521 - These are the backbone of your website: Tom talks Wordpress Plugins - Screw The Commute

521 – These are the backbone of your website: Tom talks WordPress Plugins

WordPress plugins are part of the engine that drives your website. In order to get the most from that website, you need to understand what plugins are, how they work and which ones you should use. We talk about that in this episode with Tech Sensei, and everyone's favorite IT Guy, Larry Guerrera.

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Screw The Commute Podcast Show Notes Episode 521

How To Automate Your Businesshttps://screwthecommute.com/automatefree/

entrepreneurship distance learning school, home based business, lifestyle business

Internet Marketing Training Centerhttps://imtcva.org/

Higher Education Webinarhttps://screwthecommute.com/webinars

See Tom's Stuffhttps://linktr.ee/antionandassociates

[04:22] Tom's introduction to WordPress Plugins

[07:25] Components that make up your websites

[11:00] Process to look for appropriate plugins

[20:53] Three top plugins every WordPress site should have

[45:38] Membership sites made easy

[48:17] Keeping your plugins updated

[52:40] Checking website links to ensure they all work

[56:20] Sponsor message

[58:13] Reviewing a website's plugins and performance

Entrepreneurial Resources Mentioned in This Podcast

Higher Education Webinarhttps://screwthecommute.com/webinars

Screw The Commutehttps://screwthecommute.com/

entrepreneurship distance learning school, home based business, lifestyle business

Screw The Commute Podcast Apphttps://screwthecommute.com/app/

College Ripoff Quizhttps://imtcva.org/quiz

Know a young person for our Youth Episode Series? Send an email to Tom! – orders@antion.com

Have a Roku box? Find Tom's Public Speaking Channel there!https://channelstore.roku.com/details/267358/the-public-speaking-channel

How To Automate Your Businesshttps://screwthecommute.com/automatefree/

Internet Marketing Retreat and Joint Venture Programhttps://greatinternetmarketingtraining.com/

KickStartCarthttp://www.kickstartcart.com/

online shopping cart, ecommerce system

Copywriting901https://copywriting901.com/

copywriting

Disabilities Pagehttps://imtcva.org/disabilities/

Pinterest Now Webinarhttps://screwthecommute.com/pinterestnow/

UpdraftPlushttps://wordpress.org/plugins/updraftplus/

Wordfence Securityhttps://wordpress.org/plugins/wordfence/

Yoast SEOhttps://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/

Akismet Anti Spamhttps://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet/

Google Analyticshttps://wordpress.org/plugins/search/google+analytics/

Pretty Linkshttps://wordpress.org/plugins/pretty-link/

Thrive Themeshttp://bit.ly/1ufcPlw

WishList Memberhttp://go.wishlistproducts.com/?p=WLP1197328&w=wlm

Broken Link Checkerhttps://wordpress.org/plugins/broken-link-checker/

Email Tom: Tom@ScrewTheCommute.com

Internet Marketing Training Centerhttps://imtcva.org/

Related Episodes

Basic SEO – https://screwthecommute.com/469/

Marketing Tools – https://screwthecommute.com/520/

More Entrepreneurial Resources for Home Based Business, Lifestyle Business, Passive Income, Professional Speaking and Online Business

I discovered a great new headline / subject line / subheading generator that will actually analyze which headlines and subject lines are best for your market. I negotiated a deal with the developer of this revolutionary and inexpensive software. Oh, and it's good on Mac and PC. Go here: http://jvz1.com/c/41743/183906

The WordPress Ecourse. Learn how to Make World Class Websites for $20 or less. https://screwthecommute.com/wordpressecourse/

Build a website, wordpress training, wordpress website, web design

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Join our Private Facebook Group! One week trial for only a buck and then $37 a month, or save a ton with one payment of $297 for a year. Click the image to see all the details and sign up or go to https://www.greatinternetmarketing.com/screwthecommute/

After you sign up, check your email for instructions on getting in the group.

entrepreneurship distance learning school, home based business, lifestyle business

entrepreneurship distance learning school, home based business, lifestyle business

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Episode 521 – WordPress Plugins
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode five hundred and twenty one of Screw the commute podcast. Today we're going to talk about WordPress plugins and Larry Guerrera is here. He's my left hand, right hand. Hands up. I don't want to say underhand to go to the south there, but he's really been behind the scenes at all five hundred and this will be 21 episodes of screw the commute and does a lot of the tech work for us. He's an IMTCVA graduate, by the way, our school graduate, and he is so successful. Wait till you hear this. He just bought a new house with his own personal gardener, an indoor Olympic swimming pool. I think he's got a butler now, too. I don't know. We'll see when we bring him on. Anyway, he's going to tell us all about these plugins that he does behind the scenes for us. I hope you didn't miss episode 520. That was a lot of the marketing tools I use, and that's desktop oriented and laptop oriented. I'll do a future episode on the cell phone apps that I use, but yeah, I think I went on forty five minutes of just telling you all these tools that I use, and I just picked the ones that I happen to use and could remember because I looked at my roboform that keeps track of all the stuff I've had over the years is over a thousand entries in there, stuff that I've tried and either used it at the time, but now they're no good or I found out that they are no good and so I didn't want to introduce them to you.

