Tips Tuesday – Member Sites, UpdraftPlus Failure, Video SEO, Cloudflare TV

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• How the new E-comm coalition is coming together and helping clients make money
• The SEO bad bot block tests are complete and are now standard for site audit clients
• New XML-RPC hacker and scraper blocks
• UpdraftPlus backup failures and a fix in the works
• Why 3^rd party backup services are worse than backup plugins
• How to ensure your backup is getting everything needed to restore your site
• Why is WP considering a name change for Reusable Blocks?
• New ways to make money directly on Pinterest
• YouTube adds auto chapters for indexing and why this is huge SEO news
• A peek into our future with the new service from Cloudflare TV

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 Facebook Page. 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’m back! 

Taking an extended weekend break did me so much good. I spent time clearing brush in the meadow with my neighbor and we enjoyed a big bonfire that night. 

But, as I was wheelbarrowing some of the brush to the pile, I stepped in one of the numerous holes out there and whacked my jaw on the handle as I came down. You’ll see that nice bruise in our livestream tonight.

I also got my last woodworking build ready to post. Actually, I got 2 posts made. One was for a rustic shoe rack tower and the other was for a dowel jig I made for it. Making your own jigs is a rite of passage for woodworkers, so I’m really proud of that honor badge. And I got started on my next build, which is a really unique bookshelf for my living room.

You can watch my progress with it on the HeartWoodArt Instagram page.

But more than anything this weekend, I got some really deep rest and what a joy to do all of that physical stuff to move stress out of my mind and body.

And now I’m chopping at the bit to run the race to the end of this year with all of the extra special goodies I want to bring you!!

Ecomm coalition update

Last week we had a follow up meeting with my client who delightfully agreed to be the guinea pig for our Ecomm coalition mastermind.

And I could not be more excited for her and for this coalition of vendors coming together!!!

In the first session, two weeks ago, we brainstormed all of the different ways the clients could do her digital downloads plus a membership course. And then we each had homework to do for researching some of those choices in depth.

And then this past week we met for a follow up on what we found.

We were able to make a definite decision on the paid digital download delivery that will work for her site and social media platforms. So much clarity came from that consult that she has been totally enabled to start working on that part of the project. And there are super good reasons not to combine that into a single platform that will also deliver the membership course.

Now, we all have more research to do on the different membership options but one thing became super clear.

Third-party platforms are a good fit for hands-off site owners. But they are super expensive. You’re paying more for being totally hands-off.

But my peeps are hands-on, DIY site owners. And they can easily use their own WP site to outdo what those 3rd party platforms offer.

That’s exactly why I kept my own member sites on WP after I tried some of the 3rd party platforms.

And I’m super excited for the vendor in this coalition who is putting together packages of info for folks to grab for whatever it is they want to set up. She’ll help you clarify what package is the best fit for what you want to do. And then the packages will take you through the steps and integrations.

For now, we are going to double-team the consultations to help folks find more money in their project, and then assess what tech will help them best build, deliver, and maintain their offers.

And, the coalition of vendors is growing! This week I’ll be meeting with a new member, who is actually one of our favorite theme designers, and who also works with her clients on member sites.

I’ll have more details for you as we go. And I can’t wait to release the names of all the folks involved, along with their services for you.

Just know that we are going all in on this, and that should be a huge clue to you for just how much you should consider moving away from blogging for ads and into selling your own products, including the invaluable content that you create.

Webmasters, let this be a clue to you of where sites are going more too. Every integration I learn, I’ll be teaching you as well.

Site Services update

As you’ve heard me report in recent Tips Tuesdays, I temporarily quadrupled my client load in order to get us caught back up to the time I guesstimated your project would start. We’re there, so I’m working through the open projects and not bringing on new ones until we get down to about double my normal client load. I’ll do that for a couple of weeks and then scale back to normal client load through the end of the year due to all of the course updating I’ll be doing between now and then.

We’re still holding at February for all new requests at this time.

And I’m going to be laying off responding in blogger groups for a while so that I don’t encourage more ill-fitting client service requests for a while. I’d say a solid 60% of the requests I get from such groups end up being jobs that I either can’t take, or have red flags and I don’t want to take them.

Hopefully that will also help me get my backlog worked down through the rest of the year and we’ll have just a 2 month long waitlist. And honestly, I doubt it will ever be shorter than that. So, if you have a project you want to start by end of winter – first of spring, now would be the time to sign up.

SEO bad bot block tests complete and more security blocks

I’m thrilled to let you know that my testing is complete for adding bot blocks at Cloudflare for all the extra SEO agency bots that have been chewing up our hosting resources!!!

We’re seeing 50%-70% reduction in bot hits overall – and that is going to keep our sites faster.

Folks, we’re talking about eliminating 15,000 bots, minimum. That’s more bot traffic than human traffic on some sites.

Plus, I’ve added a new block at Cloudflare for XML-RPC hits. 

