Tips Tuesday – Pinterest Preview, Recipe Save Button, WP 5.6 Update, 2020 Year in Review

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• Pinterest Preview Images not Displaying
• Google Submit URL for indexing tool is back
• Grow.me makes Save Recipe button available for WP Recipe Maker
• Genesis Shapers Dec Meeting
• State of the Word Address
• Last days on the BlogAid Holiday Sales savings
• Updates in the BB Hub member area
• My checks into why some of us can’t see edits in Preview
• How to update to WP 5.6 instructions are coming out tomorrow, and who will receive them
• My 2020 Year in Review post is out with sneak peeks into what’s coming for 2021

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Join me Live to Discuss Tips Tuesday

I hope you’ll join for tonight’s livestream at 8pm ET / 5pm PT on the BlogAid Facebook Page. It’s a great way to get the deeper story on what’s reported in Tips Tuesday. And, I almost always have breaking news for the day too. So come join us live for the party.

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Who I Help

All tips, advice, and suggestions in this, and all BlogAid posts and tutorials, are intended to empower DIY site owners who are serious about making money with their sites and are not on hosting that is restrictive in what you can and can’t do with your site and hosting setup. If you have any doubts about what type of host you are on and if the tips I give will work there, see this post on What is Managed Hosting?

BlogAid Happenings

I sure hope all of my peeps are having a peaceful holiday season.

I took a bit of time off to relax, but otherwise stayed super busy getting lots of back burner projects taken care of around the house and in the office and that made me so happy to do.

Last days on BlogAid Holiday Sales

It’s your last chance to get discounts on BlogAid courses.

The holiday sale ends next week.

So, if you needed to wait until 2021 for tax purposes, mark your calendars now and be sure you get in on these savings for SEO, Gutenberg, Webmaster Training, and more.

New Computer is Good to Go

I also had to take some extra time off across the holiday weekend to switch out to a new computer system. And glad I was smart enough to take an extra day because it took 2 days to get the data transferred from the old computer and to get all of my software switched over.

But I have to say, this was the easiest computer change I’ve ever done, as so much of my software is online now. Made super simple to deactivate the license on the old computer and install on the new one.

Plus, my whole back office is in GSuites, so my critical data is in the cloud and I could get to it immediately once I got hooked up to the internet.

I also finally got two matching monitors that were perfectly calibrated right out of the box and so colors are the same on both. That should help me with making videos and livestreams and such too.

This new PC is silent running with the latest fan technology and has solid state drives, so it should last me for many years to come, which I’m super tickled about.

BB Hub Updates

For my site audit clients, you will find updated tutorials and tips in your BB Hub member area.

And I’m meeting with one of my recent site audit clients this week to answer the questions she has about ongoing maintenance of her site.

From that chat I’ll be making new posts for BlogAid and a new doc for the Hub, so everyone will get a bigger list than there already is in the Hub of things to do to keep your site running fast and secure.

Can’t see edits in Preview tests

I also had a chance to do more split testing to get to the bottom of what is causing some of us not to be able to see our edits in Preview.

I only have one site that has this issue, and I tested with every combo of caching settings and/or completely turned off. I even deactivated all other plugins. And I didn’t find the issue.

I also ran a series of tests on other sites to rule out the browser and caching plugins.

And I’m just this side of ruling out Cloudflare, as two of the sites I tested are both on it, and only one of them is having the issue. But, the one that is having the issue is on the free version of Cloudflare, and the other is on the paid version. And that is a significant difference for both security and speed optimizations that are applied.

I updated my post on Can’t See Edits in Preview with all of this info.

And I will keep checking into it as I plan to put the site that is having the issue on the paid version of Cloudflare sometime soon to see if that helps it or not.

But for now, I can’t find a common factor.

Update to WP 5.6 later this week

I believe that it is safe for most of us to update to WP 5.6, so I’ll be sending instructions for how to do that to BlogAid News subscribers on Wednesday.

Those instructions will include steps to take before and after your update, including how to notate issues, and how to deal with the jQuery helper plugin that many of you had to install when you updated to WP 5.5. Hopefully you’ll be able to get rid of that plugin with this update.

New Gutenberg Tutorials Underway

Because I’m advising folks later this week to update to WP 5.6, I turned into a video tutorial making maniac on Sunday and started the updates for the Gutenberg Ninja course.