[00:02:01] So that's part of my value to you is to check these things out so you don't have to. And I still want to mention again episodes 511, 514 and 517. This was my Pinterest series on beginner, intermediate and advanced, based on the webinar from John Kremer and Daniel Hall. That's one of the best ones we ever hosted. So the link to that will be in the show notes to that webinar replay. And still, you can send me questions through the webinar interface. Just keep your email open so I can, and they'll come to me or come to my cell phone if I'm out and about and I will answer them for you. All right. Make sure you pick up a copy of our automation e-book. Oh man. You know, I'm so into automation because without I mean, yes, absolutely. Larry takes a big load off of stuff that I do and Marc and it's just the fact that I just do enormous amounts of stuff. But I couldn't do it without these tools that we use in there outlined in this free e-book. We charge twenty seven bucks for it, but it's yours free for listening to the show.

[00:03:12] So grab your copy at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. While you're at it, pick up a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app, where you can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road. Now we're still in the middle of this great program. We've got going. It's a pilot program to help out persons with disabilities. We want to get them educated, get them hired or in their own business or both. And and really love your help on this. We have a Go Fund Me campaign. You can check it out at our school website. IMTCVA.org/disabilities, and you can click on the Go Fund Me campaign. You can see videos from these very inspiring people, two of which are blind doing videos and going through a school like this, as you know. So any time you're feeling bad about yourself, just watch those videos. So give us a hand on that.

[00:04:23] All right, let's get to the main event. We got Larry Guerrera here, and I'm just going to give him the same treatment I give a regular guest. Larry, are you ready to screw? The commute?

[00:04:36] Oh, well, first of all, I just so you know, I just asked my butler Jeeves to refresh my club soda and lime.

[00:04:45] Well, that's good. Ask Jeeves, you know? Now you're dating us now.

[00:04:49] I sure am. That's for sure. And for screwing the commute after I move, my commute will be even shorter. So I am taking this very much to heart.

[00:05:00] Well, yes. So you mean from your bedroom to your office is going to be shorter even? Wow.

[00:05:06] Yes, it will be.

[00:05:07] That's really downsizing. Yeah. So Larry's an empty nester, and he's getting all on one floor, so he and his wife can can get around easy at the house, and they're youngsters. But yeah, I love, you know, I don't like the steps that much because, you know, going up in elevation takes extra calories out of my midsection. And, you know, with the way things are and inflation and stuff, I want to preserve my calories.

[00:05:39] So this is true. Yes, inflation is really running a little high now. So I think you and I have to contribute to the economy by watching what we're doing calorically.

[00:05:49] Yes, exactly right. And also, you know, I'm very environmentally conscious because I saved a lot of the same words on these podcasts every, every three times a week.

[00:06:03] Well, you're practicing recycling, which is what we should all be doing.

[00:06:06] All right. So let's talk about plugins. So first thing I want to do is tell them my definition of a plug and to get everybody in the same category. And then you can kick in with what how you look at plug ins. But I'd like to to explain the whole WordPress thing where WordPress to me is like the engine to a car. You know, it's got the brakes and it's got an engine and it's got a steering wheel and they all have that, whether it's a Bentley or a Volkswagen Beetle. So that's the guts of everything right there. Then you put a theme on now the theme is like the paint job. You know, what's it look like? So and you want the theme to be responsive, which means it looks it'll adjust itself for cell phones and tablets? All right. So the next thing is plug ins and plug ins, which is what we're talking about today, are kind of like accessories to your car, like heated seats or, you know, a DVD player, you know, whatever heated rearview mirrors, you know, and all kinds of stuff like that. So plug ins will make it do extra stuff. So that's how I like people to understand what the plug in is. And so your turn? Larry, how would you define it?

[00:07:28] Actually, the way you defined it is absolutely correct. There are multiple components to any any website, actually, but WordPress, especially WordPress, is definitely the engine that drives all of these things. And as you said, the theme is how people see it. And it looks different if it's in dark mode versus light mode like we have on all our cell phones now and then plug ins are without question the add ons, the accessories, the things that the dealers charge us a lot of money for that kind of thing. But in this case, fortunately for WordPress, many of the plugins that I'm going to mention today, most of them actually are free as in free as in no cost, and they work just fine. And I can tell you from being the person that watches over Tom's vast virtual empire that if these free plug ins did not do their job, they would have been booted out of here long ago. So the fact that they are free is not a negative. In fact, in many cases it's a positive because there are a lot of people that volunteer to keep these things up to date. So let me just give you a couple of them.

[00:08:39] Well, we just went looking for one recently, right? And a gallery for that.

