Tips Tuesday – WordPress 5.0 Beta, Speed Warning Emails, DIY SEO Course Discount
Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!
Tips this week include:
- Your last chance to get a huge discount on my DIY SEO course
- What I’m testing in the WordPress 5.0 beta release that just came out
- When WordPress 5.0 will be available for everyone
- The new feature in UpdraftPlus that excites me
- New speed warning emails from Google Search Console and how to test your site speed
- Foodie theme updates getting out of hand
- The new theme maker WPEngine just purchased and what this means for our future with Genesis and Gutenberg too
Listen to the Podcast
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Join me Live to Discuss Tips Tuesday
I hope you’ll join me live tonight at 9pm ET / 6pm PT for the party and an interactive Tips Tuesday recap and breaking news discussion on the BlogAid Facebook Page. You can also catch the quick recap later that evening on the BlogAid YouTube Channel.
Replay
BlogAid Happenings
Boo y’all!!! Happy pre Halloween greetings. I’ve been having a good time decorating my front porch. It’s not much, but it’s enough to let the kiddos know they can get candy here. There are a lot of kids in my new ‘hood, so this should be a lot of fun!!
Last chance on the biggest DIY SEO course discount
The new Google Search Console tutorials are now live in the DIY SEO course, and I raised the price.
But, I sent a huge $90 discount to my site audit clients and webmaster training members last week. That flash sale ended Sunday.
Yesterday I sent a $70 discount to all BlogAid News subscribers. That flash sale ends Thursday.
But you can still get in on the sale!!!!
I’ll be sending out a reminder on Thursday for the last chance to get this price before it’s gone forever.
So, subscribe now and you’ll get that email.
And tell all of your blogger buddies and groups to get in on it too. And thank you to everyone who has!!
Meeting Folks IRL
My new place has made me come alive with creativity again, which is the whole reason I breathe air.
And, I’m putting down roots and making the effort to join community groups and be with new folks In Real Life (IRL). And that feels great!!!
Plus, I noticed on the Facebook page for my new ‘hood that there are several makers, crafters, and mommy bloggers here. So, I think I will reach out to them and maybe start a new group for us. I’m very excited about the possibilities of that, and maybe growing it city-wide.
Blogging can be such an isolating way to make a living. We all enjoy our online buddies, but there really is no substitute for meeting with like-minded folks live.
I’m still working on getting my office lighting and sound squared away so it’s easier for me to go on camera and look and sound good, but in spite of that, I think I will start holding more live groups sessions with my clients again.
That’s in addition to the new live flash challenges for the DIY SEO course that start in mid November and the live workshops coming in January.
It’s just good to have more open, and casual chats now and then too. Folks pick up all kinds of tips and inspirations from them.
What are you doing to ensure you have some live connections with folks that keep you inspired and revved up for your blogging?
Let us know in the comments, or anywhere you see this post online.
That’s all the news from around here. Let’s jump into this week’s tips.
WordPress Tips
WordPress 5.0. Beta 1 Released
It’s coming for real, now. WP 5.0 beta was released last week. And that made it jump to the very top of my testing list.
And what I’ll be testing are the 14 ways to disable Gutenberg. I’m not kidding. There really are 14 ways to do it, last I checked.
There was no way to adequately test them against the Gutenberg plugin. Now we’ll get to see how they fare on the real deal.
And you know I’ll keep you updated on the best way to turn Gutenberg off prior to the official release.
We don’t want any hoohaa with our sites, especially in the busiest part of our season, right?
Along the way with these tests I’ll have posts you can share with your blogger buddies.
There are literally millions of site owners who haven’t even heard a whisper about Gutenberg and they will be screaming bloody murder when this update rolls out.
So, I hope to make it easy for you to share solid resources with everyone and help more folks get through this in the calmest way possible.
And don’t you feel good being so far ahead of the curve for your site right now!!!!
WordPress 5.0 Release Schedule
Depending on what testers find in the beta, WP 5.0 is slated to release around November 19. Yep, right on top of the holiday week.
And while devs and folks who maintain sites are screaming about that, I think I know why they are doing it.
The other release date choice, and the one that most devs wanted, was January.
But, that makes it miss the upcoming WordCamp U.S. in early December.
I was there last year and Gutenberg was the focus of both keynote addresses by Morten Hendriksen on Friday, and Matt Mullenweg on Saturday.
I’ll be there again this year to see what the community jeers and cheers are over Gutenberg, and to hear what’s coming down the pike for us with the second phase of Gutenberg as a full theme builder.
Plugin Tips
UpdraftPlus Premium now has file and database backup schedules
I am super excited about a recent update to the premium version of the UpdraftPlus backup plugin.
There used to be no way to set up a more frequent database backups apart from the file backups. Now there is!!
This is fantastic news for transactional sites, like e-commerce and member sites.
You would most definitely want to backup the database on those daily, or as frequently as you have transactions, like twice a week or such.
It’s so much faster, and less strain on your hosting resources to be able to just get the database where that transaction info is held than to have to run a full backup.
That’s especially true if you have an image heavy site, as those are the big resource hogs for not only backing up, but sending to your offsite storage.
