Tips Tuesday – Security Issues, SEO Beta Tests, Amazon Links, Email Security

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• It’s been a week of bumps and glitches online
• Changes to my Site Audit services
• Zero-day Log4J security issue update
• Why you need to get your email off your hosting
• What’s up with hosts down and internet being slow and glitchy
• cPanel’s new SEO Beta testing program and why I’ll be jumping in
• Matt Mullenweg’s State of the Word address is tonight
• Update on the WP Performance Team
• Tests on a new way to do Reusable Blocks and maybe even build Block Patterns
• New Amazon Links exclusion for WP Fastest Cache
• What’s up with the bogus redirect warning email from Google Search Console

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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

As some of y’all saw in last week’s Tips Tuesday livestream, my left hand is back in the thumb splint and it has really slowed me down this week. The tendons from my thumb down into my wrist get aggravated from overuse, which I did to it in the nice weather last weekend, hence needing be in a split for extra support for a week or more. I mouse left handed and that’s been fun to do without my thumb. Plus typing really aggravates it.

So, I’ve reserved my desk time for doing client work and had to pull back on doing the DIY SEO tutorials and the new year-end posts and such too.

I appreciate your patience and well wishes as I heal.

Bumps and Glitches Week

For the past couple of weeks we’ve had all manner of goofiness happening online. And this past week we had some real doozies, and I’ll tell you about those in just a moment.

Changes to Site Audit Service

All this year I’ve struggled with ill-fitting clients for the type of “done with you” service I offer in site audits.

It’s been frustrating for me and for the clients.

And I believe I have finally found a way to ensure that everyone’s expectations get met.

That started with me adding more questions on the audit request form earlier this year.

And then last week I published a post on what constitutes a DIY, hands-on site owner.

I have always offered a hands-off site audit package too, I just never advertised it as only my webmasters took advantage of it for their clients. I did the audits and they did the fixes.

But, what I’m in the process of doing is making it clear that the audit is one service – fixes are another. 

And BB Hub Plus membership will be by invitation only.

Here’s why I have to do this.

Some folks who are not DIY, hands-on site owners already are signing up for audits just to get free support in the BB Hub.

And some folks who don’t really want to be hands-on site owners, and who don’t really participate in the Hub except when they have an issue, are trying to skate by with doing the least they have to in between audit checkups.

We have a great village. And we have a WHOLE bunch of new masterminds and mini challenges and other special events coming to the Hub. I want to ensure that the membership is filled with folks who are already DIY, hands-on site owners, are comfortable with tech in general, and who are super serious about doing what it takes to run a successful online business, and who are happy to help others in our group too.

I already have a new draft of the Site Audit services page in the works. And as soon as my editor clears it, I’ll be posting it to the site.

I’ll also be contacting all of the new clients who are currently on my waiting list to ensure that we are a good fit for one another.

Site Services Update

If you have an open project, I’m getting to your work as fast as I can with my splinted hand slowing me down just a bit. And if you are on the waitlist, I’ll open your project as soon as I can, but I will likely need to take a break for a few days this week between current projects closing, and before I onboard new ones to give me a chance to catch up on the DIY SEO tutorials.

And again, thank you for your patience with all of it.

We are about to go into March now for new requests.

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

Security Tips

Zero Day Log4J Security Issue

On Friday, a popular software code set called Log4J was found to have a major security issue. It affected Apache servers, which are the most popular type of host server, as well as storage vendors, like iCloud and such.

I sent an email out to all BlogAid News subscribers Friday night with info and instructions, plus an update from Cloudflare that they were rolling out more protection for all users, even those on the free tier. So I knew my site audit clients would have some extra help.

Patches for the vulnerability also came out Friday, it just took time to implement them. But it is safe to be on your site again.

Get Your Email off Your Host

One of the host elements affected by the Log4J issue was email running through the host.

That has always been a security issue, and had become even more of one earlier this year because it leaks your host IP address. If bad bots have that they can run end around a lot of the security you might have in place.

This is also why I chose Iridium Hosting as our boutique hosting vendor. No hosting email is allowed there. You have to run it the secure way through a 3rd party.

This is also why I have a tech specialist who does this 3rd party email setup for us, as more verification records have to be added than any tutorial shows, plus the SPF record that is leaking the IP address has to be changed, and your email list service provider, like MailerLite, needs its verification records added too. And, you need an SMTP plugin to detach site email sends from the host too for things like letting you know a new comment is on the site, or your contact form has been filled out.

Hosting Tips

Hosts down and internet slow and glitchy

Beyond the big Log4J issue, we’ve been having odd glitches and slow sites or even downed sites for a couple of weeks now.

Huge DDoS attacks have been rolling through, and hosting and Cloudflare mitigation services have been on high alert.

AWS (Amazon Web Services) went down for 9 hours from an attack last week.