[00:08:44] Exactly right. Well, I'm doing it for good. That was oh, for the new Kickstartcart site, right?

[00:08:49] Exactly right. What I'd like to do is describe the process I went through to find that so people who are listening to this episode will be able to replicate that and find appropriate plug ins for themselves.

[00:09:01] And we tried a couple and we found, well, it doesn't do what we want. So it was no big deal to just throw it away and put a new one in, right?

[00:09:09] Exactly right. Yes, these were the ones that we tried were free, and even the ones that are paid normally allow you to try it for free, either for a certain amount of time or you can install it. And it will have most of the functions available, but not everything. But that will still give you a taste or a flavor for what this plugin will do. And if you like what you see, then it might be worth purchasing. Or if you like what you see, it might be worth keeping.

[00:09:34] And we do have some paid plug ins that we use all the time, like our membership plug ins. And yes, and you know, the stuff that runs this podcast on the site is a paid plug in.

[00:09:45] Yep, that is that is the simple podcast player. And that one works absolutely fabulously. I believe they just rebranded themselves. They call themselves now fuse box. But it's the same player. It's called the Fuse Box Player now, and that's the player that people will use when they come to the screw the commute website and play any episode of the podcast. So that is a paid plugin, but it's got terrific support and literally from day one, I think we've never had really a problem with this thing, so it was definitely worth the cost that we paid for it.

[00:10:18] Yeah, and I think we pay, I think, a yearly fee for that one. So that's that's common and some of the paid ones, but it does all kinds of cool stuff. Like I said, a regular website is not going to have a sophisticated podcast player. So that's an accessory that we wanted for this site because it's a podcast, you know, it's the whole site is about Screw the Commute podcast. So we got a specific thing that does all kinds of cool things. You know, you can fast forward, you can run it faster. You know, if I don't talk fast enough, you can run it up to double speed.

[00:10:53] Or, you know, it's actually triple speed,

[00:10:54] Triple speed now. Wow. You can back up 10 seconds and if you miss something or fast forward and and. Ok, so anyway, go ahead and go through the process that you use when when we go looking for a plug in.

[00:11:09] Ok, so I'm going to give you a couple of easy steps that I use whenever I'm searching for a plug in that is going to satisfy either your requirement, my requirement or requirement of the website so that we can get the features that we need. And then after that, I'm going to give you a couple of plug ins that we're actually using right now where I use that exact same process.

[00:11:30] And then we go, tell them about, you know, when we review other people's sites and it's just plastered full of unused plugins.

[00:11:38] I'm gonna have to take some headache tablets before we get to that point. Part of the interview? Boy, oh boy. Ok, so the process that I usually use is I use Google search extensively for this, and there's a very good reason for that. Many of the plug ins, most of the plugins, I should say when they put out your ability to download this thing normally contains a really good detailed description of what the plug in is for what it does, how you can install it, what it costs if it's not free and so on and so on.

[00:12:11] So Google, how when's the last time it was updated

[00:12:14] And when the last time was updated, the number of people that are using it? That's also a very important.

[00:12:19] They've got star ratings, too.

[00:12:21] They do get star ratings. Yes. And what? The star ratings are very similar to what you would see on Amazon or on any of the other e-commerce websites when you're looking for a rating for a particular thing you want to buy. Really no different. So by typing in certain particular parameters into Google search and in this case, the one. Tom mentioned we were looking for a plug in that would allow a gallery of images to automatically swipe from right to left or left to right after a certain number of seconds and put up a new image each time.

[00:12:54] Sometimes called a slider.

[00:12:57] A slider yes. No different from a picture gallery or any of that stuff. So by typing in things like image gallery, picture gallery, or if you're looking for a gallery that handles video, that's a separate thing. You would type in YouTube gallery or something like that.

[00:13:14] The Google search results will give you a whole bunch of places you can look to start narrowing down the items that you're trying to find and which plug ins are good. What you're going to see and I found this to be the case most times, is that many of these plugins kind of float to the top on Page one or even Page two at the most when you're typing and stuff like this always include the word plug in. Even better, WordPress plug in whenever you're typing in the Google search box for a plugin that you're looking to do a certain thing this way, the search will narrow that down tremendously. And instead of giving you like 15 million hits, you'll be possibly in the thousands. But it will at least narrow it down to give you the choice that you want to see.

[00:14:01] Yeah, because so plug in is a generic term and lots of different programs used. There's plug ins for the audio program I'm recording with right now using Adobe Audition, so there's all kinds of plug ins, so it would behoove you to narrow it down with WordPress.

[00:14:16] Yes, by using WordPress in that you really would narrow the focus down, which is really what what you want to do.

[00:14:21] Now that's in Google, though, no. But can't we use to search for plug ins right in side your WordPress site?

