Tips Tuesday – WordPress AI Plugins, GA4, Formidable Forms Tutorial

ByMaAnna Stephenson

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips Tuesday – WordPress AI Plugins, GA4, Formidable Forms Tutorial

Tips this week include:

  • Formidable Forms tutorial updated
  • It’s time to get your Google Analytics 4 squared away to beat the deadline
  • Are you making the most of your About page?
  • How to scale your content marketing to grow traffic
  • Social networks augmented by AI
  • WP 6.2 set to release next week and where to get update instructions
  • New OpenAI Block for WordPress
  • More AI plugins for WordPress
  • My new AI Tools and News site coming very soon
  • Brief on all the monumental AI news announced last week

BlogAid Happenings

Formidable Forms Tutorial Updated

I really like the Formidable Forms plugin for my contact form.

Even the free version is powerful enough for me to use on my intake forms for site audit requests and such, and they have several radio button sections and fill in the blank sections and such.

But the main reason I like Formidable Forms is that it has settings to ensure I’m not collecting and form data in my database, and I’m not collecting the IP address of the form’s sender – and both of those things are part of GDPR compliance.

Plus, a messy, bloated database slows down your site’s performance.

There really aren’t many free contact form plugins with all of that, and are up to modern coding standards. 

I really loved Contact Form 7 for many years, but the code is old and it has been experiencing issues with WP, CAPTCHA, and even security changes.

So, Formidable is the one I recommend the most now.

But just like everything with site tech, things change.

And the video tutorial I made 3 years ago for Formidable was so out of date that my peeps could no longer follow it.

So, I made a new one.

If it’s been a while since you set up Formidable, you may want to see the new tutorial and check that all of your settings are in compliance, as a few of them have moved and/or changed.

BlogAid Course Happenings

Get Your GA4 Squared Away

Are you using GA4 yet?

July 1st is when your Universal Analytics stop collecting data.

That may seem like a long time away, but it will be here before you know it.

Just don’t let it be here before you’re ready.

Jump into the Ultimate GA4 Course for Bloggers or even the GA4 Lite course now.

You’ll see how to check if Google has already auto “migrated” you, or if you used the Setup Assistant, and thought either one of those was all there was to it.

Neither of them are set up fully – like only doing 2 of the 12 steps.

You can get your GA4 set up in one sitting with the fast and easy to understand tutorials in the course.

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

Blogging Tips

Are You Making the Most of Your About Page?

The About page on your site is not about you.

It’s about how you can help your reader.

The nice folks at Blogging Wizard have 7 Best About Me Page Examples that are sure to give you some ideas.

And have a look at BlogAid’s About page too, for a super clear example of how this page is all about the reader and how I can help them.

How to Scale Your Content Marketing to Grow Traffic

I know most of us are solopreneurs. But I think this post on Search Engine Land is still worth having a look it.

They cover the steps needed to scale your content creation with the goal of growing your traffic.

And while they talk about how to train your content creation team, the points are still valid for establishing a content marketing plan and a workflow for yourself.

Social Media Tips

Social Networks Augmented by AI

Here we go.

LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft.

And Microsoft is integrating AI into all of its products, and that will include LinkedIn.

They announced last week that they will use AI to write posts for folks to chat about – literally AI conversation starters.

And LinkedIn is not the only one.

Snap has created a similar chatbot. And Meta is working on AI personas.

Discord has a chatbot called Clyde.

Of course, the whole point is to keep users engaged on the platform.

So, we’ll see if this elevates conversations, or devolves them into drama dumpster fires.

My concern is that folks will be spending more time engaging with bots on these apps than they do with our content because the bots can keep the conversations going in real-time.

WordPress Tips

WP 6.2 Set To Release Next Week

We expect WP 6.2 to roll out on March 28, which is next Tuesday.

We will not be the first folks to update because they are changing the names of some requests in the core. There is a legacy bridge, but we won’t know if that works for all of our themes and plugins until more folks start using it.

I will start my testing on the final Release Candidate this week, and I’ll have a video tour of what’s new in 6.2 next week.

Get Special Update Instructions

BlogAid News subscribers will get my special update instructions when I feel it is safe for us to update.

OpenAI Block for WordPress

I’ve been closely following the development of an OpenAI block plugin for WordPress.

It will be part of the editor interface and will auto insert an image block after uploading the selected image.

It’s not ready for primetime yet, and will not be in the WP 6.2 release.

I’ll be testing it as they finalize it to see how it works.

More AI Plugins for WordPress

Did you know that some of the plugins folks already use now have AI integration?

The folks over at WPBeginner have a list of 10 of them, including:

  • Akismet
  • WordLift
  • Grammarly
  • ChatBot
  • ImageSEO
  • SEOPress and All In One SEO

I didn’t find any that are on my recommended plugin list, though, but I’m keeping my eye on them, as the list keeps growing.

AI Tips

New AI Site Coming Soon

This week me and my help mates are getting a new site setup that will focus on all things AI, including GPT4, images, video, productivity hacks, and so much more.

There was huge, breaking AI news this past week, so I’ll be covering the parts of it you need the most here in Tips Tuesday again this week.

Once we get the new site setup, I’ll be doing all of the full reporting on the new site, including demos and tutorial.

But, I will still be including links to the AI stories bloggers need the most here in Tips Tuesday.

I’ll keep you posted on when I launch it.

AI News Brief

Following are the huge announcements for AI this past week – and they really are mindblowing!!!

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg on all of the monumental AI news from the past few days.

Wrap Up

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

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.

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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.