Every time I insert an image into a page or post, WP by default links the image to its file. For example, the image below links to https://wppov.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/monalisa.jpg.
This can be desirable in some use cases, but much more often just creates confusion. A user mouses over an image, sees that it links to somewhere, clicks on it, and is rewarded by … the image. On a page all by itself. The user then has to click back to my site or, more likely, just moves on never to return.
Rambling thoughts about WordPress
More wrath of the great Google god
A few months ago the great Google god thundered wrath in my direction, declaring a portion of my innocuous website byGosh.com to be hate speech. Google demanded that I remove ads from Huckleberry Finn. I was amused that anyone would find Mark Twain’s masterpiece to be hateful, but I can understand why Google might not want its ads there, and I had no objection to removing them. In spite of my immediate compliance, Google wreaked terrible vengeance upon me, taking secret measures that destroyed 80% of my traffic and effectively demonetized my entire site.
Google god wrath redoux: Two days ago, I received another email from Google, this time claiming that my posting of Tom Sawyer constitutes illegal file sharing. This is obvious nonsense, as Tom Sawyer has been public domain for many decades.
Optimizing the WP Database
Every time I edit a post or page, WP keeps a copy of the old version in my database. It is a great feature, handy when I mess up and need to revert to the previous version. But once my post or page is final, I have no use for the prior revisions. By default, WP keeps all the old versions, forever, and they can add up over time. I recently checked one of my sites and was surprised to find 3,566 useless old pages cluttering up my database. A large, cluttered database slows my site, as the server takes longer to retrieve information.
ECL to GDPR: The arrogance and depravity of big nanny government
The impending European Union (EU) GDPR is deceptively titled the General Data Protection Regulation, but would be more honestly termed the Grotesque Deprecation of Personal Responsibility.
Read more ECL to GDPR: The arrogance and depravity of big nanny government
The new AdSense Auto-Ads
On February 21, 2018 Google announced the new AdSense Auto-Ads, which promise to make website monetization easier and more effective. With Auto-Ads, Google makes all the decisions for me regarding the number and placement of ads on my web pages.
According to Google, the benefits of Auto-Ads include:
- Optimization: Using machine learning, Auto ads show ads only when they are likely to perform well and provide a good user experience.
- Revenue opportunities: Auto ads will identify any available ad space and place new ads there, potentially increasing your revenue.
- Easy to use: With Auto ads you only need to place the ad code on your pages once.
Monetizing my websites
Years ago I started monetizing my websites to a modest degree, using Google AdSense. I never expected to make big money, and I haven’t, for a number of reasons:
I try to emphasize content, not ads. I want my ads to be unobtrusive.- I will never subject my visitors to obnoxious ads that popup, pop-over, pop-under, pop-sideways, pop-anything. I hate those things.
- I choose site topics that are of interest to me, not high-paying niches like mortgages or personal injury lawsuits.
- My sites are not popular enough to generate much income.
I try to emphasize content, not ads. I want my ads to be unobtrusive.WordPress and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
Still reeling from the REST API debacle, and with the Gutenberg Kerfuffle roiling as WP 5.0 approaches, the good people who develop WordPress – and I mean that sincerely, I believe them to be genuinely good people to whom I owe a great deal of gratitude – endured a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day (*).
First, the Maintenance Release of WordPress 4.9.3 on February 5, 2018. WP 4.9.3 fixed 34 minor bugs, and introduced a great, big, major new one.
Bug icon by Dmitry Baranovskiy, from The Noun Project, CC BY 3.0
Read more WordPress and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
How are WP sites hacked?
I tend to obsess over WP security. But what should I really worry about? There are two main ways WP sites get hacked:
- By far the most common attempted WP hack is malicious login, in which a bot or bots attempt(s) to login using lists of common admin usernames and passwords.
- By far the most common successful WP hacks use vulnerabilities in outdated plugins, themes, or WP core.
Update 2019-11-15: There is now a third main way that WP sites get hacked. Site admins are installing the malware on their own sites! See Free Professional Themes and Plugins.
htaccess tricks
Along with the excellent 6G firewall (update: 7G firewall) from Jeff Starr at Perishable Press, certain htaccess tricks improve WP security. Examples …
Net Neutrality Alarmism
There are reasonable points to be made on both sides of the Net Neutrality debate. There is also net neutrality alarmism, lunatic fringe propaganda, and outright lies on both sides. I’d like to join the fun …
The Trump administration’s plan to end the Obama “Net Neutrality” regulations has apoplectic “the sky is falling” claims falling from the sky. Among the many outrageous predictions:
- “Your Internet service provider (ISP) will be allowed to bundle websites just like they bundle television channels”
- “It would prevent the emergence of new businesses”
- “Pharmaceutical companies could also be able to block news of new cures and alternative, lower-priced medicines”
by Gosh
Every once in a long while, the planets align just right or something, and luck falls remarkably in my favor. One example happened in late December 1999.
Beware the wrath of the great Google god
Way back in 1999 I decided to enter the new millennium with a web presence. I got very lucky and registered byGosh.com, and posted public domain literature, including the great American classic Huckleberry Finn. Little did I know that many years later this seemingly innocuous act would bring the wrath of the Great Google God thundering down upon me.
Over time the site became – by my modest standards – reasonably popular, with over 200,000 page views in a good month. In 2006 I joined the Google Adsense program to monetize the site to a small degree.
The Gutenberg Kerfuffle
The default editor used in WordPress, TinyMCE (Moxiecode content editor), does a great job in my opinion of facilitating content creation independent of page design, which I’m pretty sure was its intent. However, as WP has advanced from its roots as blogging software to become a popular full-fledged web development tool, the editor has become a limitation. For creative web page design with rich content, true what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) page builders offer significant advantages. [Note: TinyMCE is labeled WYSIWYG, but I have to use the Preview feature to see my content in the context of the page design.] The WordPress core team is understandably concerned about the future of WP in the face of drag-and-drop page builder offerings like Wix, Weebly, and SquareSpace.
Hence, the WP core team plans to replace TinyMCE with a brand new editor, Gutenberg, beginning with WP 5.0. The intent is to “make writing rich posts effortless”. Gutenberg is a radical change from TinyMCE, and the apparent rush to move it into the WP core, rather than offer it as an optional plugin for a year or two, has caused something of an uproar, or a Gutenberg kerfuffle, in the WP community.
Google Analytics
I consider Google Analytics to be essential for all of my websites. There are very popular plugins for adding the Google Analytics code and for viewing fancy graphics of my site data from my WP admin dashboard. And … I don’t see the point of any of them. My theme makes it easy-breezy to add the code to my site header, and Google already has plenty of cool data visualizations that I have no reason to duplicate in my WP admin dashboard.
The best SEO tip of all time
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