Tips Tuesday – Birthday Party, Plugins Pulled from Repo, Site Security Threat Increase

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• It’s my birthday – come celebrate with me tonight
• A new DIY SEO challenge coming soon
• All the great news about my hobby to money-making site journey
• What’s up with the Ultimate Nofollow plugin being pulled from the WP plugin repository
• And same with the Duplicate Page plugin being pulled too
• Why you need to check your PHP version before the end of the year
• Graphs showing the extreme increases in site security threats since 2018
• Why you need to check your site security after a theme redesign

Listen to the Podcast

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Android | RSS

Join me Live to Discuss Tips Tuesday

I hope you’ll join for tonight’s livestream at 9pm ET / 6pm PT on the BlogAid Facebook Page. It’s open Q&A time for what caught your attention in this week’s tips or whatever you’d like to discuss about your site success. And, I always have breaking news for the day too. So come join us live for the party.

Replay

BlogAid Happenings

Happy birthday to me!!! I hope you’ll join me tonight live to celebrate. It’s been a super good and productive and fun week around here.

Booked with Site Services and Audits

Thanks to everyone who jumped on the Super Summer Sales Event that ended yesterday.

I’m booked pretty solid for the rest of July and through the middle of August with all manner of site services including audits and their fixes, HTTPS conversions, plus new site setups, and migrating folks to better hosting.

But, there are a few spots open, especially for loyalty audits for my current site audit clients.

Those are fast as I just fix or update things as I go.

So, definitely go ahead and contact me to get on the schedule or waiting list now.

September marks the start of busy season for all site service related businesses, so it’s not going to slow down from here on.

New DIY SEO Challenge Coming Soon

The DIY SEO live workshops are packed with info and real things to do on your site to make your SEO better.

But those last workshops on content management can be a super big project that takes months to complete, especially if you’ve been running your site for a few years and have lots of content.

I know many of you got started on those projects but have let them drop by the wayside. That includes me too.

Well, we’re going to have a few mini challenges to help you get going again, and to do some quick checks on things that have changed since the live workshops, like all the Yoast SEO updates and such.

You’ll be hearing from me soon on when the challenges start and what’s in them.

Hobby to Money-Making Site Update

In the past couple of weeks you’ve been hearing me report on blowing up boulders to get back in motion again with my woodworking site.

This past week I started on my workbench build and it’s going so fast and easy.

All that practice I got with photojournalism and storytelling on the mitre saw station build is really paying off on this new build!!!

And since the builds are so similar, I already know what the story and the money shots will be, so I’m not having to take as many photos. And that means I don’t have as many to sort through later.

Plus, since I’ve already included so many of the fundamental posts along the way during that first build, like how to safely cut plywood on the floor, I have those to easily reference as well in this new series of posts.

And that’s all part of my editorial calendar plan.

The only real difference in this build is how I created the legs, and I’ll never do them another way now!!! I really like this method of using my mitre saw to cut notches in 4×4 posts better.

See my latest post on the workbench leg build.

Promo Video Experiments Update

And I’m so happy to be active on Instagram again!!! (Join me @HeartwoodArtCreations) 

That’s where I’ve been doing most of my promo video experimentation.

And now I’m getting ready to branch out to doing them for Pinterest.

And all of this has given me a LOT of ideas for how to use those platforms for BlogAid too.

Are you experimenting with video more now too?

Feel free to leave a comment on the blog or anywhere you see this post online.

Finding My Tribe

That final post on the mitre saw station that had the build plans really took off on Pinterest this week. So I’m super delighted about that!!!!

And I’ve been actively seeking good woodworking groups on Facebook.

I’m learning a lot from more seasoned woodworkers. And, I’ve been able to help my peers too.

I’m hoping to find tribes of women and hobby woodworkers to join.

So if you know of any, please do tell.

I’m seeing more and more website/traffic related folks start up Facebook groups as a way to reach their peeps.

I’ve even seen a few that focus on a group as part of a sales funnel for an upcoming course or other offer that starts with a freebie.

I know a lot of you focus on Pinterest, but maybe it’s time to research new groups on Facebook, or start your own.

Are you seeing this trend too? Leave us a comment and let us know how you’re using Facebook these days.

