Infobesity & Fat Sites

Before we hop into this week’s issue, a little personal matter…

Today, my wife and I are having our 18th anniversary. 😍 18 years doing life together.

She subscribes to this newsletter, too. Funnily enough, she has a little website which I manage in my Concierge program. She gets the husband discount. 😜 And she’s not much into this WordPress stuff and may not ever even read these things. But, just in case…

I love you, honey. And I thought I would just say that in front of all of my subscribers and customers.

OK, let’s jump into it…

Infobesity – Are We Too FAT On Information?

Here in America, the obesity rates are sky-high. Why is that?

Well, this isn’t a nutritional newsletter. 😇 But, I would say it comes down to an overabundance of cheap “fake” food combined with a lack of real knowledge about how our bodies actually work. As a nation, we’re far disconnected from the “basics” when it comes to health. And so we have an obese population that eats fake food from boxes and “healthcare” has devolved into more of an industry of sickness dominated by drugs and surgery.

Honestly, don’t get me started. 😒 I could go on. But, I do have a point…

The same exact thing is happening when it comes to education and learning new skills.

We live in a time where you can learn to do almost anything you want for free. There is SO MUCH information out there. Just sheer overabundance of it.

And now we have AI. People are using AI tools to “write” content. Marketing copy out there talks about using AI to create training courses!

All this AI stuff is just regurgitated info-vomit that doesn’t get deep on anything. Just re-states the obvious. It is generic crap.

It is the informational equivalent of junk food.

The dumb viral TikTok videos, the Instagrams, the snaps, the Youtube Shorts. And yes, even the blog posts in some cases. Everybody is creating tons of “info”. Lot of it short and stupid. It’s junk food. And even through it is mostly bad for people, it is what everybody wants to “eat”.

And it has led to infobesity.

Just gluttonous amounts of information that gets in the way and hides the basics that actually work. And it is sold with flashy marketing and lots of promises.

And in a lot of niches these days, creating some new online course would be like trying to introduce a new breakfast cereal into the cereal aisle at the grocery store. There’s already so many of them! Most of them full of crap, honestly. Sugar, corn syrup and cheap factory grains laced in toxins. But, colorful! And pretty pictures!

Imagine launching a new cereal today. What are you going to do to stand out?

Plus, breakfast cereal makes you fat and sick anyway. Eating that crap literally makes it hard for you to focus and helps contribute to ADHD. Does anybody need a new breakfast cereal? Nah. We’re all better off without it, frankly.

In some ways, launching a new online course can feel similar. And the way this stuff is being created and marketed has a lot of parallels to the junk food epidemic.

Now, keep in mind… it is different in different markets. This is certainly not a big generalization about courses being a waste of time. It definitely depends. Certainly, in the market of “online business” that I was playing in, nobody needs a new online course.

And I didn’t want to sit there and chuck online courses into the headwinds. Wasn’t worth my time. Just added to the infobesity.

So, I pivoted into becoming a service business back in 2021. And today, while the Blog Marketing Academy still retains it’s courses and I still create “training” from time to time, it isn’t my focus. And any training I do create is significantly shorter than I ever used to do. Often, I do it for free, too, right on my Youtube channel.

These days, I solve people’s problems much more directly. And it is way more satisfying than recording a bunch of videos and trying to sell people the equivalent of another breakfast cereal.

What about YOUR market? What about YOUR audience?

Are they already infobese? Are you trying to launch another breakfast cereal at a bunch of distracted, fat people? Are they too busy feasting on sugary crap that they don’t want the vegetables you’re trying to sell them?

Well, don’t discount the idea of doing services instead. Maybe even productized services. Sell outcomes and you create the outcome for them.

Maybe even build a membership site to serve them. But, that membership site consists of systems to help automate your services and service actual clients. Maybe the content inside the membership is more of a form of marketing than it is something you’re worrying about selling.

Something to ponder.

This Week In Concierge

Busy week last week in Concierge…. and judging from my inbox this morning from clients, I have a busy week ahead, too. 😜

But, I’ll tell ya one thing…. partnering with Rocket Hosting for Concierge clients has been such a great move. Little story…

Last week, I brought on a new client. This client’s site is going to need a re-build in some ways because it is using a really old, buggy theme and a few other old-school plugins. We’ll get him all fixed up, but that’s not the point here…

I migrated his site over to Rocket and it appeared to be good to go. But, come to find out, there was data loss. Some stuff just didn’t make it over to the new host. That literally NEVER happens. Migrating sites is usually something I can do in my sleep, but something about this site was giving me problems. Probably due to the old code in there, but not sure.

So, I asked Rocket about it. As usual, instant live chat support with a real person who knows what they’re doing. And, I’ve been working with Rocket long enough now where I start to remember the names and faces of the people I interact with on support. Anyway…

Rocket ended up doing a new migration for me and doing it themselves. They did a very accurate migration, too, using a different method that I did not have easy access to.

Not only that, but the old theme had hard-coded file paths in it (which you should never do) that was spitting errors. So, Rocket went in and edited the PHP files manually to fix the error, verify things were working, and have a functional site.

This is why I use Rocket for Concierge. 😍

Not only is it fast, reliable hosting. But, the support team is stellar. It is like having another team member as part of Concierge to assist with things when needed.

Kudos to Rocket Hosting.

WordPress Quick Bits

Automattic Hit With Class Action Lawsuit. Automattic is being accused of anti-competitive tactics in a new class action lawsuit filed over the whole WP Engine fiasco. And this is not coming from WP Engine… this is coming from another party. Ryan Keller, who runs a cybersecurity firm SecureSight, filed the suit on behalf of WP Engine customers. We’ll see what comes of it, but gotta admit, it is hard not to sit there and nod in agreement at every one of the points in this lawsuit.

