Tips Tuesday – Free EZ Metrix Webinar, Safe Backup Storage, Huge Password Leak

Tips this week include:

• EZ Metrix free webinar is this Thursday – register now
• Does your optin plugin hold data? It shouldn’t
• Don’t use Gmail for your list service’s From email
• All the places you need to whitelist your IP
• WordPress cleans up dev account security
• 10 billion passwords leaked
• How to protect your passwords and online security
• Why we’re not using the new Cloudflare AI bot blocker
• Why I only use AS3 for backup storage, and why Google Drive is getting dropped
• My WordPress 6.6 tests are underway ahead of next week’s release
• WP market share is stagnate – here’s what’s growing
• Pixillion image optimizer does bulk AVIF images
• The power of video to make $2.6 million a year

BlogAid Happenings

You know that old saying that if you build it, they will come? 

That’s exactly what happened when I launched the new done-for-you services on BlogAid and the new services and consults on eCreatorsHub last week.

I was contacted immediately with 4 service requests and 1 consult.

I also attracted another trusted vendor partner to ECH. And I’ll have more info on all of the partners coming to this new agency as soon as we set up their pages and offers.

EZ Metrix Webinar on Thursday

See the Money in Your Metrix.

That’s exactly what I’ll show you in this free webinar:

Thu July 11 at 12pm ET / 11am CT / 10am MT / 9am PT

Register now on the eCreators Hub site

There will be a replay available for a limited time. But those who come to the live will get all of their questions answered on the spot.

I’ll also show you:

• How vanity metrics lie to you
• How fast it is to get the real story with Session, Impressions and more
• How to make more money from your most popular posts
• How to find posts that hurt your SEO
• How to investigate spikes in your traffic to see if it’s humans or bots
• And more

The best part is, it only takes 15 minutes once a week to find the money in your metrics when you use the EZ Metrix custom reports.

Email Tips

One of the reasons why it took me longer than usual to build the eCreators Hub and memberships is because I researched every single thing I was integrating and setting up to ensure that I was using the most modern way of doing it.

I’m so glad that I did that because I found things that you need to know about.

Optin Plugins Hold Data

There are some optin plugins that hold your subscriber’s email in your database.

That’s not good. It’s a security issue and not GDPR compliant either.

And there’s no good reason for them to do it either.

The only place that info needs to be held is in the database of your email list service provider.

The MC4WP plugin provides customizable optin features that connect your site to Mailchimp. And while it’s pretty, there is no way that I could find to turn off it holding those emails from subscribers in your database.

If you use a form plugin for your optin integration, you need to check if there is a way to turn off saving data to your database in it.

Don’t Use Gmail for Your List Service’s From Email

Y’all may recall that a few months ago both Google and Yahoo email services required folks to get serious about ensuring all of their email DNS records were set up properly, including SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.

Even if you get those things set up on your free Gmail account, you still don’t want to use it as the From address on your email list service.

When your subscriber tries to open your newsletter, their email provider is going to issue a warning that it may not be safe.

You need to use a domain-related email address, like @blogaid.net as your From address.

That’s because email list service providers, like Mailchimp, give you a way to verify that domain and they give you the proper verification DNS records to add too.

Free Gmail accounts can’t be fully verified, and that’s why they get a warning.

Contact me if you need help getting any/all parts of your email setup properly.

Everywhere to Whitelist your IP Address 

Due to the insane increase in bad bot and hacker hits, sites need to have their security locked down tighter than ever now.

And that means more challenges to scrutinize visitors are going to happen, especially to sensitive areas like your login page.

To help you avoid being scrutinized when you try to log into your own site, it’s best to whitelist your IP at Cloudflare, and even at the host in some cases.

The problem is, IPs rotate, even if you’re not traveling.

That’s especially true if you are using wifi via your home router.

And Cloudflare is not the only place where you need to update your IP.

You also need to update it in GA4 so that it excludes you from the visitor counts to your site.

If you have a wifi router that is constantly rotating the IP, or if you’re traveling and need to stay off unsecured free wifi, then you need to get a VPN service that offers a static IP address.

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. They are cheap to get, but a static IP address will usually be at an additional charge.

The service that me and my clients like the most is Private Internet Access (PIA).

Here’s the PIA page with info about their dedicated IP.

FYI, you’ll want to only use this VPN when logging into your site, not for general use.

Security Tips

WordPress Cleans Up Dev Account Security

Last week I reported on a Supply Chain hack that compromised the Social Warfare plugin along with 3 others.

WP immediately jumped in to clean up all  dev accounts to ensure better security.

This may have delayed deployment of plugin updates for a bit, but they should be back on schedule now.

10 Billion Passwords Leaked

This is a MOAB event – Mother of All Breaches.

It’s called RockYou2024. It’s a mix of old and new data breaches.

You can read more about it on Cyber News.

Get Serious About Your Passwords and Online Security

Every online account you have needs a unique password.

