What Are Cookies

As is common practice with almost all professional websites this site uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your website experience. This page describes what information they gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or ‘break’ certain elements of the sites functionality.

For more general information on cookies see the Wikipedia article on HTTP Cookies.

How We Use Cookies

We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately is most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use. Cookies will never contribute to a negative experience on our website and we do not use cookies for third party advertising or to gather your personal data.

Disabling Cookies

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will usually result in also disabling certain functionality and features of the this site (such as logging in, hiding notifications and much more). Therefore it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.

The Cookies We Set

By visiting this site we will perform basic checks on your browser and set cookies on that basis. By logging into this site, we will use cookies during the signup process, to remember who you are and general browsing and administration. These cookies will usually be deleted when you log out however in some cases they may remain afterwards to remember your site preferences when logged out.

We use cookies when you are logged in so that we can remember this fact. This prevents you from having to log in every single time you visit a new page. These cookies are typically removed or cleared when you log out to ensure that you can only access restricted features and areas when logged in.

When you submit data to a form such as those found on contact pages or comment forms cookies may be set to remember your user details for future correspondence.

In order to provide you with a great experience on this site we provide the functionality to set your preferences for how this site runs when you use it (hidden adverts, login status etc). In order to remember your preferences we need to set cookies so that this information can be called whenever you interact with a page is affected by your preferences.

Third Party Cookies

In some cases we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details which third party cookies you might encounter through this site.

This site uses Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solution on the web for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content – it will not collect any identifiable or sensitive information from you.

For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.

In some cases we may provide you with custom content based on what you tell us about yourself either directly or indirectly by linking a social media account. These types of cookies simply allow us to provide you with content that we feel may be of interest to you.

We also use social media buttons and/or plugins on this site that allow you to connect with your social network in various ways. For these to work the following social media platforms including; Facebook, Twitter & AddThis will set cookies through our site which may be used to enhance your profile on their site, allow you to share content using their platforms or contribute to the data they hold for various purposes outlined in their respective privacy policies.