Is Your Backup Getting Everything?
A couple of months ago I did a Quick Check for my Site Audit Plus clients to ensure that they were getting all the files they needed in their backup.
The free version of UpdraftPlus and VaultPress leave out some critical files that are below WordPress.
And then you also have all of your site verification files for Pinterest and other platforms that get left out too.
READ: How to Backup and Restore Your Site with UpdraftPlus Free Version if you’re using that or VaultPress, as it has tips for downloading those extra files manually on a regular basis.
Or, consider upgrading to the premium version of UpdraftPlus. And I appreciate you using my affiliate link that is in the post. That helps support all of the free and helpful info you get here on BlogAid.
SEO Tips
Google sends speed warning emails
It’s been about a year since Google PageSpeed Insights started displaying actual speed data in their test results, which is actually pretty funny when you consider the name of the tool.
It’s real data they gather from visitors who use the Chrome browser to access your site.
And it’s taken all year for Google to gather enough info on most sites to even display that speed data. Most of us are still seeing a box empty of data, saying they haven’t collected enough yet.
And the data they do show is just as useless as the rest of that tester. It’s basically a bar graph that shows super slow, medium slow, and fast page percentages. Well, without knowing which pages are what, you can’t really do anything with that info, can you?
But now Google has taken it an extra step and they have started sending emails to site owners with too many slow loading pages.
More info about it is in this SEO Roundtable post, but here’s the part that I want to quote for you.
“Speed is a ranking factor for both mobile and desktop search results. While we don’t disclose the exact factors used for ranking, we recommend using a variety of metrics to understand your site’s performance, including first content paint, time to interactive, and first input delay.”
Okay, here’s what that translates into – the perception of speed.
You can actually get away with having a long full page load time.
But what you have to pay close attention to is how long it takes for a visitor to:
- See anything at all – which includes first input delay, or Time to First Byte (TTFB) and first content paint
- See what they came for
- Scroll or interact with your page
READ: How to Test Your Site Speed Accurately with WebPage Test which is my workhorse tester. And I give you tips on how to make sense of the data for the specific things they are calling out in that email warning.
Also keep in mind that these speed testers only tell half the story.
A site audit shows you all the drags on your page load speed. In fact, you can see examples of that in last week’s Tips Tuesday where I shared clients who had faster sites with just a few fixes, even before we got to the speed tweaks.
And the best thing about an audit is that is it’s a major education that will help you keep your site running super fast all the time.
Theme Tips
Foodie Theme Updates Out of Hand
One of the reasons folks flocked to the foodie focused themes created by Feast Design, and made them the top sellers on the StudioPress community theme space, is that they had so much recipe-related functionality built right in, with few to no extra plugins required.
Well, that’s backfiring on them now.
The whole beauty of child themes is that WordPress and Genesis can update and that never touches the theme. Same with plugin updates. They can keep pace with WordPress and not affect your theme.
That’s also the bane of child themes.
WordPress could come out with new support for something, like they did for schema markup several years ago. And Genesis can follow suit and have built-in support for it. But, your child theme would not support those new functions.
I remember paying about $200 to have my theme upgraded to support schema markup, and I started reaping the SEO benefits immediately.
But now, with these foodie themes having so much built-in functionality, every time there is a major update to WordPress and Genesis, the theme has to be updated too.
That’s costing site owners a bundle, as a theme update can wipe out all of their theme customizations.
So, while it may be attractive to have a theme customized for your niche, you also need to be careful of it destroying the whole reason you want to use a child theme in the first place, especially if you paid to have it customized.
And, this makes a few extra plugins look like a better idea, doesn’t it?
If you’re in this boat, and suffering from the frequent updates to your theme this year, please do let us know how it’s going for you. I hope you’ll attend our live recap tonight and share your thoughts too.
WPEngine Acquires Array Themes
I want to thank fellow webmaster Larry Snow https://larrysnow.me/ of Strategic Marketing Solutions for the heads up on this next news.
You may recall earlier this year that I reported WPEngine bought out StudioPress, which included Genesis and their child themes.
Well, now WPE has bought out Array Themes. They are pretty much a block theme builder that is focused on e-comm sites but they claim to not have as much bloat as other theme builders.
But, I think the bigger acquisition here was the Atomic Blocks the Array Themes folks created. They were specifically built for use with Gutenberg.
You may also recall a month or so ago my sheer relief in reporting the news that Genesis is going full steam ahead with Gutenberg support and may even jump ahead of Gutenberg Phase 2 and become a full-fledged theme builder.
All of this tells me one thing – WPEngine is strategically positioning themselves to be the dominant leader in the community for WordPress/Gutenberg support, as well as hosting and themes.
I will likely never endorse their hosting, as it is mainly geared toward hands-off site owners who are willing to pay more to not have to contend with anything remotely technical on their sites. And I focus squarely on helping DIY site owners on a budget who are willing to learn and do as much as they can on their own for speed, security, and SEO, and then have someone trusted to turn to for the super techie, one-off stuff, like me.
But, one way or another, WPE is going to get our money with the themes, or Gute blocks, or something.
