Tips Tuesday – PHP 8 Update Coming, Digital Downloads Guides, WP is Out of Touch

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• Awesome digital download guides and resources are here
• Why it’s important to say thank you to your favorite creators
• Support for PHP 7.4 ends in Nov and what I’m preparing for my clients and Webmasters to get ready for the change to PHP 8.0
• Major security issue with the Ad Inserter plugin
• Why we’re still waiting for the WP 6.0.1 release so we can update
• WordPress is totally out of touch with end users and the grumblings are getting louder
• Why the owner of WordPress might have a conflict of interest with WP users
• Shopify will soon support NFTs
• Why I still believe that crypto and NFTs will someday be the norm
• TikTok adds new tutorials called Snacks
• Google will soon be paying Wikipedia and how that pay may trickle down to us
• Bing has a new “from this page” section and how you can get your content in it

Listen to the Podcast

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

BlogAid Happenings

This past week was filled with helping clients migrate to better hosting while doing their audit in a migration/audit combo. 

And, we’re doing a bunch of audit checkups for my BB Hub clients who are returning for their annual audit. Those are so super quick, easy, and cheap!! Most of them had little else to do besides the updates I make during the audit.

We’ve got a lot of news to cover today, so let’s jump right into it.

Digital Download Guides are Here

NOTE: This is my affiliate link.

I am so thrilled to share with you that Cath Hakanson at Think Smarter Solutions has released all the guides and resources you need to create and deliver digital downloads.

Cath is one of my long-time site audit clients and she has tried every combo of e-commerce solutions.

So I asked her to create guides for us with comparisons on the different setups and vendors, plus how to do it.

And boy, did she ever knock it out of the park!!!

Even if you already have a digital download setup, you’re going to want these guides. There were plenty of tips in them I didn’t know, and I’m betting you didn’t either.

Beyond the guides, Cath also made some amazing lead magnet templates for you to use on Canva.

And if that wasn’t enough, she also offers a wide range of resources, consults, and even support to help you.

I bought the guides myself so I can do my own setups and advise my clients properly too. And that way I get updates all the time as well, and you know how often things change with site tech stuff. And Cath stays right on top of it.

Feedback from Last Week’s Tips Tuesday

Thank you to everyone who sent feedback about last week’s Tips Tuesday.

Folks said things like, “I always enjoy Tips Tuesday, but this one was fire.” And then some folks told me this was just what they needed to encourage them to make the changes in their online adventure that they knew they needed to make.

Say thank you

I would also like to encourage everyone to take 2 seconds to say “thank you” when you see something online that helps you.

I’m not big enough on any social media platform to attract tons of trolls. But a lot of the folks you likely follow are.

And your quick comment simply saying “thank you” means so much to them.

It also endears you to them.

I’m very active on my various TikTok accounts and I make a point to heart videos that my clients make and watch until the end, as just liking and moving on borks the algorithm.

And I make a point to say thank you to the crypto creators who take the time to make daily videos that help me keep up with the news. Same with the website folks I follow on other platforms.

And doing this ensures that I continue to see their content in my feed too.

So, if someone is helping you, then help them with your likes and comments. It is so encouraging to them and helps combat the negative trolls as well.

And thank you to everyone who likes and comments on my posts wherever you see them online. I see you!!!!

BlogAid Village Happenings

Support for PHP 7.4 Ends in November

Some of y’all may remember a few years ago when we made the big leap from PHP 5.6 up to 7.0.

For many site owners, that was the first time they had ever had to concern themselves with what PHP version they were running at their host.

PHP is a coding language that WP heavily relies on. It’s also involved with your database too.

We are currently running PHP 7.4.

Development support has already ended for it.

Security support will end in November.

The next version up is 8.0 and all of us will have to switch to it come November. Hosts don’t have a choice in that if they want to keep their servers secure.

