Cookies

The short version

This website sets one cookie, on one page, for one reason: to protect the contact form. There is no analytics, no advertising, no session recording, and no cookie that follows you to another site. If you never open the contact form, this website sets no cookies at all.

What a cookie is

A cookie is a small text file that a website asks your browser to keep. When you return to the site, or move between its pages, the browser sends the file back. It is how a website remembers something between two requests, because the protocol that carries web pages has no memory of its own.

Cookies are not programs. They cannot read other files on your device, and they cannot run code. A cookie is only as useful as the site that reads it, and only to the site that set it, unless the site deliberately shares it.

The cookie we set

Name

PHPSESSID

Set by

This website, on our own domain. It is a first-party cookie.

When it is set

Only when you open the contact page. Every other page on this site runs without starting a session and sets nothing.

What it holds

A random identifier. The identifier points to a short-lived record on the server that holds a security token for the contact form. It holds no name, no email address, and nothing you typed.

Why it exists

To stop a form being submitted from a page that our server did not serve. The token in the session is compared with the token in the form; if they do not match, the submission is refused. Without the cookie, the check cannot work.

How long it lasts

Until you close the browser, or until the server discards the session, whichever happens first. It is a session cookie, not a persistent one.

Can you refuse it

Yes. Blocking it stops the contact form from submitting, but every other page continues to work. If you would rather not use the form, write to us by email instead.

What we do not use

It is easier to describe this site by what is absent than by what is present:

• No analytics product, and no page-view counting that identifies a visitor.
• No advertising or remarketing cookie, and no advertising pixel.
• No session recording, heat map, or A/B testing script.
• No social media embed that sets a cookie before you interact with it.
• No consent banner, because there is nothing optional to consent to.

If that changes — for example, if we add privacy-respecting measurement — this page will describe the new cookie before it is set, and the change will not be retroactive.

Other requests your browser makes

A page is rarely a single request. This site loads its fonts and images from its own domain, so those requests do not go anywhere else. One library is different:

• Animation library. The homepage loads GSAP from a public content delivery network. That request tells the network your IP address and which page requested the file, as any request does. It does not set a cookie of ours, and the library is a static file.

Links to Discord are ordinary links. Nothing is loaded from Discord until you follow one, at which point Discord's own policy applies.

Managing cookies in your browser

Every current browser lets you see the cookies a site has set and remove them. The setting usually lives under privacy or site data in the browser's preferences. You can also browse in a private window, which discards the session cookie when the window closes.

Removing the cookie while the contact page is open will cause the next submission to be refused, because the token will no longer match. Reloading the page issues a fresh one.

More detail

How long information is kept, and who can reach it, is described in storing information. Why we hold it at all is described in the privacy notice. If a cookie question is not answered here, write to [email protected].

Changes to this page

If a cookie is added or removed, this page is updated on the same day. The date at the top is the date of the most recent revision.