[00:14:27] You can. But I would do the Google search first only because that allows you to narrow it down outside of your own website. And there are a couple of advantages to that. One of them is that one of the link results that you're going to find is going to point you to Wordpress.org. And WordPress.org is where all of these plugins that you can download for the most part exist. It comes from the WordPress.org plugin library, so Google has that indexed very, very well. So that's a good place to start. If you don't want to do that, you want to go directly to your website. What you can do is you log into your website, go to your dashboard, click on plugins and you'll see that on the left side of your screen. That's the standard position for that. Then click on the add new button. What that will do is bring up a different page that allows you to search, and there are just going to use this number because it covers everything. There are a gazillion plugins, there's literally a gazillion plugins. And by taking typing in the search box. So in my case, I typed in image gallery. And it came up with a whole bunch of plug ins that I could try for free. So I did. I picked a few, downloaded those, activated them and put them through their paces. And between Tom and myself, we figured out, All right, this one doesn't have exactly what we're looking for. This other one looks good, but it doesn't have enough flexibility. And then I stumbled upon another one in that same search that turned out to be just what we needed. Didn't do everything, but it came really, really, really, really close. So Tom took a look at it. He liked it. I took a look at it. I like the way it looked. It was very simple. It was elegant to use.

[00:16:18] You could have anybody with even a tiny bit of WordPress background would have been able to set this thing up very, very quickly with their images. And I've been playing with this thing for the last few days, and it really does do the job and the best part. It's free.

[00:16:33] Yeah. And so and another thing what we kind of noticed, we looked at some of the plug ins that where you're using on sites that have been around a long time. And we said, Uh oh, because the one we're using and depending on and one of my major sites hasn't been updated for four years. So we got to keep an eye on that in case, you know, with all the WordPress updates that if that plug in goes completely on us, we need to be able to replace it in a hurry. Yeah, so that is correct. So you can't just set it and forget it on all these things because all these updates that are security fixes and improvements means that when you're putting these things together, something can go completely on you if you're not paying attention.

[00:17:19] Yes, and completely, by the way, is a technical term.

[00:17:22] Yes, that's right.

[00:17:23] It complete technical term. So some of the other things you should look for when you're searching for plug ins, there are actually three things. The first one is when was it last updated? I'm looking at a list of plug ins right now on my WordPress dashboard, and I see one was updated a week ago. Another one was updated four weeks ago. It was one that was updated two days ago. You want to find something that's been updated recently. If you see one that looks good, but it hasn't been updated for a couple of weeks, that's usually not a problem. Sometimes even a few months is not a problem. It really depends on what the plug in is doing and what you're relying on it to do for you. If you see one that's gone years, though, unless it's a function that you must absolutely positively have and no other plug in will do the job, I would really urge you to skip that one because that means it's been designed for an older version of WordPress and most likely could cause problems with other plug ins you already have. That's not to say you couldn't use it. You could install it, activate it and see if it works for you. But just be aware that they may not play nice if it's that old, but the other ones most likely they're good to go and you should. You should give them the try. So that's the first thing. The second thing is is how many active installations does this plugin have? And every plugin that you find if you search for them under plugins, we'll show you how many websites have them installed.

[00:18:53] The higher the number in general, the better that is, but it has to be activated, right?

[00:19:00] Yes, these are active installs. That's why they use the word active, because if you just install it, that doesn't mean anything, you're not using it. So just to level set that when you install a plugin, just like when you install a piece of software on your Windows computer or on your your Apple laptop, let's say it's a MacBook, or if you have a desktop computer just because you install, it doesn't really mean anything if you don't configure it or activate it and start using it. That's when you see whether or not the benefit of that plug in or piece of software is for you. So I can install as many plugins as I want, but if I don't activate them doesn't mean anything,

[00:19:40] But it's not a good idea to do it that way.

[00:19:42] That is right. That is not a good way to get into that. Yeah, we'll get into that in a minute because I want to make sure I mention that as well. So we're the higher the number for active installations, the better.

[00:19:52] The third thing you look at is the ratings for the plug in, the higher the number of ratings it goes anywhere from one star to five stars. So the higher the number of people that have rated it and the and the larger the star count obviously bodes well for that plug in. That means people have used it. They haven't run into any problems. The support is good and that kind of thing. So those are the things you look out for now when you when you click on that plug in to install it or look at more details, they will give you more information as to how it's supported, what you need to do and all that kind of thing. So those are the real parameters we're looking for. We're looking for popularity. How many places have this? We're looking for, how many people have reviewed it and what kind of rating did they give it? Is it a one star, two star all the way up to five stars? And when was it let? Updated if it was updated recently, that's fine, even if it wasn't within reason, then the plug ins still might be good for you to try and see if it fits your bill. Whatever you're trying to do. So that's that's looking for plug ins. Now some of the plug ins that we use, which are in my opinion, but it is my opinion, so it does carry some weight.