Automattic Reduces Core Contribution, Again. It wasn’t long ago that Automattic announced they were drastically reducing the amount of time spent working on WordPress Core from about 4,000 hours down to just 45. Why 45? Because that’s what WP Engine was doing. And more recently, WP Engine said they were reducing from 45 down to 20. So, what does Automattic do? Announce a 53% reduction in THEIR contributions to match. Not coincidently, there was a meeting of Core Contributors at WordCamp Asia where clearly the lack of core development was on their mind.

WooCommerce 9.7 Launches. WooCommerce 9.7 was launched last week. This new version has improvements to the display of shipping methods on checkout, a significant performance boost when it comes to WooCommerce blocks, and more. Here’s the full rundown.

PersonalizeWP 2.8. PersonalizeWP has been updated to 2.8. It includes something called content variations. This is a new block in the block editor where you can create different variations of the same thing and choose certain conditions on when they are displayed. And if you’re not aware, PersonalizeWP is a plugin that enabled you to change what displays on your site based on a number of conditions, thereby allowing site personalization. It looks like a really nice solution, but it isn’t one I use myself. That’s because I usually use Block Visibility. But, PersonalizeWP does do some things that Block Visibility does not, so it is a cool solution.

FluentBoards Update. Just this morning, FluentBoards was updated to 1.45. This version has CSV export, custom color labels, FluentCRM integration, and more. Check out the full details here.

FluentCRM Update! FluentCRM was updated to 2.9.45 early last week as well. Among the new additions are new automation triggers for subscription cancellation and payment received if you’re using Fluent Forms for your checkout system. Also, a new Fluent Forms subscriptions widget. Bulk update options for custom fields. There’s actually quite a bit to this one, which you can check out here.

Tailwind And WordPress. This one is for the uber-nerds, but there’s a new plugin called WindPress that integrates Tailwind CSS right into WordPress, allowing you to use it within the block builder, plugins, as well as page builders.
Page Builders!. The Oxygen Page Builder has been re-built and released as version 6. And a brand new page builder was just released as beta called Builderius. So many page builders out there these days, isn’t there? I just stick with Kadence myself. Get really good with one tool and use it.

PerfMatters Updates to 2.4. More geeky stuff there, but now dashicons and Elementor animations CSS are loaded via async for better performance. There’s some other stuff, which you can check out here. Mostly about playing nice with other plugins.

Is Your Site Fat?

Man, a lot of talk about being fat today. 🤪 Sorry bout that. But, we don’t just get fat with too much information. Our websites can get fat, too.

In this case, I’m talking about disk space.

If you’ve had your WordPress site for years, it can get a little bloated and end up taking up a fair amount of space on the hard drives of your web host. And most web hosts have disk capacity limits. I’ve seen it happen where people end up blimping their sites up so much that they end up getting warnings from their web host that they’re reached the limit and will need to pay more to fix it.

So, let’s talk a moment about some of the common ways WordPress sites blimp up and what we can do about it.

#1 – Local Site Backups

If you’re using a WordPress plugin (like UpdraftPlus) to back up your site, it can easily take up a ton of disk space. Especially if your settings aren’t correct and you just store too many backups.

First off, it isn’t a real backup if it is stored on your web host. That defeats the point completely. So, you need to always set UpdraftPlus to store backups on a remote storage location. And be sure you check that little box to REMOVE the local backup copy once it has been sent to remote storage. Don’t store backups on your web host.

Then, go into your site’s file system and delete any old backups just sitting there. You will find them in your /wp-content/ folder in WordPress if they’re there. Likely in a sub-folder titled by the name of the plugin you’re using.

The other day, I deleted 4.7GB of super old backups off one client’s sites. Don’t dismiss how much room this stuff can take up.

#2 – Image Backups

If you’re using an image optimization plugin (and you should be), be aware that a lot of them will store full backups of unoptimized images by default. That literally doubles the amount of disk space used up by your Media Library.

I personally use ShortPixel and also use it for all of my clients who don’t have one of their own already. And ShortPIxel has a checkbox to store backups. I always disable that function. In reality, I’ve literally never had to restore an optimized image on any site I’ve ever managed.

So, I recommend you back up your original images locally on your own hard drive, not your web host. Disable those backups and then go into your hosting and delete any backups that have stacked up in there.

#3 – Old Plugin Folders

Your /wp-content/ folder and /wp-content/uploads/ folder can stack up with folders (and the contents) of plugins you’re not even using anymore. Most plugins just leave all that litter in there long after they’re gone.

So, pop on in there and scan these folders. Delete the ones with names of plugins you no longer use. It could be old page builders, old caching plugins, or any number of things that just left all that stuff in there.

#4 – Old Database Clutter

Your site’s database can get bloated, too. The disk space problem in there usually isn’t as pronounced as that of files on your file system, but it still exists. And running your typical database optimization plugins won’t fix it because they have no judgement.

When you look at the tables in your database, you’ll often see old, custom tables of plugins you no longer use. Most of the time, you can just delete those tables without any issue.

Also, you’ll often see plugins keep activity logs. If you don’t have a regular purge of those logs, they can really add up over time. I would recommend an auto-purge of your logs so it doesn’t keep anything past 30 days. And for any old logs of things you no longer even use, just get rid of them.

It can take some experience to know what is safe to delete and what isn’t. I do this kind of thing all the time, so feel free to get in touch about me doing a site cleanup for you.

But, always run a backup of the site first. If you break something, you just restore and it is like nothing ever happened.