That’s super duper smart of them!!!
And, it shows a long-term commitment by them to be an even bigger voice and player in the WP ecosystem.
As a long-time Genesis user and advocate, that makes me very happy.
So, let’s all just get through this WordPress 5.0 update as calmly as we can.
And our future with Gutenberg looks very bright.
We’ll jump on that ship once it matures a bit more. I’m thinking closer to 2020, but with these major advances by the big players, we may get a lot closer a lot faster. I’ll be keeping my eye on it for you.
Wrap Up
That’s a wrap for this week’s Tips Tuesday.
Show some love!!
Share this post with all your blogger buddies to support all the free info and help you get on BlogAid – and help your buddies too!!
Get the BlogAid Tips Tuesday Podcast on iTunes or Stitcher
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.
Great post! All the changes are worrisome but such is the way of life I know. Everything changes! I’m glad I have you to help me wade through to the other side-thanks MaAnna.
Happy to help guide us, Tipper!!! I don’t know what I would do without someone like me too ;-)
Thanks for the heads-up about the impending Gutenberg release. I’m afraid it’s going to catch most casual bloggers off guard.
I have already installed the Classic Editor on my blogs and I look forward to reading about the alternatives after you finish your testing. This is a very valuable service you’re providing and I for one truly appreciate it.
Thanks again for all you do to assist everyone in the WordPress community!
Agree, Rick, we will hear a lot of screaming about Gute soon.
Oh wow. I am one that has customizes some of the basics you can’t do in the customizer. And my theme keeps updating. I keep asking for release notes but never get them so I am not updatinf even though I download to review code changes. I can’t wait until it slows down and waiting for all these plugins to catch up. I am sure those updates outweigh the child theme!! Passing this on!
I’ve been seeing folks in their groups complaining about the frequency of updates, and that they are paying folks to ensure the theme remains okay through them. I wish I had more details on what those updates were too, and how deeply they affect the theme customization.
@Marilyn
We’ve taken note of this feedback and started a changelog on the theme page as of about a month ago: https://feastdesignco.com/product/foodie-pro/
We’ll be working on expanded customization options in the future – if you want to share what coding changes you’ve made, we may be able to build this in – send me an email.
Skylar
Hey MaAnna!
Would you argue that it’s better to not have the theme updated and stay out of dated, gradually falling further and further behind best practices, or to have those updates AVAILABLE to you, and to upgrade at your own discretion? We address this on our page at https://feastdesignco.com/how-to/update-your-food-blog-theme/ and I’d love to hear your side of the story about this.
The idea that the themes “never used to be updated” and that was a good thing was a MISCONCEPTION. In fact, I’d argue that the default setup of our themes – which were designed for best practices when they were first released (specifically: oversized headers, retina-quality images) – are now outdated and harmful to the user experience visitors and not what search engines expect. We’ve touched on this on this post: https://feastdesignco.com/recipe-page-guidelines-for-food-bloggers/
The difficulty of updating child themes is a problem with WordPress and Genesis as a whole, not specific to Foodie Pro or our themes.
Your comment about too much functionality being built into the themes is noted, and has been feedback we’ve received a few times. And we agree – functionality should be handled by plugins that are regularly updated, and have a recurring billing subscription to pay for these functionality updates. This has been outlined in this post: https://feastdesignco.com/what-am-i-paying-for/
We’re working on separating the design (purpose of a theme) from the functionality (purpose of a plugin) so that future updates are simpler. I don’t know of any other child theme developer that’s doing this.
So good to hear from you Skylar!!! And thanks for all the nice links to more info too!!!!
I’m not arguing that anyone should let a theme that has that much functionality built in allow it to fall behind in updates.
My point was that so much functionality should not be built into the theme in the first place.
All themes get outdated, not only in style, but in function. I updated the backend of my theme code for 4 years with things like schema markup and accessibility. This time, I needed to start with a whole new base because so much had changed with WP and Genesis core and it was actually cheaper and less stressful to simply start clean.
But my base theme only ever updated once in those 4 years. Same with most of my clients. So, I don’t think I have a misconception about that. Agreed that it is not only a foodie related theme issue, but the ones from your company have been the top sellers for many years, and I have a LOT of clients that use them, which is specifically why I called those out.
As far as all Genesis child themes, I have a bone to pick with Genesis that there should be more standardization with the coding and a QA process to ensure that each theme meets current standards, like the did for schema markup. The theme names were changed to Pro over that.
Third party/community themes are all over the place with their coding. They are also all over the place with their documentation, and even the dummy content they provide.
I appreciate that your company has a team and good coding, and standardization, is something you’re super careful with.
I totally agree that specialty plugins should be a paid subscription. Offering them as a bundle with a theme is very attractive. And I REALLY hope more site owners begin to appreciate just how much work goes into keeping plugins updated, especially given how often the very coding language they are built on changes, not to mention updates in the WP core, and especially right now and through the next few years.
I wish you the very best of luck with all of the enormous changes hitting right now for PHP, JS, and Gutenberg!!!!! I’m very much looking forward to what Genesis will natively support, and how you’ll make the most use of that too.