And it is best to rotate them every year – I’m not kidding.

Cyber security experts suggest rotating them every 3 months, but I know y’all aren’t going to do that.

Get a password manager to help you – there are lots of them.

Following are just a few that I have opinions about – but this is not an extensive list.

• Browser – both Chrome and Firefox have radically improved their password managers and you can use them. But they are not as extensive with features as paid manager apps. Apple’s Keychain Access is also on par if you’re still using Safari, but it is, by far, the worst browser to use now.
• LastPass – don’t do it. They have had 2 major data breaches of their own in the past couple of years.
• Norton/Nordpass – nope. I’m not a fan of Norton anything.
• RoboForm – they’ve been around forever and still work just fine.

See more recommendations on Wired – but I have not used/tested everything on the list. And maybe read even more reviews to see how each site ranks them.

Let us know in the comments which password manager you use.

SEO Tips

Why We’re Not Using the New Cloudflare AI Bot Blocker

Cloudflare has introduced a new setting that allows you to block all AI bot scrapers and crawlers in just one click.

I’m advising not to use it and here’s why.

My clients and I are already blocking some of those bots by name using Cloudflare rules.

But I think letting OpenAI and Google scrape our sites is the only way to get citation links in their AI summary stuff that they show in Google and Bing search.

The fact is, Google has been using our content for years in Featured Snippets and such in order to give an answer right in search so they make more money on ads.

The only hope we have on making money from our content with that is Google also showing a link to our post where they scraped the content.

This AI thing is no different. In fact, Google has been using their internal AI to produce those Featured Snippets for years as it is.

Backup Tips

Use AS3 for Backup Storage

Solid Backups, formerly known as Backup Buddy, is dropping support for Google Drive as a storage destination.

And I’m glad to see it and hope other backup plugins follow suit.

Google Drive’s cloud security API restrictions have been beefed up considerably, and multiple times in the last 2 years. That requires a LOT of code upkeep in the backup plugins, and most are not doing a good job of it, at least not doing a timely job of it.

Dropbox has always been a super poor choice for storing backups, mainly because of their extreme upload file size limit. More little chunks of backup files means more strain on your hosting resources and more chances to glitch the files.

Emailing the backup to you is the worst choice of all.

And none of these backup storage solutions allow you to hold as many backups as you need to keep on hand.

Most don’t do auto deletions to move out the oldest one when you hit the limit you want to keep either.

Do this instead.

Store to Amazon S3 (AS3) using an encrypted connection to a bucket that is used for nothing else, and has a secure access policy.

I can set this up for you, and I teach how to do it in my Webmaster Training too.

WordPress Tips

WP 6.6 Drops Next Week

The WP 6.6 RC2 is out and I’m busy doing tests on it.

The final release is scheduled for next week, on July 16.

I’m busy doing test this week and will have a post for you on all the new features.

WordPress Market Share is Stagnate – Here’s What’s Growing

Joost deValk (formerly of Yoast SEO), has released his CMS Market Share Report for 2024.

You really need to look at the graphs for yourself, as a simple summary does not tell the whole story.

Yes, WP still has the lion’s share of the CMS (Content Management System) market at 35%, but certainly not the full web market, which is 42%. These are likely custom enterprise-level sites.

The most interesting part of this whole report is that the growth rate of WP is on 0.20% and it has leveled off at that number since 2022. And it wasn’t that much higher than in 2020.

The Real Growth Rate

Here are the other CMSes that are going bonkers for growth rate:

• Shopify – 15.45%
• Squarespace – 31.39%
• Webflow – 24%

Shopify Gaining Ground

Woocommerce still leads the pack for e-comm sites. But it only has a 5.6% growth rate.

But Shopify is definitely gaining ground with a 15.45% growth rate.

This has EVERYTHING to do with why I built the eCreators Hub.

Bloggers NEED to move into selling their own products and stop relying on just ads and affiliate links.

I don’t like Woo, never have.

But you don’t have to start with the expense of a whole Shopify store either. 

I’m building courses and downloads to help you ease into more products and save money while you’re growing.

Image Tips

Pixillion Image Optimizer

The Pixillion image optimizer software from NCH can do bulk image conversion on your computer, including AVIF images.

So, you don’t have to upload and download one at a time from Squoosh.

I didn’t think their optimizer worked as well as Squoosh for jpegs and pngs, and it didn’t offer the modern format. But if you’re doing AVIF images, then this should work just fine. But do compare it to an image done in Squoosh to be sure.

They have several price points, and one version does just the conversion, which is a bit less expensive. 

And it does have a free trial.

Here’s more info on the software, and here’s the pricing page.

Thanks fo Dennis McAllister for reminding me of this optimizer. 

I’ve also updated the DIY SEO image workshop with this info too.

Money Making Tips

The Power of Video to Make $2.6 Million a Year

Tips Tuesday Plus subscribers got this tip.