Tips Tuesday – AVIF Tutorial, Shopify Starter Store, Email Spoofing

Tips this week include:

• New AVIF tutorial
• New Vectorize tutorial
• MFA will be required on AS3 soon
• Shopify Starter store setup
• Several folks are changing the focus of their sites
• Site refocus examples
• Spoofing is no joke
• Proper email setup matters
• Why Yahoo and Hotmail emails are crap
• Why you need to use a domain-related email
• WP SMTP plugin changes name – and what to do if you have issues with it
• WordPress 6.7 Beta 1 release
• The WordPress vs WP Engine fallout – this will not end well
• Who to call if you’re coming out of WP Engine
• Help for Helena survivors

Welcome to Q4, y’all!!!!!

This is the race to the end of the year.

Are you ready?

BlogAid Happenings

I’m still making tutorials and documentation like crazy this week.

New AVIF Tutorial

Recently I mentioned that there is a new rule available at Cloudflare for disabling further compression of AVIF images.

They have now opened that up to all plans, not just the paid ones.

So, I’ve updated my tutorials for my site audit Hub clients and Webmaster Training members with a video walk through.

New Vectorize Tutorial

Several of the folks in the AI Images for Profit course make stickers, icons, and other types of images that really need to be served in an .svg format.

SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics.

But, being .svg does not necessarily mean that it is a true vector image.

And converting a raster image, like .jpg or .png to .svg definitely does not make it a true vector image.

There are only a few apps that can convert from raster to vector properly.

I had let my Adobe Illustrator license go, as I’m just not using it as much as I used to. It’s made specifically for creating and editing vector images.

Photoshop can convert to the .svg format, but it opens them as a raster. There are ways around that. But it doesn’t convert to true vector images like Illustrator.

So,I needed a new tool. 

And I just added a new tutorial to the course for a new one I tried last week. 

Wow! It works great!!! And it’s free, plus you download it, so no uploading images. I’m hooked!

MFA on AS3

When I was uploading my new video tutorials to AS3 yesterday, I saw a notification that they will be requiring the setup of MFA, which is like 2FA (2 Factor Authentication), for better security. 

We need to do this within the next 17 days. 

So, this has come to the top of my tutorial making list and I’ll get it out to my clients as soon as possible.

Shopify Starter Store Setup

I’ve got clients who will want to set up a Shopify store on the Starter plan in the next few months.

That Starter plan is a perfect fit for folks who already have a site and just need links to their products on their own sales page. Plus, you can use those same links to sell directly in your newsletter and on social media too.

If you’ve ever done Amazon affiliate marketing, it’s kind of like that.

So, I’m jumping out of the theme coding for a while and setting up my own Starter store instead.

I’ll be integrating it with my eCreators Hub site too.

And, I’ll have PDFs for sale, as well as some apparel, plus Google Doc templates that are also available for free in the EZ Digital Designs course.

I already teach in the course how to make those printables, downloads, and templates with Google Docs, and how to deliver them.

Now I’ll also be documenting how to make apparel available through POD (Print on Demand).

Plus, it will be a great way for me to show off how you can easily get started with Shopify for cheap, cheap.

Change Site Focus

This year I’ve helped several clients change the focus of their site to capitalize on what is getting the most traffic.

It’s a super way to niche down without creating a new site or disturbing the traffic you’re getting to other parts of your site.

There are a LOT of lifestyle blogs that cover everything under the sun.

And a few years into blogging, the site owner has found what gets the most traffic and what her audience really wants to hear about.

In fact, those are the very topics that loyal followers are asking to have made into products, courses, and memberships.

It’s okay to refocus to meet the need and make more money!

Site Refocus Examples

Earlier this year I helped a client refocus a site about homesteading into one that featured everything you would ever want to know about raising chickens.

Her visitors are gobbling up her affiliate-linked products.

And now she is looking to create a paid membership with resources and live sessions.

I also helped another client refocus her lifestyle blog into a fantastic beauty resource for women of a certain age. 

We literally took a single category on that site, did a content audit, then filled in the gaps to make super Content Silos. And then revamped the home page to feature those different Silos, which are self-selecting customer journeys.

Her site is now at the top of search and even sometimes beating the brand of makeup she promotes.

And her videos are going bonkers everywhere.

And both of these clients are still getting traffic to other categories on their site from Pinterest and YouTube and such.

So, they didn’t lose anything.

They just gained far superior visibility for the niche they want to focus on.

And they are making more money!!!

So, you don’t have to create a new site, or destroy the site you have, just to refocus it.

Get a Consult, Make a Plan

Are you ready to refocus your site?

Let’s chat

In 1 hour or less we’ll talk it out and make a plan that you can get started on immediately.

If you need help with doing a content audit and creating a Content Silo – everything you need is in the DIY SEO course. You’ll also learn how to do it without borking your current SEO too.

And I can help you look over that new content map.

Plus, I’m available to help with any site changes you need to make. That may just be a revamp of your home page.

Site Services Update

If you are due for a site audit checkup in October, now is the time for you to fill out the request form.

If you need help with email setup, 3rd-party integrations, or any big changes to your site, I’m available to help with done-with-you or done-for-you services. See the Services page for details.

Email Tips

Spoofing Is No Joke

Last week I started getting emails about Joanna’s Steaks. I thought it was just a rash of spam that had not been detected yet.

Nope!!!!

I opened one of those emails and discovered that someone had spoofed the email address I use for sending the BlogAid News email.

They used it as the return address.

