Well, Hello 2025.

Well hello there! And Happy New Year to you! 🎉

For the first week in the entire year of 2024, I took last week off from producing this newsletter. I was still in “holiday mode”… and heading to my Dad’s place to spend time with family for New Years. Took the RV up there, too. Basically, just using it as a “bed on wheels” and “moochdocking” in my Dad’s driveway. It has become the annual tradition. 😇

But, time to get back to business with this first issue of the year.

On that note, I wanted to share a few thoughts about new years resolutions… and our habits. Plus, catch on some updates with my favorite plugins that happened in the last couple weeks.

So, let’s get into it….

Your New Years Habits…

Well, here we are. 2025. A new year. And a time of year where a lot of people are thinking about New Years resolutions.

Thing is, for most, 2025 will look a lot like 2024. And 2023. And 2022. And…

That’s because most people end up thinking of these resolutions in super vague terms. No specificity.

They want to “lose weight”. Or “make more money”. Or some other such vague, stereotypical thing. Even if they try to get specific about it (“I want to lose 20 pounds”), it is just put out there as a hope. It is just an expression of a desire.

And then as the year begins, you feel that little temporary wind on your back. That little surge of energy driven by the calendar and perhaps a little holiday break…. and then it dies off.

Why does it die off?

Because it didn’t concentrate on changes in your DOINGNESS.

Instead of writing down things you want to have or be in 2025, concentrate on what you’re going to do. And more specifically…

Focus on your habits. Focus on your systems.

Everything you are and have right now is a result of the systems you execute every single day. Your morning routine. What you eat. How you organize your day. How you work. What you work ON. What you do before going to bed. What vitamins you take. Etc etc.

It is your habits – the things you do all the time – that create your present moment.

Could be big things…. often it is small things that add up.

And I think… if you want to achieve real change and growth in 2025, you shouldn’t do traditional New Years resolutions…. but instead focus on your habits.

What habits are helping you? And which aren’t helping you?

What changes can you – no, WILL you – make to your habits and routines in 2025?

Keep in mind, habits can be tough to change. So think in “baby steps” if you must.

For instance, if you resolved to exercise and you weren’t before, don’t start the year suddenly going to the gym every day. You’ll burn out. Instead, schedule exercise just once or twice per week. Change your habit. Then, once you’ve gotten OK with that one, you can increase it. But, don’t go for broke right away.

New Years Resolutions are kinda fun. But, many forget what it means. That word… resolution.

A resolution is to make a firm decision. It is a determination. The root word is resolve, so you are resolving to do something. It is you deciding what is true in YOUR world. You’re the decider. It is a postulate.

Most people aren’t making resolutions. They’re listing hopes.

A resolution is a decision. It is you as the god of your own universe deciding what is true and then operating upon that truth. Because it is true. There’s no doubt.

And then from that fundamental truth, you act accordingly.

Hence, focus on your habits. The things you are doing day in and day out. You are acting based upon certain truths that you have decided upon in your life. Some of those decisions you may remember…. some you may not. But, you are in the ultimate driver seat at all times. You can change your mind. You can decide the truth. You can make resolutions. You can change the rules by which you operate.

And then act. And change your habits.

This Week In Concierge

Well, this will be my first full, NORMAL week back in the Concierge chair for 2025. Last week (after the 1st), I did have a busy couple of days moving some things forward for clients. But, overall, I did take the holiday break to focus more on family.

Concierge is never “off”, though. In fact, I was literally in the middle of a board game with family on New Years Eve when I happened to check my messages on my phone to find out one of my client’s had his membership site break down. It was due to a conflict with the new version of Elementor and his BuddyBoss install. I knew immediately what it was. So, I replied from my phone to give me about 20 minutes. 😇 I wrapped up the game real quick, then picked up my laptop, got online on my Dad’s wifi, and did an incremental restore of Elementor to the previous version and had his site back online in about 5 minutes.

As my client said: “Thank you. I appreciate it. Things like this always happen when it’s inconvenient..”

Kinda true. 🤓

One other quick item of business for all clients….

I am seeing some reports of more form spam coming into sites. Especially from Russian email addresses with a “.ru” extension. Several clients have reported this…. and I’ve seen it myself as well. So, here’s my suggestion…

First action…. if you’re not already running the plugin called WP Armour, I would recommend you install it. It is completely free and there is no setup work to be done. Simply install and activate and it will automatically enable a honeypot on all of your forms that is much more effective than any built into the forms plugins. In a lot of cases, this one action is enough to stop the form spam.

Of course, if you would rather me do this for you, just let me know. I’ve already put it on many client sites, but not all of them.

I may also be picking up a license to the “Extended” version of WP Armour since I am pretty impressed with how well the free version works. That would be available to all clients as well.

And lastly, if any clients have ongoing form spam with bots despite using WP Armour, let me know and we’ll set up Cloudflare Turnstile on your site. That should stop it dead in it’s tracks.

