Tips Tuesday – Keywords Research, Gutenberg Tutorials, Build Community

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• How to change the day/time of backups in the free version of UpdraftPlus
• Part 1 of the Keywords workshop is this Thursday
• 2 updated Gutenberg Ninja tutorials and why many more are on the way
• Why I’m making a major change to my site services schedule
• The digital downloads and member site survey results are in, plus the action plan I’m making for us
• All manner of internet goofiness is happening due to a huge uptick in cyber attacks
• Issues with Cloudflare and its plugin
• Ongoing issues with UpdraftPlus
• What you need to know about Google deprecating Universal Analytics next year
• Joost de Valk is changing his position with Yoast SEO
• What the cPanel price increase means for your hosting
• The difference in building community vs audience
• 25 lessons learned from building a community
• Why you may or may not want to run your member site from YouTube
• Why I’m excited about a call for Block Pattern submissions

Listen to the Podcast

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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 hope y’all have been enjoying some nice spring or fall weather wherever you are in the world.

Some of the early blooming trees and shrubs have been coming into color here and I see buds on most all of the trees now. That makes me happy.

Speaking of new things and change, I have a few new tutorials for you, plus a revamp of my schedule.

Change Day/Time of UpdraftPlus Backup

One of the reasons I suggest folks use the paid version of UpdraftPlus is because it includes 2 big features that the free version doesn’t, namely:

• Set day/time of backup
• Include WP files and critically important files below WP, like .htaccess

One of the reasons you need to set the day/time of your backup is so that it runs at an off-peak traffic time so it doesn’t slow down your site response, and so that you don’t have a backup running when you are making changes to your site or have a post scheduled to publish.

Well, there is a way to get to the backup scheduler on the free version that requires altering some info in the database.

But, there is an easy way to make those changes without having to edit the database directly.

And I just posted a tutorial for the Webmaster Training membership for how to do it on the free version.

READ: Backup Checklist to ensure you are getting everything you need in your backups, and the best way to configure the settings. You’ll also find links to a post on all the differences in the free and paid versions of UpdraftPlus too.

Keywords Part 1 Workshop This Week – new time

And speaking of changing times, I apologize to my non-U.S. subscribers in the DIY SEO course for not alerting you to the move to Daylight Saving Time in the U.S. Some of you missed the live workshop last week because of it and I’m so sorry.

I put a note in yesterday’s email for the upcoming Keywords Part 1 workshop this Thursday.

FYI, there has been a bill that passed the U.S. Senate for keeping the time as it is now. I don’t know if it has made it through the House yet, but I hope it passes unanimously there too.

2 Updated Gutenberg Ninja Tutorials

For the past few WP updates, the Gutenberg changes have been little tweaks to multiple blocks.

So, I’ve decided to revamp some of my tutorial structure to bust out some sections into their own tutorials to make it easier to keep things updated.

The first 2 updated tutorials are:

• List Block
• Create Your First Gutenberg Post

I included all of the new things in both, but basically took some things out of both that I will be making standalone tutorials on soon, like styling blocks, as so many of them now have text and background color and such.

Site Services Update

Y’all know that since last fall I’ve been making some major changes here at BlogAid to ensure I have good-fitting clients for my services. And I’ve been lowering my client load too, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which has been more long-time clients graduating up to a paid monthly maintenance program because their business has gotten so big that it’s just better for them to start outsourcing the caretaking of their site. I’m thrilled to have helped them get to that point.

I also made changes to my office hours to ensure that I have time off.

All of those changes have helped so much with my stress and fatigue levels.

And now I see that it’s time to make a few more changes in that direction.

The fact is, everything connected with site ownership changes so fast and so often now that it’s hard for me to keep up with my investigation of those changes, much less get new tutorials and info out to you in a timely manner.

Plus, there are way more fires every year now where I have to drop everything and investigate what just borked our sites or hosting.

And, even with the recent reductions in client load, and backing off my marketing for new clients, I still have a more robust client load than ever before.

