Tips Tuesday – Site Speed Deadline, WordPress Updates, GDPR, Encrypt Backup Files

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• New post on why EU country blocking won’t work for GDPR compliance
• New post on the raging debate about IP addresses and cookies that will impact all online biz
• Why I have to keep a GDPR meeting private with just my site audit clients and webmasters
• Why you need to get your request in now for site speed to beat Google’s July deadline
• Why you must take control over WordPress updates
• Why Yoast SEO tweaked the meta description length again
• Update on new structured data for recipes that could bring you tons more traffic
• A new extension for Chrome that you don’t want to tell anybody about
• Why encrypting your backups are a requirement now
• Update on how to detect cookies you have in use on your site

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BlogAid Happenings

New GDPR Posts

I hope you’ve been following along with my GDPR post series and livestreams on my BlogAid Facebook page to keep you informed as things change.

See the latests 2 posts:

• Blocking EU Countries: Why it won’t work for GDPR compliance
• Raging Debate Over GDPR, IP Addresses, and Cookies
  This is a rabbit hole that goes deep with an open can of worms. It will definitely impact all online biz.

GDPR Meeting for Site Audit Clients and Webmasters

After digging into the GDPR plugins this weekend and researching more into how this will radically impact the way site owners of all kinds make money via their sites now and for years to come, I literally had to put it all down and go sit on my deck and stare at the trees until I could sort out in my mind a way forward.

I had three revelations.

• I finally got real clarity on what I will be implementing on BlogAid and why. That’s not only what I will be placing on my sites, but also the info, advice, and support I will be offering with regard to GDPR.
• I came face-to-face with the legalities and site tech of GDPR implementation that are out of my wheelhouse and need to remain so and why.
• I developed a plan to inform my clients in a way that limits my liability and gives them the most help possible.

For that last one, I’ll be holding a private live meeting with my site audit clients and Level 6 Webmasters this Thursday to fill them in on the details of these revelations.

If you are one of those peeps, or have a current project open with me, look for an email I sent out yesterday with an invitation to the Thursday meeting.

And here’s why this meeting has to be private.

• To limit my legal liability, folks will have to register for the event, that includes attending live or to have access to the replay. That registration will serve as a legal waiver on the options available and which of them I will be implementing and why, and that it is not legal or technical advice for what you should do. This way we’ll both have a record of that agreement.
• I also don’t feel comfortable getting into this level of detail with the general public. I need to limit it to the folks I already have a working relationship with.

For the info I can share with you publicly, please see my GDPR posts.

I’ll continue to cover this topic as it evolves to the best of my ability, and to the legal limit of what I feel comfortable publishing in a public forum.

All I can do is hope that y’all understand that I don’t control the internet and I don’t have a magic wand where I can make GDPR okay for everybody, mainly due to the legalities of it.

I also hope that everyone will remember how I helped calm the tempest and kept you from going over the cliff with the herd on this.

Plus, how easy I’ve made everything else for you with regard to having a safe, secure, and profitable site that makes you more money, whether you are a DIY site owner or designer who needs to know the tech so you can take care of your clients.

Got the house

Woohoo, I finally got a contract on a sweet house in a great neighborhood!!!

Thanks to everyone for your super vibes and support.

I also want to thank my clients who were so understanding when I had to reschedule meetings during the house hunt phase too. I’m so glad that’s over.

Client work schedule

We’re still in the paperwork phase with the house. As of today, I don’t know when closing is or exactly when I’m moving, but best guess is around the first of July. I should know more about that later this week. It’s likely to happen pretty fast, as those things go.

And all other house move related things, like the inspection and stuff are scheduled meetings.

Plus, I’ve been half packed since March, so the rest of that can easily be handled in an hour a day too.

All that to say, I’m at my desk doing client work every day.

And I’m working through the waitlist for site audits and other site services.

I’m being careful not to overbook, and to ensure that all open projects are either finished or at a good break point for when I have to take off a few days around the physical move of not just me, but my internet connection.

Speed and HTTPS Deadlines in July

One of the reasons I started packing and house hunting in March was to avoid moving right in the middle of a last minute push by site owners to beat Google’s two deadlines coming up in July. We see how that worked, right?

I guarantee that I will be working my butt off for all of June to get to as many folks on the waitlist as possible.

And I seriously doubt that Google will implement these deadlines the first part of July, either, but they didn’t give us a date like they did with the last HTTPS deadline for folks collecting email addresses.

So, now is the time to put in your site audit and HTTPS conversion requests. This HTTPS deadline is for all sites, whether you collect addresses or not.