[00:21:05] I think that we absolutely positively must have for every single website there is the very first one we have is a backup plug in. The second one we have is a security plug in. And the third one we have is to boost your search engine optimization or SEO. This is what helps your website get recognized by Google, Bing and all the other search engines that are out there. So let me go over these quickly. So you understand what I'm talking about here. So a backup plugin does exactly what it sounds like. It will back up all of your critical files from your website to somewhere else. Now, why do you want to do that? Because if your website crashes or if you're doing changes on your website and something gets corrupted or messed up, you need a way to be able to recover that. Otherwise your website is toast. Now, the hosting company that has your website that you're using, like GoDaddy, Liquid Web and all the rest of these folks,

[00:22:02] They could back up your website also, but most of them will do it once a day. And most of them, in fact, almost all of them, I think at this point have a limit to the amount of times you can restore your website from a backup.

[00:22:18] Now, I don't know about you, but I really don't want anybody telling me I can't restore my website from a backup if something goes wrong. So one of the reasons why I use a backup plug in on all of Tom's websites is for that exact reason. If I screw something up, if Tom messes something up or if somebody else is working on the website messes something up, we can go and restore the stuff that got messed up from the last backup, which could be as quick as 10 minutes ago if we took a backup ahead of time and then we're back in business again. Whereas if you do this with your hosting company, you could be waiting a day or two or more or 10.

[00:22:57] That happened to me, found out once. Yeah, so folks, the hosting companies will brag to you that they have backups for you. And so I got one. This is this is over 20 years ago when I got sucked in on this and I learned my lesson is so they went down and they said, Don't worry, we'll get it back there for you. Ten days later, they got the website backed up, you know, or back in service, where if had I had the backups myself, you know, they told me, Oh, we had backups. Ok, great. So none of this stuff existed back then. I mean, you didn't know any better. And then it took 10 days to get the site back up and running to find it out of the millions of sites that they had. So it's always good to have your own backup separate from whatever you're hosting service does.

[00:23:47] Yep, absolutely correct. So everything that I'm going to tell you will be in the show notes, and I know that because I'm the one doing the show notes, so it'll be a piece of cake for me. But they will all be in the show notes. I'll have links to point you to the different plug ins so you can see for yourself what they do and see if they they they could work for what you're looking to do. So that's the backup plugin.

[00:24:09] The second one is the security plugin. This is a plugin that monitors everything going into and out from your website. Who's logging in, who's trying to download a file, who's trying to upload a file now that uploaded file could be legitimate or it could be malware. So we want to check on that. Also, who is trying to brute force their way into your website? Many of you have probably heard of the phrase denial of service. In fact, several of the hosting companies had suffered a denial of service attack just the other day, and GoDaddy, for example, was one of them.

[00:24:48] That's different when I got kicked out of a restaurant.

[00:24:51] Yes, that is absolutely different. What wouldn't be different, though, is if you tried another restaurant and they kicked you out again. That's right. Then you've got a real problem. So what the security plugin does is checks for all that stuff it will give you. It will send you an email on a regular basis, however you decide to do it monthly, weekly, daily telling you what's going on with your site. Is there anything you need to worry about?

[00:25:18] And these are the things that we use also just to make sure that everything is working the way it's supposed to and that nobody's in there that doesn't belong in there. So that's just another layer of protection. And again, going back to your hosting company, your hosting company may try to sell you a security package, their own firewall and

[00:25:38] All this other stuff. If it's in my honest opinion, if it's only a few dollars more a month to protect your website from their point of view, it's most likely worth it. It's when they start throwing in all these other add ons and these upsells and everything else that you start spending money you really don't need. So is it better to have just one layer of protection or several?

[00:26:00] It's always better to have several. The security plugin that we use are free, so it doesn't cost you anything more. And if you're hosting company does offer that as a service, you should most likely take advantage of it as long as they're not trying to charge you an arm and a leg on a monthly basis just to provide security, which is what they should be doing to begin with. So that's on the that's the security plug in. The last plug in is the search engine optimization plugin. This is the plug in that communicates with Google, Bing and all the search engines. And what it will do is structure your website internally. These are things you don't see when you pull up a web page, but behind the scenes, it's going to structure your website in a way that is very, very favorable. When the search engine spiders come crawling and they start looking at all your posts and your pages and all the things you're going to be downloading and all this other good stuff. So is that something that you could do yourself? Sure. If you want to spend a tremendous amount of time learning what the search engines are looking for, trying to be exactly spot on with what they're what they like and what they don't like. It's too much. We've reached the point in our technological evolution that we need help, and this plug in is what provides that help in order to get you in the proper place in a Google search. Yeah, also,

[00:27:25] Well, I was going to say it. It keeps you from having to dig into code, which is very dangerous for you to do. If you don't know what you're doing to put in some of the the standard SEO stuff that we, you know, I've had enough other episodes. Will put the episode in the show notes for basic SEO. All you have to do is open the plug in and type the keywords in and and the meta descriptions. And so you don't have to touch anything that's dangerous. Put it that way.