Plus, the new client projects that have come over the last year are longer and harder now too, as so many site owners hired other tech help before coming to me. Those techs disappeared on them and stuff is now breaking, and they have no idea what that tech did. So, it takes longer to sort all of that trickery and custom coding out and put the site back on a good footing, and then actually fix what’s slowing it down.

Up until March I was able to stay pretty much on track with my plans for 2022, but now I’m behind because I switched my priorities to get BlogAid ADA compliant, and to deal with some other investigations into things coming down the pike that are going to bork our sites if they get implemented, and those checks could not be delayed.

So, now I’m behind with what I had planned, plus my own to do list of new things is piling up.

Y’all may recall I got behind like that about this time last year due to working with others that got delayed on some theme testing that was critically important to everything else I had planned to do for the year. And it took me all the rest of 2021 to get caught back up. Those delays cost me money and mental health due to the stress and overwhelm.

So, to keep from repeating that same sort of stressful situation again this year, I’m going to delay bringing on new projects from the site services waiting list until I can get at least half of the currently open projects completed. And I plan to keep my client load cut in half, or even down to zero, until I get caught back up with my other projects that are required for me to run the BlogAid business.

That includes keeping my courses updated in a timely manner and testing plugins that I believe will be helpful for us. And of course, being able to do the deep dive on membership and digital download setup that so many of you have been patiently awaiting.

So, if you are on the waitlist, we will be delayed about 2-3 weeks. And that puts it well into April for any new requests, in case you are trying to time when to contact me for your audit checkup or such.

Keeping You Ahead of the Curve

Y’all know that I do my best to keep you 1-2 years ahead of the curve. And that means I have to stay on the leading edge of it so I can get services and info ready for you to use. 

So, me getting behind on those things is not an option. Else both of us will be out of business when the new stuff hits the masses.

And I appreciate your patience and support as I continue to adjust to our new reality of quick-paced change and projects that take more time, both with site services and with investigations of things that could bork us, or new things we need.

BB Hub Happenings

Digital Downloads and Member Site Survey Results

Thank you to every BB Hubber who took the survey!!!

I did a livestream in our Facebook group with the results and suggestions from those results too.

We have a really great idea now about how we want to move forward with getting you the help you need to start selling directly from your site.

Digital Downloads Action Plan

From that survey I’ve developed an action plan for us to do guided workshops this spring and summer.

Right now I’m checking in with a few of my guru buddies to come lead some of those workshops.

I think doing this as a village is a great way to motivate everyone and give the kind of support and accountability we need to get and keep the ball rolling.

Routine Site Checks Coming

Earlier this year I wrote up a DIY Site Owner’s Guide for my BB Hub peeps.

And it includes routine checks that you need to do on your site.

This week I’m finishing up an email drip series to get us caught up on our first quarter checks. And then I’ll start on the drip series for the second quarter checks that we’ll start in April.

So, we’ll be able to get this rolling and on schedule before we start the new digital download action plan.

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

Security Tips

Cyber Attacks Making Internet Goofy

I continue to see reports of random goofiness throughout the internet globally and much of it is due to the ramped up cyber attacks happening due to the Ukranian war.

Please keep in mind that all services who offer mitigation to these attacks are literally drowning. That includes Cloudflare and your hosting.

Mitigation is a bottleneck that is very much like the traffic backup at a DUI checkpoint. It takes time to check every car, and that makes getting through the checkpoint slow.

Issues with Cloudflare and Plugin

On top of all this, Cloudflare has decided that now is a good time to constantly roll out a bunch of changes to both the Cloudflare interface as well as to the plugin.

And both of them have been glitchy like crazy for the last 2 weeks.

I’ve heard that the latest plugin update won’t even go through or comes up with a blank screen.

So, just know that you’re not alone in all that random goofy that you’re seeing with it, and no, I don’t have a fix for it yet, as rolling back the plugin doesn’t make it any better.

