My Credit System + Me Being Dumb 🤣

Hope you had a great weekend. On this end, it was pretty much a weekend of work on the house. Replaced over a hundred feet of wood fence and pressure washed my outside building.

Don’t know about you, but I appreciate doing physical work on things to balance out being a keyboard jockey all day. 🤣

OK, so let’s hop into it here…

First up, we’re going to talk about my credit system and how it has evolved and how it works. There’s always been interest from many folks about that one.

And then, all this physical work I’ve been doing led to myself being reminded of my own advice. And I did something stupid. 🫣

So, let’s do this…

The Evolution Of My Credit System

One thing I have gotten a fair amount of interest in is how my Anytime Credit system works. In other words, how it is actually built.

I actually did a full write-up and a video of how it works. You can check that out here:

How I Built A Service Credit System For My Membership Site

But, here’s the thing…

Things have actually changed quite a bit since that update. And I need to update it again. I’m going to have to create an entirely new article and video on it.

I’m also probably going to button up a few things here and then make it portable so that I can implement it for clients if they wish. I had thought about this before, but I just had one of my Concierge clients ask for the implementation of the credit system on his site. I am currently in the process of doing it for him. They’re going to be called “Gig Credits” for him (he’s in the music business), but the concept is the same.

Here’s a few highlights of what has changed over the last few years with my credit system:

• The core functionality is now being powered by a custom-developed plugin.
• It now uses a custom database table rather than a Repeater Field from Advanced Custom Fields. This provides much more flexibility.
• I now have one, single screen in my Admin area where I can view ALL credit debits across all customers at once, rather than each having it’s own little repeater field.
• I have a widget on the dashboard which shows me a graph of debits, so I can track how much work is being done week to week.
• Recently implemented, when people buy more credits, an entry will be made to their account showing the increase in credits. Before, it was just debits, but now the log will show both. More like a ledger in accounting software.
• I now have a custom tab in people’s FluentCRM profiles where I can view their credit history.
• This one is for later, but I even created a custom REST API endpoint that will allow the coming Concierge plugin to query credit logs. This will allow my clients to view their credit history right inside the admin panels of their own site.

What’s still the same as the previous system? I still use the custom field for the balance, created with ACF. WP Fusion is still used to sync that with user profiles. I still use the basic automations inside of FluentCRM, triggered with tags when people buy credit packages.

Overall, it works pretty nicely. There are a few interface things I might improve to make it easier and faster to get around. If I’m going to begin offering this as a package to clients, I will probably do that. Up to now, this system was only built for me so I didn’t have anybody else to worry about. 😇

Also, right now, deducting credits is done manually. This works for me since I like to have full control of things. However, for some sites, I can see how it might be useful for certain actions to automatically perform a debit. So, perhaps I will create the code for it so that it could adapt to different sites and different purposes.

Anyway, I need to update that post about my credit system. Much has changed. At the same time, it has expanded past the point where I can just show one how to build it. There’s a lot more components now…. as well as a custom plugin. Plus, every site is a little different.

If this credit system is something you’d like to potentially have built on your own site, get in touch with me. I haven’t fulled decided yet, but I’ll probably charge at least 5 Anytime Credits for the work to implement this on sites. And, of course, discounts apply if you’re in Concierge. 😎

I use credits for client services. But, a similar credit system could be used for all kinds of different applications, depending on your client base and the nature of your membership site.

This Week In Concierge

Last week, something came up on a client site that I think all site owners should be aware of – whether in Concierge or not.

And that issue is AI scraper bots.

As site owners, we’re all used to search engine spiders that crawl our sites regularly and index for search engines. But, with the rise of AI, we now have AI bots as well. They’re scraping websites in order to train the AI. And in some cases, these AI bots can use up massive resources of your web hosting.

In this case, I was noticing the bandwidth usage on my Rocket account going up considerably. Way faster than normal. And we tracked it down to one of my client sites. Ironically, this particular client hasn’t even publicly launched the site yet! But, it is online and the traffic isn’t all that high. So, why was it sucking up all this bandwidth?

It was the “AppleBot”. Yes, from Apple. Clearly, their bot was scraping this website and, frankly, being quite disrespectful about resource usage. And, can you name the search engine that Apple has? Of course not… because they don’t have one. But, they do have AI. So, pretty clearly, Apple was barraging this site all for the purposes of training their AI and it was never going to lead to any traffic to this client’s site because that’s just not what Apple does. They’re probably trying to train Siri.

So, I blocked the AppleBot from the site. And bandwidth usage dropped back down into the normal range. It is just a simple entry in the robots.txt file to block a bot.

So, all site owners need to be aware of this.

If you’re seeing a slow website, or bandwidth usage that seems really out of whack for the traffic you’re getting, do a check on the bots coming across your site. You may be getting scraped to train AI.

Do you WANT to have your site used as a source for AI? Maybe. But, AI summaries are not all that likely to lead to click-throughs to your website. We all know this. So, you need to judge the resource usage of these AI bots up against your ROI on those hosting resources. Don’t let these AI bots lead to overage charges with your web host without a fight.

