Tips Tuesday – Big Video Plans, PHP Updates, New Email Setup

Tips this week include:

• My 3 big video plans for Thrive in ‘25
• All of my sites are now on Kadence
• The issues with Genesis that I’m seeing
• More DIY SEO folks are using Substack
• Shopify SEO guide coming
• What’s up with Google AIO and YouTube?
• YouTube SEO is different
• Time for PHP updates
• New Transactional email setup

New opportunities are popping up everywhere. Are you feeling it too?

BlogAid Happenings

Some folks make their New Year’s resolutions when the calendar year flips.

But that is the dead of winter. 

It’s not the time for new beginnings. It’s a time to go inside and reflect, or rest.

Spring is the time for new beginnings and that energy is hitting hard here!

Is the same happening with you?

How do you want the rest of your 2025 to be? What new things are you growing in your garden?

Video, Video, Video

How I plan to Thrive in ‘25 is with video.

Music Videos Coming Along

Every night for the last 3 months I’ve been learning how to build worlds to give a visual landscape to new, relaxing music videos. 

And now I’ve been doing sample recordings of those videos to catch the vibe I want to write music for.

I had spent the last 2 months of ‘24 getting familiar with new music gear and sounds. And now I’m ready to get my head back into that and start producing soundscapes for these vids.

I’m also going to produce about 10 or so of them before I launch my new YouTube channel, so that I can be consistent with uploading them over 4-6 weeks while producing more.

Heartwood Art Videos in the Works

Back in February I brainstormed a LOT of ideas for new videos to make in my woodshop. 

These are based entirely off metrics that I have gathered from my own YouTube channel, plus those of competitors.

It will still be 2-3 weeks before it is warm enough to be in the shop to make those videos.

In the meantime, I’m testing out a new audio setup for a new video camera that I got a couple of years ago. It’s SO much easier than using the DSLR camera I have. In fact, it’s as point-and-shoot easy as using my phone, which is why I got it.

But, the mic situation is different. So I’ll ne testing a new way to rig that and I’ll be good to go.

ECH Marketing Videos

Also in February I got up to speed with Camtasia 2024 and all of the new quick editing features they offer that make vids on social media look great. And they REALLY speed up the workflow with several templates that are easy to tweak too.

Well, now the new 2025 version is out, and I’m learning it this week.

I want to have an all new look for my eCreators Hub vids than I’ve had previously. And these new features are going to help me do it!!!

Back in January I outlined a bunch of video topics for Shopify, Printify, and EZ Metrix.

Now is the time to add some for the new Substack Guides and to start fleshing all of them out into scripts so I can get my marketing going for all of the courses and guides on ECH.

Theme Tips

All Sites Now on Kadence

And I’m thrilled to finally have every one of my sites switched over to Kadence now too.

Last week, Michelle of Codefetti, did the last revamp.

We had actually finished the new theme in the fall, but we ran into a huge issue when we did the migration and it was all WP’s fault.

You may recall that I spent last summer removing Spectra blocks from my sites. 

And I switched to all native WP blocks wherever possible on all themes. I only used Kadence Blocks on pages that needed extra layout help.

The theme swap went fine on all sites except for Heartwood Art.

I had used Spectra heavily on it, so that site took a lot of time to restyle out of it. And during the swap, many of those restyled blocks lost their styling, specifically the background colors.

Well, that totally borked some sections on posts and pages, as I had used the Group block with a background color to help folks understand that a bunch of things went together, you know, in a group.

And I didn’t have time until now to do all of that restyling again. But it’s done!!! And I am so grateful!!!

FYI, that styling glitch during a theme swap is due to a problem in WordPress, not the themes. WP is aware of it and has not fixed it yet, despite multiple tickets and complaints about it.

Seeing Genesis Issues

I was a card-carrying Genesis theme fan for over a decade.

And it’s still a good theme framework, for now.

However, they just aren’t keeping pace with Gutenberg, FSE, and other core WP features, as far as innovation. They’re still compliant, just nothing new coming from them.

And, they are barely keeping their Genesis-plugins updated now too.

During site audits I’ve seen several that have a warning that they haven’t been updated in over 2 years. They still work, but that’s not a good sign.

And I’ve also started seeing PHP errors that their devs say to simply ignore because it is a warning, not a break.

Well, it may be one once we go up to the next PHP version soon. More on that in a moment.

