Removed This Plugin. Site Got Faster.

This week, the big WordCamp US event will be taking place in Portland, OR. I was originally on the docket to attend the event. But, decided a couple weeks ago not to bother.

As the week goes on, we’ll see if I wish I was there. 😜

In the end, the sessions there seemed rather pointless when I saw the schedule. And, flying all the way across the country just to attend “the hallway track” and socialize with people doesn’t seem like a great use of my time. It is a LONG flight from Florida to Oregon.

Doesn’t help that I’m starting to see reports on X of Portland’s issues with drug use on the streets and crap all over the streets. I hope the attendees of WordCamp watch their back if they’re walking around town at night. Sad to see what has happened to Portland.

They should have done the event here in Florida. 😇

OK, let’s kick off this week’s issue. Got a lot to share…

Featured This Week

I published two new videos last week as additions to the ongoing video series on building a membership site.

How WP Fusion Works For Your Membership Site

Creating A Tag Structure To Run Your Membership Site

My Site Got A Lot Faster After Removing This Plugin…

Sometimes, when we build our sites, we end up using certain tools and plugins that, while professionally coded, just seem to be… beefy.

Sometimes you may end up even running several of them at the same time.

And what happens over time is that it feels like your site slows down.

When you’re clicking around WordPress admin in the backend, it just feels like it is taking too long for the screen to refresh when you click on menu items.

Is it the hosting? The plugins? Your internet connection?

Well, honestly, it could be any of them. Every situation is different. But, I will say that in working with so many sites as I do, I’ve seen certain commonly used plugins seem to have a bigger overall “footprint” than others.

BuddyBoss is one of them. Every time I remove the BuddyBoss platform and BuddyBoss theme from a site, the site speeds up noticeably. As nice as that plugin is at what it does, it is a beast.

Elementor is another one. It is a good page builder. Allows you to do most anything. But, it spreads it’s tentacles everywhere and has a lot of menu options in the WP-Admin. Not to mention that it definitely does have an impact on the site performance metrics for the general public, too.

But, most recently, I’ve found that the next one I’ll add to this list is…

Learndash.

When I transitioned the Blog Marketing Academy site over to the new video library and moved the courses into that library, I phased out Learndash. As I moved a course over, I would trash it on Learndash. This was obviously also deleting the content and all of the meta fields from the database. And then, finally, I deactivated Learndash altogether.

And, the admin panel is just…. faster.

No, I haven’t run metrics on it. And I imagine it hasn’t impacted the front-end of the site much. But, the admin panel – where I am working – is faster after removing Learndash.

Now, is this a bash on Learndash? No. I think it is a very mature and powerful course management system. If I need to use a course system, Learndash is my preference. However…

It is big and beefy. Kinda corporate. And frankly, it needs a diet. 😜

Almost every time I see a site using Learndash, I find that the site owner isn’t using a lot of the functionality of Learndash. They just didn’t really need it. Learndash does student assignments, grading, certificates, groups, student tracking, etc. It has built-in ability to sell courses. But, in most sites, people either don’t need that stuff… or use something else to do it.

Plus, I’ve seen odd issues with Learndash. So, while I respect the plugin, I’ve just found that I think it has become bloated. And I think it does have an impact on site performance – especially in the backend.

I’ve talked before about building an online course setup without using an LMS plugin. And that would be my recommendation for most people now.

For awhile after writing that post and video about not using an LMS, I was still using one. And that was Learndash. Mainly because it was a big project to remove it.

But, I’ve finally finished that project. And removed Learndash. And yeah…

My admin panel did become noticeably snappier with Learndash not there.

Make of that what you will. 😇

This Week In Concierge

Here’s a little of what’s been in progress last week for clients….

• Doing some major cleanup of a client’s membership site by re-building it with Kadence instead of BuddyBoss/Elementor. Looking a TON better, too!
• Quickly fixed a client’s site after she accidentally changed the DNS and took her site offline. It’s OK, it happens to the best of us! 🙏
• Made numerous interface changes to a client’s membership site that she requested.
• Ran some test orders and debugged a client’s ordering process. Ended up requiring some changes at the hosting level, but I took care of it.
• Helping a client set up a private podcast for subscribers

One of the things I am constantly doing is just answering questions for my clients. After all, I’m their “go to” person for such things. And when you’re running a membership site, things come up. Things like…

• How to merge a member profile where the customer mistyped their email address
• Why email notifications aren’t being received from forms
• Why RankMath is showing a bunch of 404’s in the log
• How to upgrade a member’s subscription to a higher plan

Things come up when running such sites. And a lot of the time, what I’m doing is not some project where we’re building something for them. But instead… just answering questions, doing little tiny fixes, putting out little fires. Recording a quick Loom video to show the client how to do something.