NameHero had a server down for maintenance last week too, although that appears to be a straight up hardware failure, not from an attack.

Folks, I know this is a bad time of year for this to happen. 

But it is part of having a site online. Stuff happens. It doesn’t mean you’re on a bad host or such. Sometimes the internet trunk lines get hit that go to the host, so it’s not even their fault, like what happens to BigScoots and used to happen to A2 Hosting a lot, though both of them have spent a lot of money to run end around those bottlenecks since.

And all sites run on hardware servers, and machines do break, or software updates fail. Hosts have redundancy and plan Bs for this sort of stuff, but sometimes it’s just faster to fix the broken server first, or at least try.

So, do what you can to remain calm and ride it out. Panic will cost you so much more, and really, there’s no way to entirely avoid it.

As far as the site glitches, I’m not sure what caused those as folks were seeing all manner of different things.

But logging out, then clearing all caches, and waiting a bit before trying again seems to have cleared them up. And that includes clearing browser cache.

Again, staying calm and not panicking is the thing to do.

cPanel SEO Beta Testing Program

Well, this scares the poo out of me.

I may just have to jump into this beta program to ensure they are not going to do something that will bork our sites, much like their WordPress Toolkit rollout did.

That thing was so bad that I had to strongly encourage the hosts most of my clients use to remove it. And I’ve been cleaning up the mess it left behind all year now.

I won’t be able to give you detailed reports from this beta program, as we are not allowed to publicize anything in it.

But, I will at least keep you posted on what I will be allowed to say.

WordPress Tips

State of the Word Address Tonight

Matt Mullenweg delivers his annual address tonight at 5pm ET and it will be livestreamed, so you can watch.

I always enjoy hearing about what the WordPress foundation has done through the year, including all of the global initiatives and support projects they are involved in. It’s really amazing how much good they put into the world.

Plus we’ll get more insight on the FSE project, which is Full Site Editing and the completion of Gutenberg Phase 2 that will roll in with WP 5.9 in late January.

And we’ll get a peek into future plans as well, including Matt’s vision of the online future for all of us as we move into the virtual world of metaverses.

THIS is why Gutenberg was introduced in the first place, and I’m pretty excited about it.

WP Performance Team Update

As some of you saw in the Tips Tuesday livestream last week, there has finally been some good news from the Measurement group about solidifying testing methods and such. This is the area where I have the most to offer help with, and offered to let folks see one of my case studies, which includes test site setup, testing methods, as well as spreadsheets to collect the info and graph it.

That got a LOT of attention from group members.

I was also assisted by the Slack group to find the split off GitHub discussion on image changes, specifically to make all thumbnail images WebP on upload.

No matter what anyone has said, they are going forward with this.

So, me and others have had our input and we’ll just have to wait until the beta for it comes round to do testing and then raise any objects/issues we have with it at that time.

I can’t spend any more time on it, and I can’t fight the powers that be at this stage.

Gutenberg Tips

Reusable Blocks and Patterns Tests

I know many of you are as disappointed with the current glitchy state of Reusable Blocks as I am.

In fact, I’ve had to put a warning on my tutorials for them in the Gutenberg Ninja course.

Well, we may have found a work around.

There are plugins that do a better job of RBs than WP does and I’ll be setting up a test site in the next few weeks for BB Hub members to go in and play with those plugins to see what they think, and if this may be a good idea for us.

I’m also excited that some of the plugins allow you to see where all of your RBs are used, and some even help you create Pattern Blocks, which right now, only a dev can do.

I don’t expect us to have those tests done until after the holidays, so sometime in January. 

And I’ll keep you posted.

Plugin Tips

New WPFC Exclusion for Amazon Links

A couple of my clients use the AMALinks Pro plugin for creating Amazon links. And right now it is having a conflict with the older Guzzle code that Cloudflare introduced to its plugin recently.

My clients have tickets into Cloudflare support for this, but it’s going slowly.

On top of that, the Amazon images coming in from the links put into this plugin broke.

Emre at WP Fastest Cache gave us an additional exclusion to use that fixes that issue.

And I have updated my WP Fastest Cache Settings tutorial with that info too.

You don’t need it unless your images are having issues.

SEO Tips

Google Search Console redirect warning email

Looks like most everyone with a verified site on Search Console got an email over the weekend with a warning saying there was a redirect issue on your domain.

It was just another of the many glitches GSC has suffered this year that reports erroneous and incorrect info to us.

You can ignore the email.

And to be honest, I have barely looked at GSC this year because most of the time what info I do have from them is so bogus, either due to a transitory glitch, or lack of updates for months, that it is worthless.

I’ve been spending a lot more time on Bing Webmaster Tools to get accurate crawl info on my site.

How about you? Let us know in the comments here or anywhere you see this post online.

Wrap Up

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

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