The SiteGround Blog

SiteGround is now GDPR Compliant

Over a year ago, SiteGround began the important task of preparing for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - a new law designed to protect the personal data and privacy of EU residents. While working on this implementation we have seen that the main principles behind the law are genuinely good for our users. The regulation aims to make personal data processing more transparent and to give people more control over their data. Even though the GDPR only applies to EU citizens, we have decided to go beyond and adopt the same good policies for all of our users, regardless of their citizenship or location. The new rules are becoming effective on 25th of May 2018. The following two documents apply these rules to our service:

Our Privacy Policy, which describes how we collect, use, share and process our customers’ personal data.
Our Data Processing Agreement (DPA), which regulates our responsibilities as a host, thus allowing our clients to have GDPR compliant sites themselves, if they need to.

Watch Our Free Webinar on GDPR: What Is GDPR and What Is Your Host’s Role in It?

Last week we had a webinar with SiteGround’s Senior Legal Advisor - Maya Stoyanova talking about GDPR, what it is and what you need to do about it. We share the video from the webinar here so you can watch it and find out if and how that new European regulation concerns you.

*Please excuse us for the poor quality of the image.
As promised, we are posting the replies to the questions we couldn't answer during the webinar here.
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Our Top Technical Support Rep in April

Our Top Technical Support Representative for April is Olga who managed to receive 100% excellent ratings from our happy clients. She is friendly, empathetic, and dedicated to continuously improving her skills. From learning new languages, exploring the world of photography to enjoying her favorite rock bands, Olga takes great interest in a variety of different hobbies. Read more about her in our interview below.

How is SiteGround Getting Ready for the GDPR?

We are receiving more and more inquiries from clients asking if SiteGround will be GDPR-compliant. With this blog post, we would like to explain what we have been doing and share our experience with becoming GDPR-compliant, both as a way to inform you what you can expect from us in the next month, before May 25, 2018, and as a way to help you prepare for the GDPR yourselves.

The use of our personal data by big companies is indisputably the hottest topic right now and we don’t think anyone doubts the importance of regulations to prevent abuse and enhance the security of that data. The European General Data Protection Regulation - GDPR, which will take effect on May 25, 2018 is aiming to do exactly that - regulate how personal data of individuals in EU territory gets collected and used. It defines what personal data is - being literally everything - name, email, username, address, phone number, financial data, age, behavioural data and more, and obliges everyone who collects and processes such data of EU individuals, no matter where that company or person is located around the world, to act in accordance with this regulation.

SiteGround started the process of becoming GDPR-compliant about an year ago and we wholeheartedly look forward to it being enforced. We believe the GDPR is good for users and good for the overall security of the Internet and we have always been acting in line with its main principles. Now our goal is to audit and make public these internal rules, and also make sure we apply the letter and the spirit of the GDPR to all our clients, no matter if you are an EU-resident or a resident of another country.

Time to Move Forward from PHP 7.0

Some time ago PHP 7.0 introduced some great performance gains for all web applications including WordPress. Our efforts to popularize it among our customers resulted in many sites becoming faster than before. However, since that time two newer PHP versions have been launched - 7.1 and 7.2. It is now time to move forward to one of the newer versions.

Our Top Customer Care Rep in March

Even though Stefan is an IT geek and loves helping customers with their hosting questions, he is also very artistic and has quite a flair for electronic music. He is a compassionate and reliable team-player, and this month he got amazing results of 99% happy clients and many excellent customer reviews. Find out more about Stefan and his interesting client stories in the interview below.

Free Let’s Encrypt Wildcard SSL

Free Let's Encrypt Wildcard SSL

Starting from today, all SiteGround customers can get a free Let’s Encrypt Wildcard SSL. This will make the setup and maintenance of websites with subdomains much easier, as they can now be encrypted with a single certificate. All it takes is a few clicks in our updated Let’s Encrypt interface in the cPanel. Ever since we heard that Let’s Encrypt plan to launch free Wildcard SSL, we’ve been eagerly waiting for this and we are proud to be among the first hosting companies to successfully integrate the new SSL in their platform. We strongly believe that global adoption of SSL certificates makes the Internet a more secure place.
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Our WordPress Autoupdate Just Got Better

WordPress Autoupdates Just Got Better

If you have a WordPress website and you’re a SiteGround customer, you’re most likely taking advantage of the SiteGround WordPress autoupdate service. Having your WordPress installation up-to-date is crucial for a stable and secure website. To make autoupdates hassle-free, we have developed our own WordPress Autoupdate Tool, which is included in all SiteGround hosting plans.