XML-RPC is the old way WP talked to the outside world, and the old way it did trackbacks and pingbacks too.

Even though WP has new ways to do that communication, XML-RPC is still the favorite way for hackers and bots to try to do what’s called a Brute Force attack on your login page.

Now, those holes are already secured 3 ways at the host level for my site audit clients, and I can see those security access denials in the system error logs.

But this new Cloudflare firewall rule will stop the majority of them from being able to even hit the hosting, and that’s going to save on our hosting resources too.

So, this will be a new thing I do for all of my site audit clients now. That means all new clients with currently open project, and those on the wait list, as well as all current clients who come in for their audit checkup.

And for those of us on the new HOA hosting, we will all eventually have this done and that’s going to help keep server performance insanely fast for all of us too. 

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

Backup Tips

UpdraftPlus Backup Failures

During several site audit projects over the last 2 weeks, I’ve noticed that some of my clients were experiencing backup failures with UpdraftPlus.

I made a livestream in our BB Hub Facebook group about how to check your backups and sure enough, the problem is pretty widespread.

And in that livestream I showed how to make a partial backup manually until we can get to the bottom of the issue.

It seems to be happening on sites with tons of images and the backup times out with a failure to progress error.

I had been working with UDP support on behalf of one client and nothing we did seemed to resolve the issue in a satisfactory way. We can get the backup to run using insanely small split sizes, but then it runs for 10x longer and creates a gazillion zip files. But the real issue is that it keeps hosting resources spiked all day and night – more on that in a moment.

We finally had word on Monday from UDP support that there is a verified issue with the plugin. The fix will be in the next release, however, we don’t know when that will come out.

For the time being, they sent a link to the version previous to the one we have installed. I changed that out for my client and we ran a backup overnight on Monday. 

Because I record the podcast on Monday afternoons, you’ll want to come to the livestream tonight to hear if it worked.

I’ll keep you posted on when the permanent fix is released.

3rd party backups are even worse

All backup plugins are heavy on hosting resources. 

But, if you’re only running a backup once a week, and at off peak traffic times, the plugin just spikes your resources for a few hours and then it’s over.

With 3rd party backups, like VaultPress, JetPack Backup, and BlogVault, they hit your site all day, every day, and keep the resources spiked all the time.

That leaves less CPU, Memory, and I/O (Input/Output from the database) for your human traffic.

FYI, JetPack Backup plugin has been split from the commercial product into its own, standalone plugin that does not require the full Jetpack plugin to be installed. This pretty much replaces the very way they had been doing it with VaultPress for years until they integrated that fully into the Jetpack plugin. I’ve tried to hookup the JetPack Backup and it’s nuts. We never did get it to work.

Plus, with 3rd party access, you really need to set up at least 3 connections that help the data travel faster. That’s especially true for restoring a backup. Without those faster connections it could take days, and nobody has time for that. And that’s the part of the Jetpack Backup we could not get to work either. Maybe that’s changed with the new plugin.

Those extra connections include an FTP as well as an SSH connection, and the latter is not something most non-techie site owners know how to do. And it’s not even something that many hosts allow you to do on your own. Plus, if you have to contact host support, they are going to run you in circles with how to create a special RSA key pair instead of understanding you already have one that you want to use.

Plus, any open-door connection you have to a 3rd party is a security issue. Just ask the folks who were on BlogVault when they got hacked a few years ago. In fact, that’s when they suddenly decided to become more of a security service provider than just a backup company.

So, that’s why I’m not researching 3rd party backup vendors and why I’m dedicating time to fixing the issue that is causing UDP to suddenly not work as expected for us.

Other backups don’t get everything

If you’re wondering why I don’t advise folks just switch to another backup plugin, it’s because they don’t get everything you need to fully restore your site.

Neither do the 3rd party backup services.

They miss the files below WordPress, which includes things like:

• .htaccess – HTTPS redirect and security headers and site security
• Robots.txt – for bot crawl directives and path to XML sitemap
• Verification files – for Google, Pinterest, and more

BackupBuddy is one of the few plugins that can include those files too, but me and my peeps loathe all things iThemes and I’ve lost too much of my sanity and money with their poor troubleshooting and antics.

FYI, that’s why all of us got a little tense when iThemes purchased Kadence, but so far they have remained hands off, as best as we can tell, and we hope it stays that way.

So, I’m happy to be using UpdraftPlus and I look forward to working with their support team to get to the bottom of what’s going on with it.

READ: Backup Checklist to ensure your backup is getting everything

Gutenberg Tips

Proposal to rename Reusable Blocks

With all of the focus now on Pattern Blocks, a few folks feel that renaming Reusable Blocks would make things less confusing between the two.

In the GitHub discussion for it, two other names seem to be rising to the top:

• Synced Blocks
• Global Blocks

I don’t care what they call it. Just make them work right again, huh?

