Tips Tuesday – WordPress 6.5, Accessibility, New Speed Tests

ByMaAnna Stephenson
Tips Tuesday – WordPress 6.5, Accessibility, New Speed Tests

Hello Happy Site Owner!

Tips this week include:

  • Fixing up older sites
  • Clearing out a ton of plugins
  • Cleaning out orphaned files, folders and database tables
  • Properly securing everything
  • Create by Mediavine had a major security issue
  • WordPress 6.5 is rolling out – but don’t update yet
  • New borders & Shadow styling for Blocks
  • Check your URLs for query strings
  • ADA and UX workshop in the DIY SEO course this week
  • Why Accessibility is so important – notes from DECODE conference
  • Testing INP
  • New Cloudflare speed tests
  • New AVIF image speed tests
  • AI coding that scares the poo out of me

BlogAid Happenings

This past week was pretty busy with research into the new features of WP 6.5 and several new tutorials – more on those in a moment.

And I also spent time attending the DE{CODE} summit. I’ve got notes for you on that today too.

Site Services Update

The waitlist for new projects is running about 1 week out.

If you have an audit checkup due in April, now is the time to get your request in.

If you want to get your site all spiffy for spring, now is a good time to get started.

And as always, consults are on demand.

Fixing Up Older Sites

This past week I continued to work on 3 bigger projects for new clients. 

One is for a design agency that hosts and manages their own small business clients too.

Another started as a consult a couple of months ago to pivot her site to focus exclusively on one aspect of it. And then we did migration/audit combo to far better hosting. Now we’re doing all of the cleanup on this site that has been around for 15+ years.

Another one of these projects started as a migration/audit combo that has also been live for 15+ years.

Clearing Out a Ton of Plugins

One of the biggest challenges most older sites face is from using a lot of old plugins that made up for things WP or the theme could not natively do at the time they were installed, or were used due to not knowing how to do it without a plugin. We’re cleaning all of that out and educating the client on current best practices.

We’re also clearing out plugins that are resource hogs or are in direct conflict with other plugins.

These are the type of plugins I see recommended so often in blogger groups from non-techie site owners who never actually test plugins to see if they will cause an issue on the site.

Cleaning Out the Orphans

And, on both of these projects we’re removing a ton of orphaned files, folders, and database tables that were left when plugins were deleted.

That’s especially important to do for the database.

Think of it like a messy closet that has tons of stuff in it that you don’t even use.

How long does it take you to find something in there?

A database is the same – and it is where all of your content is stored.

So, anytime content is requested to display, it has to start at Row 1 and go through the entire database in numeric and then alphabetic order to find that content and then deliver it to the viewer.

Talk about a speed drag!!!!!

Most of my clients notice a speed improvement the minute we clean out that messy closet and ensure only what we need is in there.

Properly Securing Everything

During a migration/audit combo we take the opportunity to switch out the backup setup to ensure all required files are included and that the files are stored off site.

Plus, we radically change the security setup, well, I guess a more accurate description of what happens is that full, layered security is added, as many of these sites either had no security or they used one of those behemoth security plugins that actually chew up more hosting resources and don’t fully secure critical errors.

The layers I add stop the overwhelming majority of bad actors before they even hit the hosting, much less the site.

And if anything gets through that gate, they are stopped at the hosting level, prior to hitting the site.

And the trickle of what gets through that gate is kicked back to the curb by the security at the site level.

Those behemoth plugins let everything hit at the site level before they can react. That’s a ton of research loss that should be reserved for your human visitors.

And keep in mind that security and speed go hand in hand these days too.

Security Tips

Create by Mediavine Had Major Security Issue

By the time I finish fully securing your entire site installation, the only real threat left is from code hacks to WP, the theme, and to plugins.

The Create plugin had a security issue so severe last week that it was pulled from the WordPress Plugins Repository for a time.

Wordfence posted details about the issue on 3/19. 

But, the vendor was warned about the issue well before that announcement. 

I had advised my site audit clients and webmasters to deactivate the plugin, which would take it out of play.

I heard that Mediavine hds not been able to reproduce the issue and it took them several days to make a patch available.

But, it should be fixed now. Just ensure you are using the latest version.

WordPress Tips

WordPress 6.5 Rolling Out

The WP 6.5 update will likely start rolling out today.

But, we will definitely not be the first folks to update.

My site audit Hub members and Webmaster Training members will get special instructions when I feel it is safe for us to update.

In the meantime, see What’s New in WordPress 6.5 for what to expect when you do update.

New Borders & Shadow Styling

I’m thrilled to see these new styling options added to the native WP Blocks in 6.5!!!!

Borders and drop-shadows are the main reason I used specialty Gutenberg Block plugins. And ever since the Spectra (formerly UAG) plugin started being such a turd with updates, I have been doing all I can to switch those to native WP blocks instead of using another block plugin.