That’s all the news from around here. Let’s jump into this week’s tips.

Plugin Tips

Ultimate Nofollow Plugin Pulled from the WP Repository

The Utlimate NoFollow plugin was pulled from the WordPress plugins repository on July 5.

This sort of thing happens all the time for TOS violations in their plugin description or unusual security issues.

And then the plugin is reinstated a few days later, and we’re never given word on why.

But, this plugin is not returning, it looks like.

I found a thread with a dev asking about it. He has a lot of clients using it and wants to take over maintenance and get this plugin back up and running.

We’ll see how that shakes out.

Ultimate Guide for Creating WordPress Links 

I spent most of yesterday testing how to properly create links in WordPress regardless of what editor or plugin you are using.

It turned out to be a big can of worms that I opened. But I sure am glad to know what’s going on with links, especially since Gutenberg rolled into the core. It’s also affecting the Classic Editor plugin.

And please do share this post with all of your blogger buddies!!!

Lately I’ve seen so much misinformation around creating links and hiring tech help that folks don’t need for what happens when you delete that Ultimate Nofollow plugin and such. Or, maybe you do need the help, but you need to know first.

Help spread the word of tested advice instead, and bust those myths!!

Duplicate Page Plugin Closed

This is one I see a lot of my site audit clients using.

We don’t know what’s going on with it yet, or if it will be back.

Honestly, you don’t need it.

If you switch to Gutenberg, you can create reusable templates that serve the same function.

My Gutenberg Ninja course is full of great, real-world tutorials like this.

You’ll be blown away by all you can do in Gute, and drop a bunch of plugins you don’t need anymore.

PHP Tips

PHP 7.1 Support Ends Dec 1, 2019

Hey, giving you a heads up way in advance.

If you’re using PHP 7.1 right now, go ahead and test PHP 7.3 if your host has it.

If not, try 7.2. But I sometimes find that one glitch.

If anything ceases to work correctly on the site, make note of it and start trying to find a substitute now and get it in place way ahead of the deadline.

READ: How to Change Your PHP Version for an easy tutorial on how to do this.

Security Tips

Extreme Increase in Security Threats in the Past Year

Cloudflare released a debrief on the 20 minute global outage on July 2.

You’ll welcome to read through it all, if you like.

But the main thing I want you to see is about midway down the post in the section labeled WAF Threats.

Look at the graphs there of the dramatic increase in security threats that the WAF (Web Application Firewall) protects us from.

You get this extra protection on the paid Pro plan, which is $20/mo and worth every single penny.

I won’t do a money-making site without it.

Among the types of protections you get, it includes the 2 most common issues with WordPress plugins, which are XSS (Cross Site Scripting) and mySQL injections on the database.

Those two things happen every single day to multiple plugins, including popular ones that most of us use.

The Cloudflare WAF protects your site until a plugin update can be released.

And, whatever issue that plugin had, gets exploited in that gap of time before an update can be released.

That’s why you need the Cloudflare WAF to tide you over.

Check Your Site Security After a Redesign

Hey, site audit clients, listen up.

One of my peeps recently got a theme redesign from a designer she has worked with before.

And that designer wiped out the security we put on the site after her site audit.

She was kind enough to allow me access to her site during some recent testing and that’s how I happened to find out about the missing security.

It looks like the designer did the theme revamp on a sandbox site and then migrated that over to the client’s hosting. And poof!!! All the security was gone.

If you’ve had a redesign since your last site audit, and it wasn’t done by one of my webmaster designers, check your site to ensure the security measures I put in place are all still there.

Send your designers to my Webmaster Training so they can learn how not to compromise sites with their ignorance anymore.

They are running an irresponsible business by not knowing site security and speed, and/or not partnering with those who do.

Don’t let yourself get caught in the middle of that!!!

Ensure your designer knows how to work with your existing security.

Wrap Up

That’s a wrap for this week’s Tips Tuesday.

Gimme some love!!

Share this post with all your blogger buddies to support all the free info and help you get on BlogAid – and help your buddies too!!

Get the BlogAid Tips Tuesday Podcast on iTunes or Stitcher

Subscribe to all BlogAid Posts via email so you never miss anything!

Be sure to visit BlogAid.net for more tips and resources and I’ll see you online.