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COOKIES

Cookies, and how few of them we use

We use essential cookies to run the site and optional ones to understand which writing is worth continuing. Nothing optional runs before you accept it.

LAST UPDATED AUGUST 2026

A cookie is a small file a site stores in your browser. Some are needed for the site to function at all. Others are a convenience for us, and those are yours to refuse without losing anything.

Essential cookies

These are always on because the site cannot work correctly without them. They carry no advertising identifiers.

Your cookie choice itself, so we do not ask again on every page.
Your light or dark theme preference.
Security and routing state used to serve the page and protect against abuse.

These are first party, stored by www.crenspire.com, and are not shared with anyone.

Analytics cookies

Off until you accept them. We use Google Analytics for counts — how many people arrive, from where, and which pages they read — and Microsoft Clarity, which tells us which pages are read, how far down people get, and which links are followed. It also records sessions: your pointer movement, clicks and scrolling on the page, played back later as a recording. It sets two cookies, _clck to recognise a returning browser for about a year, and _clsk for the current session. Nothing loads until you accept, and if you decline, the recorder is never fetched at all.

We also use Vercel Web Analytics, which counts page views and where visitors arrived from, and nothing else. It sets no cookies and stores no identifier for your browser. It is here because ad blockers remove Google Analytics and Clarity from a large share of visits, and a traffic count that undercounts by an unknown amount is not one we can plan against. It is off until you accept analytics, the same as the other two.

What we do not capture: everything you type into the contact and newsletter forms is masked before it leaves your browser, so your name, your email address and whatever you tell us about your systems never appear in a recording. We do not sell this data or use it to build advertising profiles.

We use this for one thing: deciding what to write next. If a note on multi-tenancy gets read to the end and one on tooling does not, that changes our editorial plan.

Marketing cookies

Off by default. If you accept them, we load HubSpot, which tells us whether a specific campaign brought you here and which pages you read before getting in touch.

HubSpot sets cookies named hubspotutk, __hstc, __hssc and __hssrc. The first two identify your browser across visits so that if you later fill in a form we can see which pages you read first. Decline them and the contact form still works exactly as before; your enquiry simply arrives without that history.

We do not run retargeting advertising, and we do not build audience profiles for resale.

Changing your mind

Use the cookie banner’s preferences panel at any time to switch analytics or marketing on or off. Your choice is stored locally and applies from the moment you save it.

You can also clear cookies in your browser settings, or block them entirely. If you block everything, the site still works, though it will forget your theme and ask about cookies again.

Third party cookies

We keep these to a minimum. Fonts and script libraries are loaded from a content delivery network, which may see your IP address as part of serving the file, but they do not set tracking cookies for us.

If we ever embed a third party player or widget that sets its own cookies, it will sit behind your consent, not in front of it.

Changes to this notice

If we add or remove a category of cookie, we will update this page and re-ask for consent where the law requires it. The date at the top always reflects the current version.

Short version: essential cookies keep the site working, analytics are opt-in and only shape what we write, and there is no advertising machinery behind any of it.