WordPress Quick Bits

WordPress 6.8 To Be Final Major Release For 2025. Mary Hubbard has confirmed that WordPress 6.8 will be the final major release of the year. Gutenberg releases will continue on the current every two week schedule and minor releases will take place as needed throughout the year. Details here. This is due to the cutback on contributor hours due to the lawsuit between WP Engine and Automattic.

SureTriggers Has Rebranded. SureTriggers is now to be known as OttoKit. SureTriggers is, of course, the automation tool that is part of the “Sure” family of products. Frankly, I think the name change makes perfect sense. Much better.

Ads Injected Into The WP Editor?. Morgan Nvidt pointed out in an X post that he was seeing ads injected into the WordPress block editor. The culprit? Spectra. Frankly, I’ve been noticing increasing aggressive tactics by that team that reminds me more of how Awesome Motive has done things. Spectra/Astra needs to pipe down on the promos.

FluentBooking Update. FluentBooking 1.7 was released. This version has an offline payment option, enhanced multilingual support, better calendar management, and a few other things. Check out the full changelog here.

Uncanny Automator 6.4. Automator 6.4 was released, with this version supporting Facebook Lead Ads as well as the BlueSky social network. Some new automation abilities on existing integrations as well, including Thrive Apprentice and Easy Digital Downloads. Check out the whole enchilada here.

FluentCommunity 1.3. FluentCommunity keeps on truckin’ with the updates. Version 1.3 introduced full block editor support for course lessons. Also, more options in the messaging feature, fixing issues with LightSpeed caching, and more. Here’s the full announcement.

Newsletter Glue Has Sold. It looks as if Newsletter Glue, the newsletter plugin for WordPress, has been sold by it’s creator and taken over by Tyler Channell of PaywallProject. Blog post announcement here.

2024 WordPress Security Report. WordFence has published their annual security report for WordPress. They report a 68% increase in vulnerability disclosures, but most remain very low risk. Plugin vulnerabilities remain, by far, the top source of security issues…. with 96% of all vulnerabilities found in plugins.

21.7 Active Plugins. An interesting little tidbit, but the co-founder of Kinsta mentioned on X that, on average, a WordPress site running on their platform has 21.7 active plugins. Some folks thought that was a lot. Frankly, most sites I manage in Concierge have more than that. 😇

ACF 6.4 Release. Advanced Custom Fields 6.4 was released, with support for WooCommerce HPOS the main selling point. If you don’t know what that is, here’s a quick video I recorded about HPOS when it first came out.

Peeling Away From Events Calendar. I’ve been noticing more complaints about The Events Calendar plugin lately. And frankly, I think it is bloated and error prone. It was mentioned on X as well and people chimed in with recommendations for alternatives. Pie Calendar is one I keep hearing good things about. I might test it out and even consider adding it to the Concierge Toolkit… because I don’t currently have an events calendar tool in the toolkit.

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I Was Reminded Of My Own Advice…

Let’s switch gears here. This one isn’t talking tech or WordPress. Instead… it is a reminder of the value of time.

See, I’m in the middle of a bunch of projects on my property here at the house. And in the process of doing all this, I had a pile of junk sitting in the backyard that needed to be removed and taken to the local dump.

But, I got stupid. 🤪 And I ended up valuing my time so low that I just had to laugh about it when I was done.

I had two options to get this junk removed:

• Have a junk removal service come out and haul it off. I actually got a couple quotes from people on Facebook ranging from $150-$200.
• Rent a Uhaul van and do it myself. I don’t own a pickup truck, so a Uhaul was my best bet.

Guess which I chose. 🤪 I chose the DIY method with the Uhaul. I figured it was cheaper and I could use the van to handle one additional errand while I had it.

That Uhaul ended up costing me about $66. Plus, I had to drop about $12 worth of gas in it. So, yes, it was cheaper. But, the entire process of picking up the van, bringing it home, loading up the junk, driving to the dump, unloading it again, then coming back…. took probably about 2.5-3 hours of total time.

As I was sitting there throwing junk in the back of a freakin’ Uhaul, I just have to start laughing at myself.

…. because when all was said and done, I just valued my time at what ended up being roughly $24/hour. And mind you, those 2-3 hours I was doing this was also hard work. It was some exercise.

Is my time worth more than $24/hour? You bet it is. Hell, even when I’m doing client work, my time tends to be about $100/hour and up.

So, I was GIVING my time away here…. all to save a few bucks in the short term.

The lesson here is obvious: VALUE YOUR TIME.

The funny thing is… how many times have I talked about this?! And yet, I didn’t follow my own advice. At least I got a good laugh at myself over it. 🤪

I could have had a dude come out for $150 and make it all disappear and be done with it. But, instead, I did it the hard way.

Not everything is worth doing yourself… even when it might save you some money in the short term. Because in the long term, it is actually costing you.

As I was sitting there, waiting in the SLOW line in the Uhaul office to get this stupid van, I realized what I was doing. And as I giggled at myself, I realized… “Well, at least I have an article idea for my next newsletter!” 😝