There is a list of the new tutorials in the Start Here section and I’ll be sending out an email to course members as I get full sections completed so you’ll know which ones to revisit.

BlogAid 2020 Year in Review

On Sunday evening I released my year in review post and this time I started with an overview of the major site changes we all went through this year.

I also combined on overview of what worked and what didn’t for both BlogAid and Heartwood Art.

Plus, you’ll find a sneak peek at the end of what’s coming for 2021.

And the post is also available as a bonus podcast too!

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

Security Tips

Pinterest Preview Images not Displaying

This seems to be a moving target.

We couldn’t turn on Hotlink Protection at Cloudflare for a long time because our Pinterest preview images would not show up if we had a plugin that linked to the post when someone clicked on one of our images.

Then, the plugin folks got that issue fixed and we were able to have that protection at Cloudflare again.

Well, one of my clients reported last week that image previews were blank again when using the Grow plugin.

So, you may want to go check on your site if you’re using a plugin that puts a Pinterest share button on your images.

And if all the preview images are gone, then go to Cloudflare, and click the last blue tool at the top for Scrape Shield, and turn off Hot Link Protection.

Then purge all of your caches and use an incognito window, and be logged out of your site, to check to see if that fixed it.

Be sure to wait 5-10 minutes to give Cloudflare time to fully purge, or you may have to wait a couple of hours to see it fully purge for you. So don’t give up too quickly if that didn’t seem to fix it for you immediately.

SEO Tips

Submit URL for indexing tool is back

Google has once again reinstated their request for indexing tool.

So, folks can get back to abusing it for purposes it was never intended to do – including creating a new post or updating an old one, and then submitting that URL immediately.

The fact is, Google has a crawl budget for your site and will automatically pick up the new or edited post from your sitemap changes.

There’s really no reason to submit the URL.

Plugin Tips

Grow.me makes Save Recipe button available for WP Recipe Maker

During my video SEO research, I noticed that most of my foodie clients are using the WP Recipe Maker plugin instead of the Create plugin by Mediavine, even though most all of them are with Mediavine for their ads.

I’ve also noticed that just about every recipe related function that Mediavine adds to their Create plugin they also make available to WPRM because of this.

Recently they include the new Save Recipe button that you can now use in WPRM too.

Special Code for ConvertKit

One of my site audit clients is using the Custom HTML block to install the JS script for a ConvertKit optin in her post.

Unfortunately, that script’s placement can confuse optimization plugins like WP Fastest Cache and WP Rocket.

There is an exclusion you can add to the script to keep it from being affected by the Render Blocking JS settings in those plugins.

But, it has to be added directly to each instance of the script.

This is where the power of Gutenberg’s Reusable Blocks really comes in handy. If you need to make a change to something that is placed all over your site, then you can place it there as a Reusable Block. If you need to make a change, you simply change the master Reusable Block and it changes in every place it was added.

I’ll be updating my WP Fastest Cache Settings tutorial for this soon too.

And I teach stuff like this in my Gutenberg Ninja course as well.

Theme Tips

Genesis Shapers Dec Meeting

Webmasters who design in Genesis will definitely want to read all of their latest Shapers Meeting discussion.

But one of the things that will affect end users of Genesis themes is how they are still figuring out the recent changes to the Genesis Pro platform in conjunction with the new Genesis Blocks plugin, which as formerly known as Atomic Blocks.

To be honest, I have always favored the Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg Block plugin over the Genesis Block plugin for giving us an extra suite of blocks with additional styling.

I teach both in the Gutenberg Ninja course, though, so folks have some variety in what they use.

So, if you use Genesis, you will want to at least scan the meeting notes to see what changes may be coming down the pike for you.

And keep in mind that all references to Genesis Pro are for the new framework that is a fully block-based theme to accommodate the new Full Site Editing coming in Gutenberg. It is not the original Genesis framework we are all currently using.

WordPress Tips

State of the Word Address

I attended the livestream of Matt Mullenweg’s State of the Word address last week.

Basically, it was all about Gutenberg. WPTavern has a nice recap and video embed, if you want to get more details.

Folks, if you are not already on the Gutenberg train, and I’m talking to both designers and site owners here, you are getting left in the dust – and fast now too.

Be sure that all things Gutenberg are on your schedule for 2021.

Wrap Up

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

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