[00:27:57] Correct. So the watchword here is if there is a plug in that will help you avoid learning how to code, get the plug in. Don't bother with trying to get into the guts of your website, putting in all these crazy codes and stuff and then keeping your fingers crossed that it all works. There are many cases where it just might work fine,

[00:28:21] But there are many other cases where you could really mess things up and it's not worth it. It's really not worth the aggravation because while you think you're saving time and money now, you're going to have to spend time and money trying to find somebody to undo what you did. So it really doesn't pay to do that. And these are the three plugins I just gave you. These are a list of among a whole bunch of others that we use that have been tested and tested and tested, and they're pretty much battle hardened against anything that your website can experience and encounter.

[00:28:51] And they help you to get things done.

[00:28:53] So I'm going to mention the names of these three plugins, but again, like I said, they will be in the show notes and everything will be there for you to just click on a link and you can read all the descriptions of all these things. So the backup plugin is called updraft plus. That's one word updraft, plus it's great plug in.

[00:29:08] There are other backup plugins that also do the same thing, but for my money, this is the one that works the best out of all of them. It's the simplest to install to configure, and it just works. It's just one of those things that just works for security. We use Wordfence security. That's one word again, word fence, and there are other security plugins that will do very similar things. I themes is one, and there's a few others that have similar names. But again, this one has been really tested by us, and I found that from a ease of use standpoint, this one word fence security is the best one out of the bunch. If you ask 10 other people that you trust, you'll probably get 20 different answers as to which one is the better one. You can pick those and try them for yourself. But these are the ones that we use, and we found that over time, they provide the best, the best value for what, what we're getting, and it doesn't mean that we wouldn't change later. Oh yes. Yeah, absolutely. At the time of my flying boarding and for a while, we've been using these ones. If I find one or the other, plug ins provides a superior product from one that we're using now. And it turns out that that is better. That's it. We have no allegiance to these given plug ins. What we do have, though, is an allegiance to the website to make absolutely sure it does what we want it to do. And if there's a plugin out there that does it better than what we're doing now, we would gladly switch to that. So we're always on the lookout for new and better things to substitute for what we're using now. But as of right now, the ones I'm giving you are the ones that we've been using for a long time, actually in many cases, and we haven't found anything better yet. So the last one out of the three is called Yoast SEO. Search engine optimization. And again, this is one of those plug ins where there are plenty of other SEO plugins out there. One in particular called all in one SEO, which is actually one we did use for a while.

[00:31:05] But I have found that the all in one SEO?

[00:31:08] Yes, there is a package where there's other things that go along with that plugin, but we have found that Yoast SEO seems, does a better job overall when it comes to placing codes in the right spot. And as as Tom mentioned, there's header information, there's a meta tags, there's all sorts of other crazy things that these plugins will do for you, and that's exactly what we want it to do. We want them to put stuff where it's the most beneficial without us having to get our hands dirty and getting getting into the code and doing all sorts of other stuff like that.

[00:31:43] Ok, so let me jump in here on Yost for a second. Something that I just realized in the past month that by putting the meta description in, you know, I haven't other than basics. I haven't folded. Watch much with SEO since I was top of the heap in SEO years ago, but we use a lot of paid traffic now. But just since I've been really putting a lot of emphasis on Pinterest, there's a thing called rich pins, and they grab the meta description from Yoast and make your pins stand out more on Pinterest. And also they can be updated. It's like if you had a product and you change the price, it would automatically updated on Pinterest. These called rich pins, so don't worry about the get in the weeds on how to do it. But the fact is is that the simple free plug in and putting in a little description can make your Pinterest results better.

[00:32:46] Yep, absolutely correct.

[00:32:48] And Yoast is great for that, they make it so simple, it's literally I think it's one to three clicks.

[00:32:54] Yeah. And they even give you a little thing. That's it's I don't know. It's almost like a breadcrumb thing where it's as you're typing your description, it's read until you have the the APR good number of words that they know the search engine likes. And then it turns green and then you type for a while and it's green. If you type too many words, it turns red again. So then you're back up and adjust it to stay in the green area. So that's a really cool feature.

[00:33:25] Oh yeah. And just by that alone, you can see that they make it very, very easy to be able to use these to the best of our ability without having to go nuts. Like how many characters did I type that I type into? Many that I type into a little? You don't have to think about that. It will tell you. So it makes it a lot, a lot easier doing it that way. So those are the three main plugins that I would use, like right off the bat wouldn't even have to think about anything those three would go in instantly. Now, after that, depending on what you're doing with your website, there's a whole bunch of other ones that you can that you can put in that we've used that we still use.

[00:33:59] Actually, that will help your sites as well. One of them is called Akismet antispam. This is a very popular plugin like Beyond Popular that will filter every single comment that comes into your website and determine whether or not this is a good comment. This is a spam comment, and ninety nine times out of 100 it guesses correct. Actually, it's probably a lot larger than that. Probably nine hundred and ninety nine times out of a thousand. It will guess correctly, and it will put the spam comments in a separate folder. You never get to see these things. You already have to worry about them.