WordPress is Ready for PHP 8.0, Plugins May Not Be

The WordPress core code has been tested against PHP 8.0 and works. It may not work with PHP 8.1, and little to nothing has been tested against that version, so no one should be using it even if your host has it available.

But, there is no longer a good way to test if your theme and plugins are PHP 8.0 compatible.

We looked into that PHP Compatibility plugin we used last time and it has not been updated to test for 8.0. And it gave too many false flags anyway because it triggered on finding backwards compatible code in some plugins too.

The Only Real Way to Test

So, the only foolproof way we have to test our sites is to flip the PHP switch and see what breaks.

And that’s exactly what I’m preparing my Webmaster Training members and BB Hub Plus site audit clients to do.

This week I’ll be making tutorials for how to change your PHP level and check the extension and option settings.

NOTE: my affiliate link for Iridum is below

These tutorials will only apply to those on Iridium Hosting on both the cPanel shared hosting and the Interworx VPS hosting.

The reason why is because all other hosts have a mix of PHP setup on cPanel and CloudLinux and also on different servers that have radically different PHP settings.

The PHP setup and settings at Iridium Hosting are the only ones that I can guarantee are correct.

Mixed Results When Testing at Other Hosts

Because the PHP setup and settings are so all over the place at other hosts, if you do switch to PHP 8.0, you may see things break, but not because there is an issue with your site. It may be due to the PHP settings being wrong.

Or, everything may look like it is working fine, but the settings are way, way, way too high and you’ve just opened yourself up to resource overages. Plus, the entire server will run slower because everybody else on the server has those outrageous settings that just give more room for the rats to run on their unsecured sites.

No Hosting Support

Earlier this year I drew the line on offering support for any hosting issues. I’m done banging my head against the wall trying to work with hosts that refuse to fix the problems they caused with their poor server setups. And I’m done banging my head against the wall with telling clients to move to better hosting sooner rather than later.

If you didn’t head those warnings, then you deal with that crappy host, not me. And if your site gets toasted and you want to move, then it is considered an emergency migration at my dev partner’s higher rate, as he’ll be doing the move, not me.

Compiling a List of What Breaks

Once I have the PHP switch tutorials available to my peeps, then we’ll set aside a week for testing where everyone can report what they encountered. That will likely be mid to late July.

And I’ll be making a list of those issues that will be available to my peeps.

This way we can all work together to get themes and plugin devs to make the changes needed well before the drop-dead switch date in November.

Village Support

The reason we want the full power of the village in on this is because support folks tend to blow off one complaint.

They can’t blow off the 100s of support tickets we all open, though!!!!

That’s the power of the village at work for each one of us.

This is also why it pays to be in my Webmaster Training if you are in the business of creating or maintaining sites for clients, and why it pays to be a DIY site owner who qualifies for the done-with-you site audit and you are invited to join our BB Hub Plus program.

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

Security Tips

Ad Inserter Plugin Security Issue

I sent an email to my BlogAid News subscribers the minute that I heard about an issue with the Ad Inserter plugin on Monday. That email included how to check your site to see if it had been compromised and steps to take.

Something with that plugin is deleting your wp-config file, and that file holds the security keys to your site kingdom, so this is a really big deal.

If you use that plugin, you most definitely need to follow the news on it.

WordPress Tips

Still Waiting for WP 6.0.1 Update

There are a couple of bugs in WP 6.0 that I believe will affect my clients, which is why I have not cleared us to do that update yet.

They are minor bugs, like making all of your center-aligned images suddenly appear left-aligned.

But, I know my peeps are picky about the “look” of their site and won’t like that.

It’s been weeks now since the 6.0 release and the reason we have not seen a bug fix minor release, even for stuff like this that has already been taken care of, is because the WP core devs are bogged down fixing bugs with the new FSE code. You know, the Full Site Editing stuff that no one is really asking for or using.

So, we wait.

And I believe that one of those bug fixes is going to impact the look of a Gutenberg Editor thing too, so I’m holding off with updating the Gutenberg Ninja Tutorials as well.

