Tips Tuesday – Cloudflare Updates, UpdraftPlus Issues, FSE Themes, iFrame Tutorials

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• New UpdraftPlus problems that may not be an issue with the plugin
• What was in the WordPress 5.9.2 Security and Bug Fix update
• New Cloudflare Firewall Tutorials
• Cloudflare is switching to the Wayback Machine for Always On
• Why the end of the browser compatibility wars may be near
• Helpful ways to address blogger burnout
• 5 tips to become a product review blogger
• Updated iFrame video embed tutorials
• Why to take a “no edit” approach to making videos
• Why Elementor is releasing a new version built on containers
• Does WP really need thousands of new FSE themes?

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Spill the Beans Livestream tonight

Do join us live tonight at 8pm ET / 5pm PT on the BlogAid LIVE YouTube channel, which is a sister to the regular BlogAid YouTube channel. So, be sure to subscribe to BlogAid LIVE so you get notifications on live events and so you can join in the live chat. We spill the beans on this week’s news, breaking stories for the day too, and special info just for those who watch. And the replay is available here on this Tips Tuesday post later too. But the live party is so much more fun.

Replay

Who I Help

All BlogAid posts and tutorials are intended to assist business-minded, hands-on bloggers and webmaster designers who are serious about making money and who want to stay up-to-date with site changes. And our BB Hub is a private member site and Facebook group for my site audit clients that has lots of extra perks and support.

BlogAid Happenings

I was in a funk for most all of last week and my days were seriously unproductive.

The weather turned cloudy and cold late in the week and I don’t know if it was that, or just fatigue of what’s going on in the world, or what.

I decided fighting it was a losing battle, so I rested more and did some comfort things, and that helped.

But Saturday I was back to being my usual energetic self and I got a LOT of good desk time in while it was sunny, but bitter cold outside with snow on the ground.

And now the weather has returned to spring-like temps and I’m feeling pumped!!

Finished ADA Updates

Y’all recall in last week’s Tips Tuesday that I shared Michelle Phillip’s public posts on ADA compliance info and testing.

Well, one of the things I’ve been working on this week were all the updates I needed to do to finish bringing BlogAid into ADA compliance.

That included totally rebuilding most all of my pages because they were still in the Classic Block.

Now they are all Gutenberg and compliant and I’m delighted to have that project finished for BlogAid!!!

Now I have 4 more of my sites to do, and 2 of them are nearly done already too, thanks to help from Marcy Diaz because she either built or has already been tweaking those themes. I’ll be calling on Michelle to help tweak the theme that she built for one of my sites too.

And I am so grateful for the help from both of these fine webmaster designers and these tasks are well worth outsourcing.

I strongly encourage you to motivate yourself however you need to and get your ADA compliance completed as well.

None of us can afford to drag this out and we need the peace of mind in knowing our sites are up to par.

Tutorial Making Maniac

Since I got my groove back on Saturday, I put it to good use and became a tutorial making maniac over the weekend. And I’ll highlight all the new ones in this week’s tips sections for you.

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

Backup Tips

UpdraftPlus Issues

Y’all may recall a couple of weeks ago when we all had to do an update for UpdraftPlus for a security issue.

And since then they have been rolling out minor updates every day or so. That’s a good thing, as they had to do some rebuilding of the plugin for that one security change.

But it’s a not so good thing in that some of the code they changed created a new bug that had to be fixed too.

What I’m hearing from my webmasters is that backups are now either failing or they complete but the files are not making it to AS3, which means they are being held on the disk space at the host.

There could be several reasons for that.

• UpdraftPlus is having internal issues
• The backup times out due to issues at the host, including cyber attack mitigation causing things to run slowly
• Internet issues with sending AS3
• AS3 mitigating a cyber attack
• Being out of enough resources or disk space at the host.

So, don’t blame it all on UpdraftPlus, as it’s hard to pinpoint the exact cause in some cases right now.

My concern is with the build up of local backup files stored on the host that run you out of room to even take more backups.