That’s where the real confusion is, and why so many folks have stopped using them, which is a real shame, as they are one of the most powerful features of Gutenberg.

Monetization Tips

Make money directly on Pinterest

In the past few Tips Tuesdays I’ve been encouraging you to consider all the money there is to make directly from platforms, not from just driving folks back to your site.

My focus with that was mainly with using video to help build your audience on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

Well, it looks like Pinterest is now going to also pay creators directly too.

Last week there was a rumor that PayPal might buy Pinterest.

And before that wildfire news got out of control, Pinterest released news that they were going to start paying creators directly.

Pinterest is making a $20M investment into Creators and Idea Pins.

The 3 priorities for Pinterest’s new focus are:

• Creators Hub – where you can make money directly from Idea Pins
• Brand Sponsorship – where a brand pays you for an Idea Pin with their product
• Affiliate Link Tagging on Idea Pins – which includes Amazon aff links

I know that many of my clients have been heavily invested in Pinterest and have been very disappointed with the roller coaster of traffic to their sites over the last couple of years.

Well, here’s your chance to make money directly from the platform.

So, learn all you can about Idea Pins and see how you can make the best use of them.

Just like with other platforms, whatever they are focused on, they are going to promote.

Do whatever you can to get in on that for as long as it lasts.

SEO Tips

YouTube adds auto chapters for indexing

A few Tips Tuesdays ago I mentioned that I teach you how to add chapters for your YouTube videos in my Video SEO Booster course.

I also teach you how to coordinate these with the written content in your blog post too.

Well, these chapters have become a powerful feature for YouTube to crawl and then deliver as the content and video marker when it displays your video in Google Search.

Keep in mind that Google owns YouTube and they love featuring YouTube videos in featured snippets and video carousels now.

These chapters have been so powerful in search results that YouTube is now auto adding them to any videos that don’t have chapters already properly marked up.

That should tell you one thing – you need to do your own chapter markup to get the biggest SEO bang for the buck.

This is right up there with the blog post formatting I teach in the DIY SEO course. 

The text content you place in your YouTube video description has everything to do with your SEO on both YouTube and Google.

Keep in mind that YouTube is the world’s 2nd largest search engine, right behind Google.

Over the next few months I’ll be doing SEO testing to see what Google is auto assigning for chapters on YouTube videos that don’t already have them.

I want to know how Google understands the video content.

That’s got to come directly from the audio and/or any text on the video.

I’m thinking it’s both.

And I will be adding my findings into the Video SEO Booster course – that may include an expansion of how to make your videos too.

I’m thinking videos that just have music and no voice audio or text on the screen are not going to be indexed as much as videos that do have those things, especially videos that have both.

And then when Google finds this same content in your blog post where the video is embedded, that’s going to help your post rank better too.

A peek into our future

Over the past few Tips Tuesdays you’ve likely noticed an increase focus on video.

Folks, we are in a true video revolution where it is quickly replacing the written word as the go-to preference for online eyeball time.

If you want viewers to your content, video is the way to capture them now.

For the last year I’ve been watching Cloudflare TV and how they have built out a new platform from scratch.

They are literally building a full 24/7 livestream production center.

And now they are offering Cloudflare TV as a service.

This is HUGE news!!!

In the last year they have produced over 1,000 shows.

More than that, they have included 650 Cloudflare employees and interns — and over 500 external guests.

These folks are not techs. And that’s why Cloudflare had to literally build this entire thing from the ground up. Their focus has been to make it both easy and efficient by creating and integrating tools to automate as much of the process as possible, and make getting started super intuitive.

I can see some brands and organizations running on this thing.

I can also see new startups using it as a base for creating platforms like Blab, but with a twist. These will be business-minded folks, and the platform won’t be targeted to general audience chit-chat livestreams.

Ever since Blab shut down I’ve been dreaming of creating a platform for business and blogger folks.

Well, maybe this is the start of things just like that.

Blab literally exploded my BlogAid business, as it did for a lot of other business owners who offered help and info for folks.

I’ll be keeping my eyes on this closely, as I can see that one of the focuses of Cloudflare TV itself is to train up coders to do something like this, as well as help producers of channels get started.

I’m also watching for the walls they are going to run into from wanting to syndicate shows to other platforms, like YouTube, Facebook and more. They may have a real issue with that, as each of these platforms is trying desperately to maintain their own identities and some are not allowing syndication like this.

Livestream syndication is also a nightmare for producers to keep up with comments coming in from multiple locations and it really splits the audience participation and the analytics that come of that too. And that can directly impact ranking on some of these other platforms.

So, while you can do it, maybe you shouldn’t.

I’m just super excited to see where this is going and what could come of it.

And if we have the chance to have a branded channel with discovery options and an episode guide, I’m jumping up and down to encourage that to manifest in our world. 

And as always, I’ll keep you posted!!

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.