Tips Tuesday – AI Video, Shopify Stats, Technical SEO, Online Security
Tips this week include:
- Change of season hustle begins
- Why I’m moving more into AI
- Why video is my #1 focus
- Issues with latest updates
- Delete unused plugins
- Updates to our site’s database are coming
- Shopify stats that show pros and cons
- Google Analytics went down – did you notice
- Technical SEO is still very much in play
- A must-read article for better online security
Hello Happy Site Owner!
Welcome to Q4 y’all!!
This begins the race to the end of the year and I know it’s a super busy time for you with your site.
Change of Season Hustle
In the U.S. we just celebrated Labor Day, and for many, that also marks the end of summer.
I think it means more than that.
I’m writing this post from my tree house of a deck. I’m on the 2nd floor and surrounded by 4-story tall trees on all sides.
Most of those are walnut trees and they are already starting to turn and drop their leaves and the nuts are getting ripe.
Needless to say, we have a VERY healthy squirrel population here too.
And they are entering what I call their Craze Phase.
They are gathering nuts at a frenzied pace and, very literally, squirelling away for winter.
I think we do the same at this time of year.
We are super busy gathering the last of the summer harvest by looking over our crop of content and getting it ready for the holiday push.
And we’ll put away the bigger cashflows we have during these months to tide us over during the dead of winter from the cliff-drop in revenue many of us experience after the last new year bump.
Change of Focus
I know some of us will be looking hard at our Q4 income, and even full year income, and weighing that against the new normal of inflation too.
And I’m betting you’re also looking at the ROI of what you’re putting in compared to the prospect of what you can get out.
I know I am.
And it’s time for a change of focus.
Moving More Into AI
Over the past few months you’ve probably noticed that Tips Tuesday has morphed into more of an op-ed of change than strictly a website/WordPress list of tips.
Frankly, there hasn’t been that much website/WordPress news that is worthy of my attention, much less yours.
And what has been worth paying attention to has more to do with the techie side of things, much of which I don’t report on publicly, but I do tell my webmaster members. The rest is mostly stuff that you simply need to know is coming.
I will continue to report what I believe is helpful for you to know and keep you prepared for.
And I will continue to provide my site audit clients best-in-class service and extra info and help to keep us ahead of the curves and out of panic, just like the extra support I’m doing right now for the PHP 8.1 and WP 6.3 changeover.
But, Tips Tuesday will likely get shorter.
And I will be moving BlogAid to a half-time business meaning that I will only be working about 4-6 hours a day on it instead of 10-12. Yes, that’s how much time I’ve been putting in weekly for all these years.
I’m also being a whole lot pickier with what jobs and clients I take and I now require a quick preview of sites before accepting them for site audit services.
Plus, as you’ve probably noticed, I’m moving deeper into AI ventures.
I have 3 highly profitable AI business ideas and I’m bursting at the seams with ideas for how my clients can use AI in their current online ventures.
Follow the New Money
The folks who started blogging in 2009-2013 became the money-making gurus everyone sought out later to learn how to replicate that success.
Right this minute is that same sort of opportunity with AI.
I plan to be that money-making machine and help others replicate that success by being the groundbreaking users of AI in their niche.
Video, Video, Video
Y’all know that I’ve been jumping up and down to encourage everyone to find a way to get into video making, as I believe that’s the best way to get more eyeballs.
I’ve been making at least 20 videos a week for the last 4 months.
For the first 2 months, the focus was on video for social media, with 10 videos for GA4 and 10 for AI.
For the last 2 months, the focus has been on the AI Images for Profit course tutorials and a little social media for the AI Discover Hub.
My money and my time are where my mouth is about making videos a primary focus of my content creation. You just may not be seeing all of them because not all are public.
Letting Go of What Doesn’t Work
I plan to let the BlogAid video channels go fallow. Nobody much wants to hear my WordPress related reports. In fact, WordPress is pretty much a dirty word on platforms like TikTok.
Every other video channel I have outperforms BlogAid too. That’s the power of evergreen content on those other channels.
BlogAid is transitory news and the grind of keeping up with reporting that news is not worth the ROI anymore.
I never did a whole lot of the AI FOMO video grind either. The folks who did got millions of subscribers and views. But at this point, they are weary of that grind and weary of folks constantly asking them about which of the hundreds of AI tools they have talked about are actually worth using.
Most of those folks never had a business model to justify that grind and now they are changing over to do what I was doing from the get go – finding things that are helpful.
My mistake was not doing enough FOMO to get millions of subscribers. Lesson learned.
But, I still have no interest in the new-and-shiny news grind. I’m going another direction with my time.
Faceless YouTube Videos
One of my interests with AI images is to use them in Faceless YouTube videos.
I am on fire with what we can do with AI video already, and it’s only going to get better.
I already have 1 Faceless YouTube channel that got subscribers from day 1 and increased viewership the entire time I was uploading to it.
That was prior to all of the AI tech I have access to now, and the video production was taking far too long for me to continue that channel the way I was doing it.
But, I learned a LOT.
And now that better tools are available, I’m looking forward to creating at least 2 more Faceless YouTube channels as well as TikTok and other channels where I can stream those videos and see which niche catches on.