That’s Concierge.

WordPress Quick Bits

TutorLMS 3.0 Beta is Out. TutorLMS has gone live with the beta release for version 3.0. Of course, being a beta, it could have bugs. But, TutorLMS is doing what Learndash has done…. ADD MORE. 🤣 3.0 has a new interface, AI integrations, subscription sales, etc. You can learn more about it here. TutorLMS is nice. Better UI than Learndash. I do find their AI integration marketing material worthy of a chuckle, tho. Create an entire course with AI? Gimme a freakin’ break.

AffiliateWP Gets Multi-Currency Addon. AffiliateWP now has a new add-on which would enable you to pay commissions in multiple currencies… as well as to properly handle commissions when you take in sales in other currencies. Learn more here.

LiteSpeed Cache Critical Vulnerability. If you happen to use LiteSpeed Cache, make sure you update the plugin. The 6.5 release was found to have a critical security hole in it that could allow hackers to gain access to your site and gain admin permissions. Not good. More about the security hole on Patchstack.

Approve New User Plugin. A new plugin was released called Approve New User. This plugin makes it so that new user registrations need to be approved before they will receive access details. The plugin is free and could be handy for some kinds of membership sites.

Really Simple SSL Rebrands. The Really Simple SSL plugin is a very popular plugin meant to ensure HTTPS throughout your site. Over the years, tho, they’ve added more security features and it has turned into more of an overall security plugin. Now, they have rebranded to Really Simple Security.

WordPress 6.6.2 Released. It came out last week and you may have already noticed since most sites auto-upgrade. This one includes 15 core fixes and 11 in the Block Editor. The next major release is 6.7 and comes out in November.

2024 Security Stats for WordPress. MelaPress has published it’s security survey. Two-factor authentication is the most widely adopted security practice… more than firewalls. Plugins are the preferred method for securing WordPress. Personally, I wouldn’t do 2FA. I work with a lot of membership sites and I do think that puts unnecessary burden on members to log into your site. With quality plugins, kept updated, and a secure hosting environment, such things are usually unnecessary.

Customizing Your WordPress Admin (To Make Life Simpler)

One mindset that I think it is worth having with WordPress is that nothing is set in stone. And it is way more customizable than you might think.

No, I’m not talking about simply installing plugins. Plugins are, of course, one of the superpowers of the WordPress platform.

But, you can get way more granular with it. And what I’m referring to here are specific customizations within your WordPress admin panel just to make YOUR life easier.

Now, to be clear, I’m under no illusions here that most people reading this will have the tech skills to do it. In many cases, it requires a bit of coding. But, I can do that for you if you would like. So, don’t consider that to be a “stop”. What I’d like for you to do is just think of what things could you have in your own admin panel to just increase convenience, reduce clicking, and make life simpler.

I’ll give you some examples of things I do on my own site:

• I use Admin Columns Pro to customize all of the post listing screens to show only what I want to see, in the way I want to see it.
• I used a snippet of code to create a custom menu in my top admin bar to give me bookmarks to sections of my admin panel that I very commonly access.
• I use Admin Site Enhancements to remove all admin notifications as well as remove all the clutter from the Dashboard… so that my dashboard shows only the things useful to ME. Not what plugin authors think I need.
• I created a custom dashboard widget that lists out all of my Concierge clients in alpha order, with quick links to their CRM profiles (in FluentCRM), user profile and their Anytime Credit log. Saves me a TON of hassle having to search for them in the CRM.
• I used another code snippet to remove all the useless stuff from user profile screens and do some interface modifications. Stuff like controlling the visual editor, admin color schemes, language selector… all of that stuff is gone from my user profile screens even though it is default WordPress. Because, they’re useless to me.
• I, again, used Admin Site Enhancements to hide menu options, rename a few of them, and reorder some. To make it more convenient.

You get the idea.

In a lot of cases, you don’t have to just accept the way WordPress does things. Or to just accept all the notifications, widgets, menu items that plugins insert in there. You can take control of it.

And yes, in some cases, you can make personal tweaks just for you. Custom dashboard widgets. Shortcuts. All just to make your day-to-day life easier inside of WordPress.

Got some in mind? Hit me up and maybe I can help you do it.