In UpdraftPlus settings you can scan your local folder to see what is stored there. But I’m hesitant to ask you to do that just yet, as it is not foolproof, and I don’t want you to delete a recent backup even if you find them unless you absolutely have to.

So, for now, just ensure that your backups are completing, no matter where they are stored, and we’ll circle back to this another day when both UDP and the internet have settled down.

WordPress Tips

WordPress 5.9.2 Security and Bug Fix Update Released

Last week a minor release rolled out for WP with version 5.9.2. 

It contained 1 bug fix and 3 security fixes.

And those security fixes stopped logged in users from being able to inject or execute malicious JavaScript code onto the site.

Folks, this is why we have good ModSecurity rules at the host.

Logged in users are not protected by Cloudflare or other 3rd party WAFs.

But, we’re also seeing Imunify360 tighten the ModSecurity rules so much that we can hardly work in the Gutenberg editor without getting an Update failed or JSON warning.

So hosts are either turning off the most common mis-firing rules or getting rid of ModSecurity altogether.

It’s like walking a tight rope between user ease and needed security.

READ: Fixes for Update Failed Not Valid JSON Response if you run into those errors for what the cause may be and ways around it.

Cloudflare Tips

New Cloudflare Firewall Tutorials

As global cyber security worsens, it’s more important than ever that you have super security for your site as security and performance go hand-in-hand.

I even did a TikTok about it that has screenshots of all the bad bots hitting your site and chewing up your limited hosting resources like CPU and Memory that you want to reserve for your human visitors.

In the Webmaster Training course, there is a big section on how to configure all 30+ Cloudflare settings to block the most bad actors.

And I just updated the Bad SEO Bot Block tutorial that takes care of one of the huge bot hit logs I show in that TikTok to also include a block for XML-RPC.

Now, we already block that 3 ways at the host. But this firewall rule at Cloudflare keeps them from even hitting the hosting.

We’ve enjoyed a 50%-70% drop in bots from those 2 firewall rules alone.

And if you’re on the Cloudflare Pro version and have the WAF turned on, those rules are getting tightened to the point that they may block the IPs of some of your vendors.

So, I added a new tutorial for how to easily whitelist a string of IPs in a firewall rule too.

Cloudflare Switches to the Wayback Machine for Always Online

One of the things I like about Cloudflare’s caching is that it can keep delivering your site even when your host has a hiccup, like being down for scheduled maintenance or such.

And none of your visitors will ever know that your site is not up.

Several months ago, Cloudflare released an update beta to this service to rely on the Wayback Machine for the long-term cached version of your site.

I’m not too fond of Cloudflare betas, but the Wayback Machine has been around for years.

And Cloudflare has demonstrated that their connection to it is stable, so they sent out an email to all users that they would be switching us all over to it later this month.

Last week I sent out a tutorial to all of my BB Hub site audit clients and my Webmaster Training peeps with instructions on how to do the switch now.

Browser Tips

Will Interop 2022 Bring Browser Wars to an End?

Finally!!!!!!

The supporters of Apple, Bocoup, Google, Igalia, Microsoft, and Mozilla are going to actually talk to each other and come to some agreement on common browser support.

And that benchmark will be called Interop 2022.

Folks, this has been two decades in the making.

And maybe, just maybe, developers and designers can have a single standard to comply with when building website functionality.

In other words, if your site works on one of these browsers, it should work on all of them.

Blogger Tips

Addressing Burnout

I know some of y’all have been feeling a little funky lately too.

And sometimes it’s due to burnout.

That’s a real issue for bloggers, as it’s such a solitary job and even our friends and family don’t understand what we do enough to be able to encourage or support us.

Plus, with all the massive changes happening from every angle right now, it can seem like an endless stream of stuff to be concerned about or just one more thing to deal with that is not your primary focus.

If you’re feeling burned out by it all, I hope you will listen to this podcast with clinical psychologist, Sherry Walling where she covers the causes of occupational burnout and ways to deal with it.