UpdraftPlus Ongoing Issues

Ever since UpdraftPlus had to make major security changes to their plugin we have been seeing minor updates almost daily for the last few weeks.

And last week I told you that all the internet goofiness was causing issues with UDP being able to send backups to remote storage.

That could be due to mitigation on the host or at AS3 or wherever else you store your backup files.

And now my peeps are reporting that so many backups have failed to make it to remote storage that they are running out of disk space at their hosting.

When UDP can’t send the backup to remote storage it keeps a local copy of it. So, UDP is working, but I don’t know all of the reasons why some folks can’t send to AS3. 

The real issue is that it may depend on where you are in the world as to how bad some of this stuff is for you, as cyber attacks and internet goofiness is different for folks in different countries.

So, I don’t have a way to troubleshoot for everyone to find the common causes. We will have to continue to take things on a case-by-case basis and ride this out.

SEO Tips

Google Will Deprecate GA3 Next Year

We knew this day would come.

Google announced that they will be sunsetting the current Universal Analytics on July 1, 2023.

And they encourage us to install GA4 now so it can start tracking data concurrently with the UA tracking we have now.

That’s because your UA tracking info will not transfer over to the new GA4, and you will need both to compare year-over-year analytics.

Here’s the rub.

GA4 is shit.

It has been shit since it rolled out and it still is.

And that’s just one of the reasons I have discouraged my peeps from installing it, as it just adds another set of requests that slow down your page load time only to give you inaccurate data.

But, it looks like we have no choice now, so I’ll be updating my DIY SEO course for how to install GA4.

I don’t cover how to use analytics in that course, as they are not SEO, which is Search Engine Optimization. They are traffic from every source.

I just cover how to make the connection as your Search Console connection depends on it – and because all of those connections need to be correct for proper HTTPS conversion too, which is a service I offer.

And GA4 is a whole other animal. You pretty much have to use Tag Manager to get any meaningful tracking data. So, you will want to find tutorials for how to make use of it, because just connecting it is not enough.

And come next summer, we’ll have inaccurate analytics to go with our inaccurate reporting in Search Console, which has had one glitch after another for over a year already.

Joost de Valk Transitions to Advisor Position

Team Yoast made a huge announcement last week. 

One of the reasons Joost de Valk sold the Yoast business to Newfold was so he could back off the day-to-day management as CPO and pursue other life goals.

And now that he sees things are running smoothly with Jono Alderson as the head of SEO, Joost will be stepping back into an advisory role where he will only need to be in the office once every couple of weeks.

I want to take a moment to say a HUGE THANK YOU to Joost de Valk for creating such a great SEO plugin that has always been heavily tested and in lock step with Google’s preferences. And, for creating such an inclusive and active workplace and community. Plus, a thank you for all the amazing support you have shown to the entire WordPress community with your sponsorship and attendance at WordCamps, and on the WP core team.

No other plugin developer holds a candle to all you have freely given and we wish you well with the next part of your journey.

Hosting Tips

cPanel Price Increases Again

Y’all remember a couple of years ago when cPanel made that out of the blue announcement that they were tripling their prices?

Most hosts did not react well to the news or the way cPanel handled the fallout. It was super clear that they were only concerned about making money for their board of directors and didn’t give a damn about their end users, who were hosting providers.

Several hosts had a massive knee-jerk reaction and jumped to other control panels before really thinking it through as far as cost of change over and the cost of making new tutorials.

And other hosts got busy building their own custom control panels.

cPanel has continued to raise their rates ever since, and they just announced another one.

Now, many hosts have been absorbing the cost of these increases, especially the big-box hosts who are in a race to the bottom with discount hosting.

But I doubt too many hosts, even the big ones, can keep doing that.

So, do expect to see an increase in your next renewal.

Use Interworx on VPS but Only at Iridium Hosting

Back when cPanel announced that triple price increase, the number one alternative some hosts considered was Interworx.

