Tips Tuesday – WordPress 5.3, Social Pug and Mediavine, Recipe and Travel Site SEO

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• Why I’m thrilled to meet my goal of monetizing my woodworking site
• The new Gutenberg Ninja tutorials that just came out and what’s coming next
• Why I’ve got migrations galore happening, and the hosts folks are leaving
• cPanel makes changes to how SSL certificates renew and removes DCV rewrite conditions
• Big changes to the Cloudflare interface
• Why you need to get an audit checkup
• The huge issues one client is having with Thrive and why you need to stop using it too
• WordPress 5.3 rolls out today and why we won’t be updating to it
• Why it’s so important to take the annual WordPress survey and get your voice heard about its development
• Big news for Broken Link Checker and who picked up development and why I still say to drop it
• The surprising news of Social Pug being sold to Mediavine and what this means for the plugin
• What’s up with recipe and travel sites getting hit in the latest Google update

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No Live Show Tonight

I published a poll on the BlogAid Facebook page and 64% of you chose the new time of 7pm ET / 4pm PT instead of the other choice of 2pm ET / 11am PT and I’m glad because those afternoon shows are very disruptive to my schedule, and obviously yours too.

And speaking of disruption, Facebook has changed their API once again and I can’t get vMix to stream under any conditions. They are working on a fix, but for the meantime, I think we’ll just take a little break from the live show for a bit. I’ll be back as soon as they get this fixed, or I might find a different way to do it, whichever comes first.

And when I do return, it will be at the new, earlier time.

BlogAid Happenings

Mid November means crunch time around here. I bet it means that for you too.

Monetizing Heartwood Art

It’s been a month-long process, but I’ve completed the first steps in monetizing my Heartwood Art site with Amazon links for the tools and supplies I use.

I’m so grateful for how easy Gutenberg made this for me now and down the road, as I plan to add links for Home Depot and such, as soon as I get approved on that affiliate network.

I’m also beyond grateful that I have already met my required purchases years ago, with the Amazon links I had on the site from back when I was focused on carvings. I can’t even imagine having to qualify again, or having to change all of those links and setup if I didn’t. Nor can I make any sense of why Amazon has such a short time-frame for new bloggers to qualify. It’s crazy.

I’ll have a post with details for you in my Hobby to Money Making Site series later this week with all of the details, and why I’m doing it the way that I am. Plus, you’ll get to hear about what I’m doing to meet my year-end goals on that site.

New Gutenberg Ninja Tutorials Underway

This past week I’ve been making new tutorials on all of the Gutenberg tactics I’ve used to do the monetization on my woodworking site.

Things like:

• A look over my shoulder as I convert posts from one Classic Block to individual Gute blocks
• Creating jump links
• Where to find different page layouts on Genesis
• The Ultimate Add-on Blocks for Gutenberg plugin Sections block and Advanced Columns block

Only the first one has been released to the course. I’ll be releasing the next two this week.

And then for the UAG blocks, I’ll likely be releasing them as a whole new section when I finish them. That includes making lots of examples for you too. You’ll flip when you see all the styling options you get with the UAG plugin. And you’ll see some really advanced block nesting techniques too. Plus, you’ll get tips on the inexpensive things I had tweaked on my theme to take full advantage of the powerful ways you can do stuff in Gute that would otherwise require some advanced coding skills to achieve.

Migrations Galore

This week I’m piled high with migration requests as more and more site owners wake up to just how critically important it is to be on a fast host with superior support and reasonable pricing.

They are leaving hosts like:

• SiteGround
• A2 Hosting
• WPOPT
• WPX
• Bluehost

They couldn’t believe the speed boost they got by just moving. 

And that was before we finished the speed tweaks on their site.

No More DCV Rewrite Conditions

Well, it looks like cPanel finally figured out a way to help SSL certificates renew without getting tripped up on redirects in the .htaccess file, including your HTTPS forced redirects.

I’ll have an updated tutorial for my Webmaster Training course members soon.

Big Changes to the Cloudflare Interface and a Few Settings

Cloudflare has been tweaking their interface all year. I believe it has finally settled down and I’ll have updated tutorials for my Webmasters soon.

Cloudflare has also added two new features for better security too. This, on top of the other 20 setting changes and enhancements they have made in the last year.

Get an Audit Checkup

Folks, security and performance things change ALL the time!!!! 

If you are a site audit client and haven’t had a check up in more than a year, you’re behind the times.

Contact me now and I’ll get you on the wait list, which is running into December at this point.

I just fix or update things as I go, so it’s faster and cheaper than the first audit too, as all the big stuff is already done. 

Leave Thrive

If you use Thrive, either their themes or plugins, seriously consider leaving that stuff alone.

They have been behind the times with their code for the last 3 years. It started back when everyone had to go HTTPS and their code just failed, miserably.