[00:34:35] But there could be thousands of folks and there could be thousands of them. That is correct. Yes, I monitor this on a regular basis four times websites and I can tell you some of the websites get very few comments because they weren't really designed for comments. But the other ones that do get comments. There are times I've got to clear out thousands of spam comments because they're all automated now. Every single one of those spam comments is from a from a bot. So they go out, somebody clicks a mouse somewhere, and thousands of these things come flooding through the internet, trying to find a rich, juicy target to to put their spam on. And the Akismet anti-spam plugin will trap that and put it away.

[00:35:14] Like I said, you never even have to see it. It's a beautiful thing. It really is. And then you can go about your business, running your business, making money, increasing your revenue and not having to worry about these spam comments. So that's one. Another one is Google Analytics, a great plug in, and there's a series of those plug ins that provide analytic data to determine how much traffic am I getting to my website. Every single one of you out there that owns a website has got to have thought at least once, if not a million times. Who's coming to my website? Am I getting any traffic if I'm really getting, where are they coming from?

[00:35:50] Where are they coming from exactly? And what are they doing when they're on my website? Are they just looking around? What pages are they going to? Are they buying something? All of this is part of Google Analytics. How long are they staying? How long are they staying? That's called the bounce rate.

[00:36:07] What are your favorite? What are their favorite pages? What are the content that you have? They spend the most time on?

[00:36:13] All of that stuff is great, great.

[00:36:16] Data that you would never be able to get otherwise. But Google allows you to do this. And there's also a plugin for that. It's called Google Analytics or Google Analytics for. And then there's some other words after that it depends on the type of analytics you're trying to use,but having some type of analytics plug in is really a key is really key to determining whether your website is doing what it's supposed to be doing and that's getting your traffic. If you're making if you're making changes to your website, you can also see whether or not those changes are being very effective because you're hoping to see different data come back from the analytics plug in that tells you, Hey, you get more traffic now or you're getting less traffic or your traffic hasn't changed. So that's part of the package of having analytics done on your website so you can see what's going on because otherwise you are literally flying blind. If you have no idea who's coming and where they're coming from and what are, they're doing, what they're doing, then you're flying blind and you're keeping your fingers crossed that you're getting the right amount of traffic to do what you need to do. Ok, so that's analytics. One other one, which is sort of a an addition to this and an extension,

[00:37:30] We use a plug-in called pretty links. And it sort of says what the name is, it pretties up the links that we send either through the website or through email for people that want to engage us in our services, they want to download stuff and the like.

[00:37:48] So we're just giving them on a podcast or they could be printed on a postcard or, you know, a business card or something like that.

[00:37:56] Yep, exactly. So as an example, Tom could have a link on the Screw the Commute website that would be screwed the commute. And that would be download Dash something, dash something, dash, blah blah, blah, blah blah. That's the way the links would look within WordPress. But you can't expect people to remember that, and you don't want to print that on a card or anything else. So what happens is pretty links says, All right, give me that link, and I'm going to allow you to make a real short link out of that. So instead, what you would send is screw the commute download or free download or something like that. And that's all they have to remember makes it a lot easier to remember if they don't write anything down. It makes a lot easier to send in an email. And it also doesn't look suspicious to a lot of the scanning engines that scan for spam email. The very last thing you want is to have your email trapped in a spam filter. So Pretty Links helps you to avoid that as well.

[00:38:55] Yeah, and and some people will say, Well, you know, we got Bit.ly. Why would we want to bother with pretty links? Well, Bit.ly. A lot of spammers use Bit.ly, and a lot of places won't accept Bit.ly. So this looks does not look scary at all to have your website as the first part of the domain and then slash something, it looks totally normal and legit, as opposed to Bit.ly slash a bunch of numbers and letters, you know so.

[00:39:25] And also, if you're using affiliate links, pretty links can help you to make those look kind of normal too, because affiliate links look pretty scary, as is.

[00:39:34] That happens all the time on when I host a webinar for somebody. And then they make a pretty link that says something that their website Tom, but it's actually going to my affiliate link for. If we sell anything on the webinar, then the all they have to do is slash Tom and boom. They get it goes through the affiliate link, right?

[00:39:58] Otherwise, the link itself looks like somebody's cat walked across the keyboard. And nobody's going to ever remember that or or even try that. They may look at that and be very suspicious. So you don't want to do that. Ok? The last one I want to mention in this series of plug ins is what is called a page builder. Now, WordPress has its own built in editor. It's called the Gutenberg Editor and I think Gutenberg is still working on it because it's yeah.

[00:40:28] It works. All right, but it does work. Yeah, go ahead. Tell him what you. Yeah, it does.

[00:40:36] It does work. I have to admit that Tom is correct.

[00:40:39] It is a work in progress.