It wasn’t quite up to par with cPanel, though.

So LiquidWeb purchased Interworx and put some R&D money into bringing it up to par so they could make it available on their hosting servers.

FYI, several of the name brand hosts you know use LiquidWeb servers.

Most hosts are still using cPanel on shared hosting.

But, they have made cPanel an extra cost on VPS hosting, and they offer Interworx control panel for free.

Now, before you make that choice to save some money, just know that the only host I have seen Interworx set up correctly on is Iridium Hosting.

I’ve heard some horror stories with one issue after another with other hosts who offer it.

And if you get on one of those other hosts, you won’t care about the $15/mo you tried to save when you add up the cost and stress of dealing with an ill-configured server.

Monetization Tips

Building Community vs Audience

One of the projects I dedicated myself to last fall was building an engaged community in the BB Hub.

And it’s definitely working!

More folks are participating in the village of our Facebook group with sharing their wins for the week and posts they find interesting and helpful.

And that’s helping it be far more than just a support group where folks only show up when they have a problem.

And when someone does report an issue, we all benefit from seeing it, as it may be an indication of a bigger thing happening, like all of the heightened cyber security effects we are experiencing right now. Everybody jumps in and helps checks each other’s sites to see if it’s blocking traffic everywhere or just from certain regions. And stuff like that is amazing peace of mind for site owners.

And we’re all working together on projects like the digital downloads and member site stuff so that we can benefit from the variety of experiences and different ways of doing things that each site owner brings to the table.

This is the power of the village and why a community like this is worth paying for.

And this is a prime example of the difference in building a community vs an audience.

The nice folks over at The Tilt have a great post about this difference too, and how the creator economy is moving focus from just building an audience to turning that into a vibrant community that is worth paying for.

So, please do give it a read and see if it sparks some inspiration for how you can start a community of your own. 

25 Lessons Learned from Building Community

Then, jump over to this post and podcast from the nice folks at Smart Passive Income on the 25 lessons they learned from the first 25 episodes of their new Community Experience podcast.

They centered on some key questions, including:

• How does one build a truly meaningful community?
• How does one do so sustainably?
• How does one measure success in a community?

Folks, this post is more or less a blueprint of how it’s done.

So, even if you’re not thinking about creating a community, I suggest you read the post anyway as there are super tips for bringing value to your followers too.

Run Your Membership on YouTube 

This was a super interesting story on The Publish Press.

A hiker has built a huge YouTube audience with all the folks who enjoy watching his PoV hiking videos.

And now he has made many of those videos only available to subscribers who joined his $10/mo YouTube membership.

Yes, YT offers such a thing. They also take a 30% cut of the revenue. And that’s why you may have never heard of this program because folks who want to run such a thing generally opt for something like Patreon that only takes a 5% cut to start.

This hiker has over 650,000 subscribers. I don’t know how many of those are in his paid membership.

And it will be interesting to see how he does with this, as so many folks are used to free, but ad-driven videos on YouTube. Plus, he still has to make some videos free to continually attract new audience.

I take this as one more example of the direct pay creator economy that we are entering. Folks are willing to pay for access to your content.

Designer Tips

Block Pattern Submissions

Yay!!! 

Y’all may remember me talking about how excited I was for the Gutenberg Block Pattern Directory being built.

And you may recall me saying how astonished I am that more designers are not jumping all over these things as they are a great way to sell templates.

Plus, every theme creator should make their own templates available as Block Patterns for things like landing pages and such.

Well, WordPress will soon be calling for submissions for free Block Patterns to put in the Directory.

This is akin to the free WP themes that are available and it’s a great way for designers to get exposure to a wide audience.

Plus, templates like these are the only reason businesses like Elementor are even still around.

Designers could, and should, start eyeing a business based on premium Block Patterns for that reason alone.

I’ll be keeping my eyes on the Directory for any cool patterns you may want to use and I’ll be listing them in the Gutenberg Ninja course too.

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.