5 Tips to Become a Product Review Blogger

I was chatting with a new client yesterday who blogs about houseplants. Her income is currently from ads and affiliate marketing.

And I encouraged her to seriously consider doing more product reviews.

Ever since Google cracked down last year on fake review sites they have been scrambling to replace those top-ranked posts with reviews from real folks who actually use the product.

And Google would dearly LOVE to feature you in a YouTube video product review at the top of Search in the featured snippet too.

Plus, several of my clients are practically exhausted trying to meet the demand of brands asking to sponsor their video posts on TikTok and Instagram too.

Start with this post on Blogging Pro that has 5 tips to help you become a product review bloggers.

And then do posts that review the product, if you’re not already doing them now, and then move into making video reviews of them.

Video Tips

Updated iFrame Video Embed Tutorials

Have you noticed that when you pause or get to the end of an embedded YouTube video that it shows other suggested videos for you to watch?

And those are usually from your competition.

Well, good news! 

There is a way to have it only show your own related videos.

I’ve been using that type of customized iFrame code for my embedded videos for years.

And I show you how to do it too in both the Gutenberg Ninja and Video SEO Booster courses.

Well, I just updated those tutorials to show how to make that code ADA compliant, and I gave more tips for other customizations too.

Keep in mind that the Video SEO Booster course tutorials have way more embed options for speed, especially if you can’t use lazy load on iFrames because you run ads on your site.

Reminder – all BB Hub and BlogAid course members get discounts to all other courses. So be sure to see your member dashboard for your discount codes.

Take no edit approach to making videos

Anybody who makes videos knows that trying to do a perfect one is insanely tedious. And all the editing on even a good video shoot can take hours.

Well, how about taking a “no edit” approach to making your videos?

That’s what the folks at The Tilt show you why and how to do in their recent post on it.

And this goes right with my advice to you to start documenting things instead of creating a polished video. I’m seeing more and more of my clients do it and those videos are super!!

Plus, they are a whale of a lot faster to make, so you can do more of them.

Theme Tips

Elementor Releases Containers

I think Elementor is seeing the writing on the wall with being replaced completely by Gutenberg’s Full Site Editing.

So, they are about to release a new version that has a whole new way for folks to build a page.

And it starts with Containers, which is basically the same idea behind Gutenberg with its nested blocks.

I’m sure we’ll be seeing Astra themes promote this like crazy soon too.

And all I can say is that Gutenberg is the future, and there is absolutely nothing you can create in Elementor that you can’t replicate in Gutenberg.

In fact, I show you how in my Gutenberg Ninja course.

Does WP Need Thousands of FSE Themes?

That’s the question Justin Tadlock at WPTavern asked.

This post was in response to a Tweet from Brian Gardner, lead designer for Genesis, who said that he had plenty enough ideas in his head to fulfill Matt Mullenweg’s challenge to come up with 5,000 FSE (Full Site Editing) compliant theme layouts, which are entirely block based.

And then Daniel Schutzsmith responded to that Tweet that he only needed one FSE theme as a base. He went on to say that making thousands of themes seemed to defeat the purpose of FSE entirely.

I think both of these guys have valid points.

Since every part of an FSE theme is block-based, we should be able to take a single base theme and make it into anything we want.

However, many site owners want far more than a naked skeleton to start with.

And the truth is, most site owners have zero idea why themes are laid out like they are, much less why they are styled like they are.

It has to do with responsiveness so it looks good on all devices, is UX and ADA compliant, is SEO compliant, and speedy, not to mention that the base code is secure and kept that way.

This is also why designers who know all of this stuff will never be put out of business.

Site owners who want to focus on making money instead of doing sweat equity to learn all this stuff about their theme will find it a bargain to hire a qualified designer who is way more than a graphic artist.

There is no way I would spend a minute designing my own theme.

My top money-making clients don’t either.

So, no matter how easy WP makes it to do, or how many base themes there are available, there are good reasons not to DIY this important part of your site.

Wrap Up

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

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