WordPress is Out of Touch

Y’all know that something snapped in me with the hoohaa that went on in WP Performance Team due to the tests and opinions of 20+ WP pros like me and other devs were summarily dismissed. It took over 300 similar opinions being voiced to get the devs in that group to stop pushing for a plan they had that would have borked every one of the 445 million WP sites that are in production.

Well, the grumblings about WP devs being out of touch with site owners have only gotten louder this year. And now more posts are coming out to express that sentiment.

This all started in late 2018 with how the Gutenberg editor was rammed down our throats.

And now the grumblings are about how the FSE (Full Site Editing) part of Gutenberg has remained the primary focus of every release for the last 1.5 years.

WP 6.1 is still entirely FSE focused yet there is little user demand for it, from bloggers or enterprise-level sites.

I had originally predicted that FSE would not be viable until late 2022 or early 2023. And that prediction still holds true.

Plus, with the rate of bugs they are finding in every release, major theme framework devs like Astra and Kadence are super slow to even think about adopting it.

They came out with their own Pro versions that allow you to customize areas with blocks that FSE is trying to accomplish, like the header, sidebar, and footer areas.

Enterprise-level site devs have already hard coded their own solutions too, and they are not interested in using FSE either.

But, the only way the WP devs can find the problems is to take all of us through this 5 year long beta release.

It’s it funny how it didn’t take any privately held WP theme or plugin company more than a year to get a viable product out to us? Hmmm.

If you want to read more on what a long-time WP user and contributor has to say, check out this post from Matt Cromwell on The Disparities Between the WordPress Community and Core Production Direction.

I responded to Cromwell’s link of that post in an advanced WP group about what I think would help lead us into a better way to handle this great divide. My replies were well received by the devs in that group.

But, none of us expect those changes to be made. 

Trying to Be All Things to All Users

One of the other issues that is brewing is with the identity crisis WP is suffering.

It used to know who it served. 

WordPress was created for bloggers.

And now it is trying to serve small business owners, e-commerce sites, and enterprise level sites.

All of those users have radically different needs.

And one version of WP cannot address all those needs.

Ten years ago I said WP needs to split into different versions with at least two versions – one for bloggers and one for enterprise-level sites. For the last 4 years I’ve said that it needs to split again for ecommerce, especially after Automattic purchased Woocommerce.

The Owner of WP Has a Business to Run

In all of this, one fact is getting overlooked.

Matt Mullenweg created WP and holds the license to it.

He also owns Automattic, which runs the for-profit entities of:

• WordPress.com
• WP VIP
• WooCommerce
• Akismet
• JetPack
• VaultPress
• Tumblr
• Pocket Casts
• PollDaddy
• BuddyPress
• And more

Automattic is valued at $33million and Matt’s task is to keep it profitable.

Matt grants the WP.org license use to the rest of us who are not hosted by one of Automattic’s hosting ventures.

And he expects those entities who are making money from the WP.org ecosystem to contribute in some way to the sustainability of it.

That lack of “giving back” is what spawned some very terse Tweets between Matt and a Pagely employee concerning the code sourced for Automattic’s Newspack platform.

In what seemed like an off-topic response, Matt said that GoDaddy is “an existential threat to WordPress’ future.”

Of course folks at GoDaddy responded, and that led to a whole new series of tweets that eventually got deleted. But somebody made screenshots along the way.

Basically, Matt accused GoDaddy of profiting from WP without giving back to it, and even cited how much money Bluehost gives to the WP Foundation and in other sponsorships, like for WordCamps and such.

And this is the whole reason folks complain about why Bluehost remains at the top of the WP hosting recommendation list. It’s not because they have good hosting. They literally buy their spot on that list.

And all of this has led more than a few big folks in the WP ecosystem to wonder what the direction of WP would be like if Matt wasn’t both our “benevolent dictator” as he’s called in the open-source community and simultaneously the head of a for-profit company.