More than anything, I’m looking forward to all that I will learn with AI video and editing. It’s good to be in at the beginning and grow as the industry grows and the tools improve.
Bringing It Back to Site Owners
I’m also looking forward to diving into the newly available tech to help my current clients incorporate very specific kinds of videos into their online businesses.
In fact, I already have 2 clients who are ready to move on it just as soon as I have vetted the tools and techniques to deliver it and/or teach it.
If you’re not interested in all of this yet, perhaps when I start reporting on the money everybody is making, you will be.
Think about it.
The money in working from home part-time is what got you interested in blogging, right?
If someone had not told you the money, you might not have every considered it.
And I bet 60% of you have not made the kind of money advertised – why, because the folks telling you about it got in WAY earlier than you did.
If you want the early scoop on th next money-making ideas, I will be doing most of that reporting in the AI Discover Hub newsletter.
Let’s Get Into the Site Tips Already
Okay, that’s enough about the change of focus.
Let’s get into what you came here for, and that’s news and tips for your site.
WordPress Tips
Issues with Combo of PHP 8.1, WP 6.3, and Cloudflare Turnstile
Last week I reported that it was okay to do the WP 6.3 update if you had already done the PHP 8.1 update.
And my clients jumped all over it.
About 6 folks have reported issues with uploading images using the multi-file uploader, which is the big “drop files here” box you see on the Add New Media admin page.
Below that box there should be a link to use the single file (browser) uploader. And most of the folks having issues have been able to use that as a temporary workaround.
There has also been an issue with Cloudflare Turnstile contributing to the image upload problem for some sites.
So, it’s a bit of a mixed bag of conditions as some folks had not started yet their updates, and some had only done the PHP 8.1 update, and some had done all updates.
Me and my webmasters will be working through the different errors being reported this week and I’ll be sending out the fixes to my clients soon.
Once we have those vetted fixes, we’ll all resume our updates, The bottom line is that it did not affect most site owners, which is good.
Delete Unused Plugins
Earlier in the year I advised folks to do ADA compliance checks and to consider switching from the UAG/Spectra plugin over to the Kadence Blocks plugin.
If you added plugins for Accessibility and/or Find My Blocks to help with those checks and changes, and you no longer need those plugins, please delete them.
For my site audit clients, please keep a record of any plugins you delete so we can identify any orphans that we find during your next audit checkup.
The 2 plugins mentioned above will not leave orphans after deletion, but it’s good to keep a site maintenance list of your changes anyway.
Webmaster Tips
Updates to MySQL Coming
MySQL is the database brand that most hosts who have cPanel use.
(The other brand is MariaDB, which you will find on many VPS host packages that don’t run cPanel.)
Most hosts are running MySQL v5.7 currently. I saw a note on Post Status that 75% of WordPress sites are on this database version.
It will hit end of life in October.
Those hosts will be switching to v8.0 at that time.
They are waiting to give time for max compatibility.
This is a host-level change and there is nothing for you to do.
I just wanted to make mention of it because these MySQL version numbers are very similar to the PHP version numbers, and I didn’t want you to be confused.
Plus, we’re not expecting the kind of breaks with this that we saw with major PHP upgrades either.
I’ll send out reminders to my site audit clients and webmasters when we’re coming close to the date of change.
E-commerce Tips
Shopify Stats
Thinking of running your own store?
Shopify is the platform I recommend, unless it’s for handmade things, and that would be Etsy.
The nice folks over at Blogging Wizard have a super deep stats post on all things Shopify.
Definitely worth a read if you’re leaning into having your own products.
Google Analytics Tips
Google Analytics Service Went Down
If you check your Google Analytics daily, you may have noticed that the service was down for a while last week.
It’s back up and running.
And I don’t know if there were any hiccups with tracking during that down time, or the reporting service was just unavailable. I’m thinking the latter.
Did you see it? Did you notice a drop in traffic reporting? Let us know in the comments.
SEO Tips
Technical SEO is Still in Play
Google itself is the reason rumors got started that technical SEO is no longer a factor in ranking.
Back in the spring, Google modified its SEO documentation and dropped the references to technical SEO.
Some folks took that to mean it’s no longer a thing, and reported as much on X (formerly Twitter).
Google’s John Mueller quickly pounced on that and said HTTPS and Core Web Vitals are crucially important and will remain so.
Despite the name, Technical SEO is not rocket science.
And its the first thing we cover in the DIY SEO course.
Can Google crawl your site and does it find any errors when it does crawl.
That’s about all there is to it.
The fixes are generally easy too.
In fact, I check some of your Technical SEO in site audits.
Security Tips
How You Can Find Security in an Insecure Social World
I am 100% that folks do not take cybersecurity as seriously as they should.
Weak passwords and using the same password everywhere is a prime culprit of hacks.
Clicking on links in emails is another.
And lately we’ve had a rash of social media accounts getting hacked.
Ann Smarty has written an excellent post for Denise Wakeman’s Adventures in Visibility blog that is a MUST read.
Not kidding.
Go read it – like now.
And do what it says to protect yourself with every online account you have.
You can’t afford to lose every online thing you’ve worked for. Treat your online security as if that is a fact because it is.
