take a hash and “unhash” it to find the original input data, which means you don’t have to worry about someone acquiring your personal information by reading the cookie data. When a visitor returns to the blog, WordPress checks for the existence of their cookie, and then tries to compare their hashed data with the values stored in the WordPress database.
Plugin Cookies
- __utma
- __utmc
- __utmz
- uuid
- uvc
The plugin that has been installed to tell you that we use cookies also sets a cookie if you accept cookie use on this site. This is so that the message about cookies will not keep appearing once you have accepted it.
Other plugins not listed here may also use cookies.
Google Analytics
We use Google Analytics to analyse the use of this website. Google Analytics generates statistical and other information about website use by means of cookies, which are stored on users’ computers. The information generated relating to our website is used to create reports about the use of the website. Google will store this information. Google’s privacy policy is available here. Google analytics stores five cookies containing information about this website and how people use it:
- __utma
- __utmb
- __utmc
- __utmz
- __utma_a2a
Content from external websites
We sometimes use external web services such as YouTube and Vimeo to display content on our site (such as on our Resources Multimedia page). When you interact with content provided through these services they may use cookies to record how you use their service. The information they collect will be anonymous unless you have an account with the service and are logged into it. Examples of the cookies they may set are:
- PREF
- VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE
- demographics
Disabling Cookies
Most browsers allow you to reject all cookies, whilst some browsers allow you to reject just third party cookies. For example, in Internet Explorer you can refuse all cookies by clicking “Tools”, “Internet Options”, “Privacy”, and selecting “Block all cookies” using the sliding selector. For other browsers we suggest consulting the Help section. Blocking all cookies will, however, have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites.
For Further information take a look at the About Cookies website. Our privacy policy is also available online as a separate page.