You can read more about it in this post on WPTavern.

My Point

The reason I’m bringing all of this to your attention is because a major split in the WP community happened at WordCamp US 2018 with the release of Gutenberg.

I was there. It was tense.

And it wasn’t all about Gutenberg either. It was also about WP powering so much of the web, yet not having any representation at the consortium tables for big decisions about HTTPS, cyber security, hosting requirements, like the PHP thing we’re about to go through, and more.

It’s been 3.5 years now, and the divide in the community is only getting wider.

In my mind, WP has become an existential threat to itself.

I don’t know where this is going. But what I do know is that site owners and the devs and folks like me who try to take care of them are fed up and stressed. And that’s going to boil over at some point.

I also know that I can no longer afford to keep BlogAid WP centric. It’s just not the best fit for every need. Never has been. But I’ve always sought out the clients where it was the best fit. I’m branching out and will ask you to consider what other platforms may be a better fit for you too, especially with ecommerce and member sites.

So, I’m not leaving WP or my training and support for it.

I’m just not going to be exclusive to WP anymore.

I have no intention of turning Tips Tuesday into a WP bashing or drama gossip column either.

So, I will report on what I deem worthy of reporting. And that will be the kind of news I have delivered today of what’s brewing that will impact us long-term, including the fact that I can no longer bear the time, energy, and stress of trying to keep WP itself from borking us.

I will, however, be with you in whatever comes and help us find the best ways to deal with it.

Monetization Tips

Shopify to Support NFTs

Shopify just introduced 100+ new improvements and features.

And one that is getting big press is including NFTs for what they call tokengated content.

There are LOTS of news articles about it, and I suggest you do a Google search for Shopfiy NFT as all the articles have different angles and emphasis on what they cover with all the new features.

Here’s an article from TechCrunch to get you started.

Crypto and NFTs Will Be the Norm

With the recent downturn in the markets, including the shakeout that’s going on in the crypto world because of it, I have not been talking about Web3 stuff too much lately.

But, I’m still VERY active in that world and keeping close eye on the projects that are still being developed.

Plus, I’m keeping a very close eye on how crypto and NFTs are becoming the norm for direct creator pay and perks for subscribers to that creator content.

You’ll hear me talk more about it when I see it become viable for the majority of us to start moving into doing.

Video Tips

TikTok Snacks Tutorials

Do you want to get going with TikTok but you need a little help getting started?

We’ll you’ll love this!

TikTok has come out with their own set of tutorials called Snacks.

They are short and to the point and they will get you going in a hurry.

SEO Tips

Google to Pay for Wikipedia Info

For a few years now Google has made donations to the Wikimedia foundation as a way to say thank you for all the info they provide that Google uses mainly in its Knowledge Graph section.

But now, Google has entered into an agreement to officially pay a set fee for use of that info.

Y’all have heard me complain that I’m not an involuntary staff writer for Google and they should share revenue with us for giving them answers to popular questions, especially if there is no click over to our sites.

But, the reason I’m bringing up this new article is that I want you to see the comment on it about court case that’s coming up in 2023 that refers to someone bringing this up in Congressional hearings, and how creators are not getting paid for their content.

So, we’ll see what comes of it.

Bing Has New “From this page” section

Y’all know that Google has a section for “People Also Ask”.

Well, Bing is taking that a step further with a new section called “From this page.”

The folks at Search Engine Roundtable are calling it a “featured snippet on steroids.”

How to get your content into these Page 1 places and more is something we discussed last week in the Special Formatting workshop for the DIY SEO course.

FYI, just a reminder that we will be on summer break for the next 2 weeks and then we’ll be diving into our last 2 planned workshops for the year on page and post content SEO.

It is NEVER too late to get into this course!!

Wrap Up

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

Thanks for sharing this podcast and post with your blogging buddies, and for leaving comments and reviews too.

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.