I just feel better having all of my sites on Kadence now, which is keeping up with all new WP features, and they continue to innovate to give us even more features.

Plan Ahead

Are you still using Spectra/Astra or Genesis?

It might be time to consider a revamp to secure your site’s future.

GeneratePress is another modern theme framework that is okay. It’s just super plain.

But Blocksy is a no-no, as it has its own SEO and optimization that will directly conflict with the plugins you are currently using for those things, and the Blocksy way of doing them is not great.

SEO Tips

Taking a Substack Break

We had a GREAT time in last week’s Blog on Substack workshop in the DIY SEO course!!!!

And so many folks got my 2 Substack Guides to begin their blogging journey there that we’re going to take a couple of weeks off from live workshops to give them time to get going with it.

Shopify SEO Guide Coming

In the meantime, I’m going to jump into making a new Guide for better SEO on Shopify.

There are so many easy things you can do to improve the SEO on your store.

Many of those things are settings that we use in the Yoast SEO plugin to control what gets indexed and how. I teach these same things in the DIY SEO course. In fact, there is a whole section devoted to the Yoast SEO plugin there.

And while I’m creating this new SEO Guide for Shopify, I will be checking out the Yoast SEO Shopify App to see if it includes the settings we need, like we have for our WP sites.

These are things that control what gets crawled, including duplicates for tags, Collections and more. Those duplicates hurt your SEO on any site.

Google AIO and YouTube

One of the things we’ve seen dominate Page 1 of Google Search for the last 3 years has been video – specifically those on YouTube.

Google owns YouTube and makes a LOT of revenue from the ads shown on that platform. So, it has been in their best interest to promote those videos in regular Search.

Well, the exceptionally long AIO (AI Overview) shown on Page 1 of Search now has been pushing those video thumbnails off Page 1.

But, and this is news to me, those long AIOs are including citations from YouTube videos and links to them.

Google AIO has increased citations to YouTube videos, which has resulted in 36% more traffic to those videos – according to this post on Search Engine Journal.

That’s huge!!!

And one more reason to make video a priority in your content strategy this year.

YouTube SEO is Different

A few years ago I had a course on YouTube SEO because it is different from regular Search SEO.

And, there are ways to do it so that the SEO works on YouTube, regular Search, and the blog post where you embed it.

The course was not a big seller, which is why I took it down.

But the folks who did take it saw an immediate boost in traffic and rankings.

I may think about bringing it back if y’all let me know that you’re interested in it. The only reason it was not a big seller is because 4-5 years ago I was so far ahead of the curve and not enough folks saw the light with making videos the centerpiece of their content strategy.

EVERY major platform is going all in on video now.

I don’t know how else to tell you how important video is today.

Let me know if you have interest in this course and I’ll see about reviving it.

FYI, about the other video mini course I mentioned a couple of months ago. I’m still in a holding pattern to see what becomes of TikTok, as the CapCut editor will get caught in that ban, if it happens. And that is the centerpiece of that course. We’ll know in April.

Site Update Tips

Time for PHP Updates

PHP is the main coding language used in WordPress, including core code, plus your theme and plugins.

And it updates all of the time.

We’re currently using version 8.1. But it will come to EOL (End of Life) for support at the end of 2025.

Version 8.2 has been out for a while, and is stable, but we’ve been waiting for 8.3 to be tested with WP and declared stable.

Some of my webmasters have been setting up all of their new sites on 8.3 for a while now with no issues.

So, starting this week, I’m going to be taking my site audit Hub clients through the update during either their next full site audit, which happens annually, or their 6-month quick checkup audit which is mainly for security updates, especially at Cloudflare.

That way I will be available in case anything goes bonkers with older plugins or themes or such during the update.

And, we’ll be finished with all updates before EOL on 8.1, and not have to do another update if we’re able to skip 8.2.

New Transactional Email Setup

Do you have customer-type emails coming from your site for things like:

• Memberships and renewals
• Order confirmations
• Password changes for subscribers
• Tons of comment reply notifications

If so, the standard PHP method in WordPress is not reliable, as it is meant for low-volume.

And that is even if you have an SMTP plugin to remove send functions from your hosting, which you should do for better security.

This higher volume is considered as transactional emails.

The folks over at SolidWP have a list of several good alternatives for transactional emails.

I’m about to move the email on all of my membership sites to Brevo on their free plan and I’ll be offering this setup to others as well soon.