WordPress Quick Bits

FluentSupport Update. Right after Christmas, FluentSupport 1.8.5 was released. This version offers agent time tracking, an updated email parser to fix a few reports of issues, saved filters and some keyboard shortcuts. If you have a need for an in-house support desk, FluentSupport remains a very solid option. Check out the full changelog.

FluentCRM 2.9.31 Release. FluentCRM also saw a nice little update. They added an email preview in the All Campaigns screen, made it GDPR ready by replacing Google Fonts with BunnyCDN, fixed an issue with tracking abandoned cart revenue, and numerous other things. Check out the full changelog here.

FluentBooking Update. Yup, another “Fluent” update”. 😍 This time, FluentBooking was updated to 1.4 and this version provides things like collective meetings (basically, booking a call with multiple hosts simultaneously), a new terms & conditions field, HTML formatting in event descriptions and more. Once again, to see the full list of updates, check out their changelog post here.

WPFusion Supports FluentCommunity. Jack from WP Fusion continues to push out updates every single week, but on New Years Eve he pushed out version 3.44.2 of WP Fusion which now integrates with FluentCommunity. You can now protect your entire community by way of a tag. You also have tag protection and “link with tag” functionality on individual spaces and courses within the FluentCommunity platform. Check out how that works here.

SEO For WordPress. There are quite a few SEO plugins out there. I recently mentioned that I am switching to SEOPress. But, there’s a WordPress developer named Robert deVore that has been on a rip lately creating just one plugin after another. And he just created a lightweight SEO plugin called, simply, SEO for WordPress. This is a plugin that does the important stuff simply, without the complexity and bloat. Oh, and it is completely free. Check it out here. And while you’re at it, check out his overview post showing all the plugins he’s produced in 2024. The dude is a machine.

Customer Journey For WooCommerce. A cool little free plugin was released called Customer Journey Map for WooCommerce. What this plugin will do is track the pages your customer visits before placing an order so you can see the path they took to get there. Keep in mind, my Concierge clients already have access to Conversion Bridge where we can also track customer journeys and conversion rates.

2025 WordPress Predictions. Everybody likes a good prediction post. 🤣 And David McCan published his 10 predictions for the world of WordPress for the upcoming year. He predicts continued decentralization away from Matt Mullenweg for WordPress. He also predicts Matt will mostly fail in his efforts against WP Engine. He predicts the coming release of Divi 5 will be a success, too. Check out his full post here.

Kadence 2024 Updates. Kadence WP published a nice timeline of all the enhancements that they released in 2024, including Kadence AI, form analytics, the Pattern Hub, the Advanced Header/Navigation setup, and more. Check it out. Kadence continues to be my “go to” tool for site builds. I had somebody ask “why Kadence?” He was curious why I don’t use something like Bricks. My response is just that there are a lot of good tools out there and they all do the same things… a little differently. In the end, we use a tool that “clicks” with us. I’m really fast with Kadence. I also like that it is natively integrated into the block builder. So, there it is. 😇

Websites Aren’t Set-And-Forget

Your website is not a “set it and forget it” kind of asset.

You can’t just build it (or have it built), stick it online…. and let it sit there. Because like all things in this world, it is either growing or shrinking.

If you let a really nice car just sit there and be neglected, it will eventually start showing problems. And those problems get worse until the thing just fails. Anything neglected and not given that human touch regularly eventually dies. And our websites aren’t any different.

First, there’s the obvious stuff like maintenance. WordPress needs to be kept updated – core updates, theme updates, plugin updates. If you don’t keep things updated and maintained, the site begins to slow down, get buggy, become insecure.

But, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Because a website is supposed to serve a purpose. And the world it operates in is changing all the time. People change. And your website needs to evolve accordingly.

This means things like changing headlines. Making periodic design tweaks. Making performance enhancements. Adding new features and capabilities.

It could be creating a new landing page to make a new offer… or target a new market segment.

It could be creating a new form.

A new marketing automation.

A new user flow (such as an opt-in process, or registration process).

Blog Marketing Academy itself has been in a constant state of evolution ever since I started the website many, many years ago. It has gone through various designs. Various tech stacks. Various hosts. All to evolve better to suit my thinking and my goals at the time.

Your website isn’t any different.

There are a lot of ways to continue building, growing and improving any website over time… all to make it better serve it’s purpose as a true marketing and sales asset.

This idea is at the core of why I offer Concierge. And why I call it Concierge.

It is continuous and ongoing support services to do these exact things for my clients on their websites to help their sites better serve their purposes.

It isn’t just about maintenance. That’s the boring stuff. Necessary, but boring.

Concierge is about being able to make constant improvements without tech getting in the way. In fact, the idea is to make the tech mold to what you need it to do.

And, of course, there’s the strategic and advisory component to it as well. That’s something I have regular conversations with my Concierge clients about as well.

If this is something you know you need to pay better attention to in 2025, you know where to find me. Just schedule a call and I’m happy to have a chat about your site.