And now they are not doing well with the latest security measures either.

One of my site audit clients has multiple sites that we cleaned up and secured. The only one having issues is loaded to the brim with just about everything Thrive makes.

There have been multiple issues and poor troubleshooting on their part. We are going into week 2 of bouncing back and forth with support and them asking for all manner of hoops to be jumped through by us and none of it making a lick of difference. Plus, I’ve had to school them on how to check the PHP settings they require, and even how to do proper FTP connection so things like Cloudflare are bypassed. It’s nutty.

This site owner can’t wait to get into my Gutenberg Ninja course and replicate everything she is doing with Thrive and drop that mess. Not to mention the extreme bloat to her site with 15 plugins and how it’s radically chewing up her database. There are over 30 tables in the database that are all Thrive. One of them has 1.4 Million rows. It’s killing her backups too.

I was really tickled about Thrive when it first came out. But it quickly turned into a bloated mess. And now the code is just so far behind the times too that it is a monster that has no hope of giving you a fast or fully secure site.

Just leave as soon as you can if you use any part of it.

If you design with Thrive, by all means, find another way. Even Divi is better than this, and I’m no fan of its bloat.

I have yet to see anything from Divi, Elementor, or Beaver Builder that I can’t replicate with just Gutenberg. And I can’t wait to prove that to you.

WordPress Tips

WordPress 5.3 Rolls Out Today – See What’s New

If they hold true to form, it will be later tonight.

Do not update to it yet!!!

They have had more contributors on more core code with 5.3 than any other version in WP history.

That means there are LOTS of changes to LOTS of WP areas.

And we don’t want to be the guinea pigs on our money sites until the masses get hit with it and even more themes and plugins get tested on it than even the beta testers saw.

I’ll let you know when I think it’s safe to update. Keep reading Tips Tuesday and follow me on the BlogAid Facebook page. 

If you use a specialty theme, like some of the foodie type themes, you’ll want to follow them for when it’s safe to update.

And seriously consider getting away from themes where you have to worry every time there is a major WP update. Or, be delayed by weeks in updating it. That’s crazy.

WordPress Annual Survey

I’m going to ask you a favor because this is radically important.

WordPress has released its annual survey.

I’m asking you to take it.

They rarely hear from end users and we can’t let only designers and developers give them feedback.

WordPress needs to hear from you!!!!

This year the survey has more questions than ever geared toward end users.

It took me 6 minutes to do the survey.

Please go there now and do the check boxes. It’s fast and easy and means so much to the future of what WordPress will become.

Plugin Tips

Broken Link Checker Sold to WPMU Dev

I am not encouraged by WPMU Dev taking over this plugin. They don’t have a very good reputation with keeping their plugins up to par with WP core standards.

The free version still has 10k limit of links crawled. That’s not enough for medium to big sites.

Plus, I want to see the TOS of now running it through their service, which is how they are lightening the load of it.

READ: Broken Link Checker Alternatives and get off this thing.

Social Pug Acquired by Mediavine as Part of Grow Suite

To say I was shocked by this move is an understatement.

I’ve worked with the dev Mahai, for over a year now to help him speed up the code and advise on new features. And I just spoke with him a few days ago about a feature request and instructions for exporting from Tasty Pins so I could update my tutorial. (He has instructions for doing it, just not published yet.) And he didn’t mention anything about this sell out.

I’ve also worked with the lead dev at Mediavine, mainly on Create for issues it had with the REST API and tripping security wires at Cloudflare. 

From doing that, one thing I know firsthand is that MV strives for doing super clean code that keeps pace with all WP standards. So, that’s good and I look forward to that part of the plugin changes and getting the calls off admin-ajax and onto the REST API. 

By the same token, I don’t know whether to be excited or cautious about this acquisition. 

Mediavine is going to change the plugin in ways that best suit their client’s needs first. That may bring features that may confuse none MV folks, or put limits on features that the general public would like to have.  

Plus, Mahai was VERY responsive to feature requests. I was working with him as he was trying to meet all of the new ones due to the last melt down with Social Warfare. He was feverishly adding things that SW had that SP didn’t. I don’t think he slept for 2 months, at least. 

So, we’ll see how this change goes. 

I’ll be keeping close watch on this. And I have the super deep speed and function test data from earlier in the year to compare it to as well.  

SEO Tips

Recipe and Travel Sites Got Hit in Latest Google Update

If you run such a site, don’t make any changes yet. Let the dust settle on this latest change, as Google will be tweaking their algorithm on it for a while yet.

I’ll be keeping close watch on the reports and will be sharing what I learn with my DIY SEO course members, including in our Facebook group.

I’d be interested in hearing from you about whether this latest change impacted your site or not.

I’ve heard some folks actually got a boost from it.

Wrap Up

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

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