I guarantee that whenever these deadlines do hit, and site owners start feeling the pain, there will be a new mad rush of projects.

I expect to be backed up with work into August.

And that is the start of my normal busy season as kids go back to school and site owners return to site projects before their busy holiday season starts.

So, don’t put this off just because I’ll be taking a couple of days to move and get my internet service transferred over!!!!

Watch BlogAid Today

FYI, I’ve been livestreaming on the BlogAid Facebook page quite frequently with up-to-the-minute news and tips, and a super cool story about my house hunt.

So, be sure that you Like, Follow, and turn on notifications for it to ensure you see the latest.

And go check out my most recent videos too.

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

WordPress Tips

Why Sites Didn’t Immediately Update to WordPress 4.9.6 and then Suddenly Did

THIS is why I suggested you take control of all site updates.

The WP devs turned off auto updates for 4.9.6, then suddenly turned it back on without warning or explanation.

If you took my suggestion to install that Easy Update Manager plugin, you don’t have to worry about foolishness like this.

See my super quick tutorial on the settings on the BlogAid Facebook page. It was a rush thing, not a formal tutorial, but it will help you get the settings right.

Be sure that the plugin stays on until further notice, which will likely be around WP 5.1 or later, after all the Gutenberg hoohaa in 5.0.

Thanks to webmaster John Sawyer of The Small Business Website Guy for the heads up on this.

SEO Tips

Yoast to Roll Back Meta Description Length

Late last year Google started tweaking the meta description length that shows up in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

And when that looked like it would stick, Yoast updated his SEO plugin to match.

Well, just a few months later, Google has returned to the shorter lengths, and it looks like that is going to stick.

So, expect an update to the Yoast SEO plugin in the next release, which is 7.6 and due out in the next week or so.

You can read his post about this for what he thinks is going on, and what you should do.

My advice, keep your important statements up front. No matter what Google does, you’ll still get the click. All the rest is gravy.

Structured Data for Recipes

You may recall in last week’s Tips Tuesday that I was jumping up and down for you to get in on the ground floor of Google seeking recipes for Google Assistant.

Well, that requires special schema markup.

I’ll be reaching out to my foodie site audit clients about this and determining which plugins provide the required markup.

Most all of these plugins have schema markup now, but we need to see if it meets Google requirements for this new voice search thing.

In the meantime, please do read this post from Yoast about it.

This could mean a TON of new traffic for your site, so do take this seriously and do your own homework on it too.

Google creates tracking opt out extension for Chrome

You can kiss your Google Analytics numbers goodbye if this new extension for Chrome ever catches on.

And that’s just one of the reasons I won’t be mentioning it in my Privacy Policy.

If visitors want to do that, they can figure it out for themselves.

And doesn’t it seem odd that one Google department for the browser is slitting the throat of another department for Analytics?

GDPR Tips

Encrypt Your Backups

One of the requirements for GDPR compliance is that you safeguard the personally identifiable info you keep on your database.

That could be email addresses from:

• Blog post commenters
• Contact form fields (not all contact forms do this)

Besides securing your site, you need to also secure the transfer and storage of your backup files.

The premium version of UpdraftPlus offers a way to encrypt the files as they are sent to storage. Read about their new Data Protection and Privacy Centre for more on which storage location you use.

And, if you need a super backup solution, read my UpdraftPlus post series about the difference in the paid and free versions, and where I suggest storing the files using a more secure IAM user too.

If you’re using VaultPress, your connection is encrypted too.

If you’re not 100% sure your site has been properly secured, or if you’ve been relying on a security plugin for that, which I can guarantee doesn’t work fully, come get a site audit and let’s find and plug those holes.

Detecting Cookies in Use

For your Privacy Policy and/or your Cookie Policy, you need to list the types of tracking cookies that you are using.

I have a list of the common ones most all of us use in my GDPR Guide.

But, truly detecting all the ones you may have in use has proved to be harder than I realized.

Chrome Dev Tools doesn’t show 3rd party cookies. And neither do many of the other free cookie audit services.

Several folks have suggested getting on the free trial of Cookiebot.

Within a day or so, it will send you a list of all your cookies.

And that may get you started.

But, if you change anything on your site that uses cookies, then what?

And that goes a lot deeper than you can imagine. See my post on it for more.

Plus, if you run ads from an agency, they have rotating cookies and their own methods for listing and cutting them off until acceptance is given. And anything else you add to your site for it could conflict.

So, for now, I’m suggesting we all do the best we can for listing what we can identify and I’ll continue to keep my eyes open for ways to make this easier and more accurate for us.

Lots of GDPR related stuff is being developed these days, so there is hope for this.

Wrap Up

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

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