So ALL of the hate mail that should have been directed at that spammer was coming to me!!!!!!

I jumped on a call with Google Workspace support to ensure my account was secure – it was.

Then I contacted Mailchimp to see if my account there had been compromised or abused – it wasn’t.

We did find a clue to what’s happening by looking at the headers of the replies I was receiving.

Every single one of the folks receiving that spam email was using Yahoo email.

The hate mail replies have stopped for now, but this is still an ongoing investigation with the Mailchimp Compliance Department as well as Google Workspace support.

I’ll keep you posted.

Proper Email Setup Matters

Remember a few months ago when Google and Yahoo said they would require that you have full, and proper email records, like DKIM, SPF, and DMARC?

Yeah, me and my peeps have been using that full and proper setup for years already. So we weren’t scrambling to fix it when that edict came down.

(Want to get ahead of the curve and out of panic mode for stuff like this? Become a site audit Hub client.)

Yahoo and Hotmail Emails are Crap

Even with Yahoo being in on this new edict about proper email setup, they still don’t fully check all of the records for the sort of spam spoofing that happened with using my email as the return address.

If you are using these junk email accounts, I hope you like spam!!!!

I realize some folks are anti-Google and don’t want to use Gmail for their free service.

But it is a far better option than the two above, especially Yahoo and Hotmail, who are a spammer’s haven.

I’m sure there are other free email services, but check to see how they filter this sort of spam before you sign up with them.

Use a Domain-Related Email Address

There is a reason that email list services like Mailchimp, MailerLite, and ActiveCampaign require you to use an email with your domain extension, and to verify it, and to add those verification records to your DNS manager.

It’s so you can’t use their service to spam folks.

As for your email client for your domain-related email, Google Workspace email is what I use and recommend.

Zoho has a free and a paid service as well.

And I 100% guarantee that you will not be able to use their wizards to get all of the records you need for full and proper email setup.

I know this because I help folks clean up the records mess that these wizards made.

Contact me and let’s do a live session to see if you have all the records you need and if there is a mess or duplication of some of them.

Plugin Tips

WP SMTP Name Change

The WP SMTP plugin is now called Solid Mail.

But, I’m betting the plugin folder and database tables will not be renamed.

Some folks are still using this plugin, and that’s fine.

But, if there is trouble with disconnection or email sending, I’m switching my site audit Hub clients over to Fluent SMTP.

WordPress Tips

WordPress 6.7 Beta 1 Release

The first beta of WP 6.7 should be available today.

Final release is scheduled for Nov 12.

I’ll keep you posted.

The WordPress vs WP Engine Fallout

I’ve already sent an email to BlogAid News subscribers about what’s going on with the battle between WordPress and WP Engine.

I will not be reporting the details, as I very much want to stay out of the drama.

What I will say is that I’m following the money and there is no longer a good way for this to end.

Most of us think of WordPress as free blogging software.

Let me clue you into the billions of dollars that are actually involved in this mess.

WP Engine is owned by Silver Lake, which is a private equity firm. They own other entities like Dell too. They invested $240 million to acquire WP Engine. And some really BIG company sites run on that platform.

So, this news has hit newspapers that CEOs of big companies read, and those companies run on enterprise hosting as well as their own cloud servers. 

We’re talking about mega enterprise-level sites, like:

• Sony Music
• TED
• BBC America
• Vogue
• Flickr
• eBay
• Forbes

Those are just to name a few examples. There are 1000s more just as big.

And a LOT of WP devs have been called into front offices for stern conversations with those CEOs about what they talked the company into using as the framework for their website and can they really be cut off from critical support at the drop of a hat.

The devs are up in arms about the way Matt Mullenweg has handled this issue and the fact that one person, without benefit of a guiding board, and with no warning to the community, can do such a thing.

Matt is the co-founder of WordPress and has been referred to for years as “our benevolent dictator”.

What’s being called for now is for him to step down.

And without a guiding board in place, that will be yet another fiasco.

If there is litigation, it will mean bad press for WordPress for the next several years and will set far-reaching precedents. Future litigation could also involve the phrases “Managed WordPress Hosting” and “Hosted WordPress”, as the WordPress Foundation filed for trademarks on them back in July.

Nothing about that is good for anybody involved in any way with the WordPress ecosystem, including every host, theme, and plugin provider that we rely on.

I’m Here to Help

There are a lot of folks scrambling to get off WP Engine right now.

That includes designers and small business site managers who host their clients there.

I’ve seen all kinds of alternate hosting names thrown out as another place to move.

What I don’t see is any qualification of apples to apples in those conversations to ensure the new hosting will meet the needs of the site AND the site owner or manager.

If you hear of folks looking to move, please send them to this post first – What is Managed Hosting?

It will clue them into just how radically different the hosting environments are, and why you can’t easily match the proprietary setup and services offered by WP Engine.

Simply put folks in touch with me and I will help them choose an appropriate new host and help with the migration – and they will need help coming out of WP Engine.

Help for Helena Survivors

My heart hurts to see the devastation in the wake of Helena. 

Small communities all around Appalachia have been completely wiped out.

My gulf coast buddies don’t even know where to start with the cleanup.

No power, water, or cell service.

All main roads around Ashville are damaged.

Please join me in donating to your favorite national or local organizations.

These folks have lost everything and it will take many months for them to start putting their lives back together. So, please do look for ongoing donation efforts for the rest of the year.

If you are a site owner and have been affected, please contact me for any site assistance you may need.