So, this is a fantastic new feature.

It only applies to 3 blocks at the moment, but I’m sure they will be adding more.

SEE: Borders and Shadows in WP Gute Blocks video tutorial for how to apply these styles.

How-to Tip

Check URLs for Query Strings

All too often I see site owners do a copy/paste on a link that has a long query string at the end.

And then they post these in social media or their newsletters. And they bookmark them as a login link or such.

Stop that!!!!

Pay attention to your links and ensure that you don’t include things you don’t need.

READ: Check URLs for Query Strings to learn about the different types and which ones to keep and which ones to remove.

SEO Tips

ADA and UX Workshop This Week

This past week I attended the DE{CODE} summit that was sponsored by WPEngine. 

And I was delighted that the very first session was on Accessibilities compliance – more on that below.

This is part of the larger UX (User Experience) factors that Google considers for ranking.

And I’m delighted that talk coincides with the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) and UX workshop that we’ll be doing in the DIY SEO course this week.

Why Accessibility is So Important

Following are my notes on the DECODE session with Amber Hinds, CEO of Equalize Digital. She has 15 years of experience in the Accesibilities space, speaking to the potential of AI in making sites more accessible and the hurdles it still has to overcome.

Accessibility Resources

Be sure to see these posts from web designer Michelle Phillips of Codefetti:

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Speed Tips

Testing INP

One of the other sessions I attended in the DE{CODE} summit was for the new INP Core Web Vital metric.

The speakers included reps from NitroPak, WPRemote, and Google – yes, Google.

I believe everybody was put off beyond words at what the Google rep had to say.

I’ll have more of my notes for you on it soon.

But first, I want to do some of the testing that was suggested by the WPRemote rep – who is the only person in the panel who talked specifics.

What everyone in the panel agreed on was just how radically hard this thing is to test.

And it takes looking at multiple sources of info to even know if your site has an issue, and where that is.

So, this week I’m putting together a workflow on it and I’ll be making an initial test process available to volunteers from both my clients and perhaps some folks from the DIY SEO course too (there’s a lot of overlap between them).

New Cloudflare Speed Tests

Adding your site to Cloudflare is one of the best things you can do for speed, but especially for security.

However, it’s not as simple as just putting your site on Cloudflare to make use of their CDN (Content Delivery Network).

There are over 30 settings in Cloudflare that have to be configured too.

I have yet to meet a host who knows anything about those settings. In fact, I don’t know many site techs who know how to set all of them.

That’s one of the big reasons my Webmaster Training members stay in that course year after year. They get the latest settings and features updates on a regular basis.

Well, there are 2 speed settings in Cloudflare that were in beta, and when I tried them, they did not work well.

But that has changed. They are out of beta and are definitely things we want to check into for speeding up our sites. In fact, one of them is made specifically for WordPress sites.

That said, we do need to run new tests to ensure that it overcame the one big issue I ran into with it when it was in beta.

I’ve been testing it on my own sites, but I’ve asked for volunteers from my site audit Hub clients who have sites with a specific setup so we can be sure all is well.

New AVIF Image Speed Tests

I am beyond thrilled with the new AVIF image format being supported in WP 6.5!!!!!

This fixes ALL of the issues we’ve had with:

  • Superior compression
  • Modern image format
  • No fallback images

WebP was better compression, but it was not widely supported by browsers for 4 years. That meant that for every WebP image we uploaded, WP had to create fallback jpegs or pngs.

Keep in mind that for every image you upload, 3-4 thumbnails are auto generated by WP, according to the sizes your theme dictates.

And it had to create just as many fallback images too.

So, any WebP image you upload results in a minimum of 6-8 images that you have to store on your hosting disk space and backups.

That’s insane!!!!

And that’s also why I suggested that my peeps optimize prior to upload using Squoosh and either the Mozjpeg or Oxipng format.

You get superior compression and no need for fallback images.

BUT – and this is big – WP refused to support those formats all the way through. So you still had superior compression, but you lost the Progressive (faster) render on the thumbnails.

Fortunately, the places where those thumbnails are auto loaded by the theme are usually lazy loaded, so it did not affect our site speed.

But now, we will have AVIF images that are supported all the way through.

And the compression/quality ratio is out of this world!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It will be at least a couple of weeks before I give the green light on updating to WP 6.5.

But the minute we do, we’ll start using AVIF images.

AI Tips

Is AI Code for WP Safe to Use?

I have profound concerns about what is happening in the dev coder space with AI.

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MaAnna is a geek who can still speak in plain English. She helps DIY site owners plus webmasters and designers create sites that are secure, perform well, and get noticed by search engines and readers.