Today, I have some good New Leaf Journal news to report. In mid-September, I discovered an irritating Pinterest tracking script running on our site homepage. In addition to not wanting it on site because it is a third-party tracker, the script was causing a slight delay in our site loading times. I identified removing the script as a priority in my September month in review post.

The Pinterest tracking script has been dealt with. While I am not sure which of the things I tried rid us of the script, or if it left on its own, The New Leaf Journal appears to be entirely free of third party trackers. This is owed not only to the disappearance of the Pinterest tracking script, but also to our privacy-friendly analytics system and hosting Google Fonts locally. These changes not only enhance the privacy-friendly nature of our humble online magazine, but also ensure that we are delivering the best possible site performance to visitors.

Privacy Badger extension used on the Vivaldi web browsers confirms the absence of third-party trackers on The New Leaf Journal homepage, including an annoying Pinterest tracking script that had been haunting the site for several weeks.
Privacy Badger no longer flagging the former Pinterest tracking script. Rest assured that we confirmed the absence of the script by means other that my checking my preferred tracker-blocker extension for Vivaldi.

The site as a whole is not entirely free of third-party trackers at the moment. For example, we do have links to YouTube videos in several articles, and one embedded tweet in an older post. Over time, we will look to find privacy-friendly ways of embedding New Leaf Journal content in articles where we do so.

I have decided not to re-implement social sharing buttons on our content or links to our social websites in the widget area of the site. Instead, I will create an entirely new page on site dedicated to chronicling our social media presence, for those of you who would like to follow us on alternative platforms. We currently have profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest (we invite all Pinterest users to visit us now that Pinterest is not visiting us), and we are adding a more privacy-friendly MeWe profile to the list in the very near future. In addition to guiding interested readers to our social profiles, the page will include useful information to help those who are interested share our content on the social media platforms of their choosing.

I am also working on a new policy page to highlight our policies as an online magazine that respects its visitors. This will be accompanied by a copyright policy page expanding on the small widget that we already have included in the site sidebar.

Thank you, as always, for following The New Leaf Journal. We hope that your experiences visiting the site are positive, and we look forward to continuing to improve the site while publishing interesting content in many different subject areas. As a matter of fact, the rest of this week will be devoted to some interesting articles about video games (one prompted by a funny Guestbook review), U.S. history, and more. We hope you check in.