[00:40:42] The Gutenberg editor is better than the classic editor that they had previously, but it's built into WordPress and it's a free editor and it does. It does an OK job, that kind of thing. But if you really want a modern looking website, you're going to need a modern page builder, the page builder that we use and that we've really we really love because it's flexible. It gets the job done, and it can really make exactly what you're thinking in your head, be realized on the screen. It's called Thrive Architect.

[00:41:15] It's actually from thrive themes. That's the name of the company and that's Thrive Themes makes this program called Thrive Architect.

[00:41:24] Yeah, but you also my affiliate link, folks. It's only nineteen dollars a month.

[00:41:28] That will be in the show notes as well. Definitely. And they also make a new version of this called the thrive theme builder. Not only does it allow you to build pages, but it will actually allow you to build an actual theme customized for your website. It doesn't get any better than this, really. We use Thrive Architect on all of the sites it.

[00:41:52] Some of the older sites, a few of the older sites we have the regular editor there only because the theme that we're using is too old and in order to fix it in order to get it up to date, require a heck of a lot of TLC. Yeah, most likely would have to revamp the whole thing, and it's just a lot of work. But the the best thing about using something like a page builder, like thrive architect, especially in this case, it just works. I drag and drop an image. It goes exactly where I want it to go. I move text around. It flows exactly how I want it to flow. I want to change the font size and the color of the text. It's just simple. It's a couple of clicks and it's and it's done. It just makes making pages, doing blog posts and even building a website from scratch much, much easier. Now do you have to be an expert to use this? No. Thrive also has their own university, where they have a whole bunch of videos and all sorts of stuff that will step you through all the processes to use the software in the most efficient way possible. But it's one of those things where you just use it and it works, and you're very happy about that and you'll find yourself smiling after using it.

[00:43:08] Yeah, even even better than that, if you buy it through my affiliate link, Larry will tutor you on using the architect. We have older, much older people making beautiful websites all excited about it because, yeah, anything you got to figure out yourself. I mean, that's our whole value as a mentor program, as we, you know, we tutor you and it cuts your learning curve down to nothing and you don't have to fool around with stuff that we know is bad because we've checked it out already. When I was looking in my when I did the the thing, what was it Monday? I think Monday on all the the tools that I use. There's a I've tried over a thousand of them over the years in my roboform, you know, password editor. I was just I was like, Oh my God, I used all these things, all these. And then I cut out all the ones that were terrible and only teach you how to use the good one. So anyway, if you get it through, our affiliate link will tutor you on it and you'll be up to speed in that time.

[00:44:11] That would be episode 520 on marketing tools.

[00:44:14] Yeah. Ok. That's a good one. Just like this one. And yes, I will. Yeah, I've done this many times for many of times mentees, and it really provides me literally with great satisfaction knowing that the people that I'm training are actually going to be able to do this themselves. They don't have to rely on other people to get simple things done and maybe even not so simple. Depending on how far you want to take that, so thrive architect as a page builder and anything within thrive. The Thrive Themes family definitely worth the price of admission because it'll make your job and your website look so much better, and it'll make your life a lot easier by by using the software.

[00:44:53] And you'll save a fortune. Because that's true. You'll make world class websites for less than one hundred and fifty dollars, and you couldn't even get a decent, you know, a competent web designer for one thousand five hundred three thousand, you know, five thousand for something you could have done for one hundred and fifty bucks, which allows you to have a massive web presence and make all your hobbies tax deductible, have separate websites and all of these things, and no delays and no waiting because the web designers kids sick and you know, all the kinds of excuses we hear all in. You know, I'm not against sick kids, but but the thing is, is probably they're lying to you to start with.

[00:45:38] That's true.

[00:45:40] All right, what else we got?

[00:45:43] Those are the main ones that I would definitely would recommend.

[00:45:49] Well, like we have our membership site, though.

[00:45:51] That's a yeah, that's yeah, those are those are the ones that for just about any site, if we're going to go into membership sites, then then the Big Kahuna in that space, the one that we would definitely recommend is called WishList Member.

[00:46:06] And Wishlist Member is a set of set of plug ins, it's actually it can be up to two plug ins in one, or you can do it where it's just one plug in. There's a variety of ways to do this. What that allows you to do is automatically enroll members into your membership website with so little friction, it'll make you wonder whether or not the thing is working. It makes it very, very easy for people to sign up. It makes it very, very easy for people to pay, and it also makes it very, very easy, especially on a recurring basis for you to get that recurring revenue for the membership.

[00:46:44] So all in all, it really is a great way to get into the membership site area of using your website. There are plenty of other ways to do it, but Tom has found, and so have I, that in many cases we're talking thousands of dollars in order to get this right. And you don't have anywhere near as much control as you would by using some of the plugins that are available today. Yeah, my main membership site for my mentor program costs $4000, and I still had to do a lot of the work on it. So, you know, it's been around a long time. It's got 19 years worth of content on it. So it's a be a big hassle to switch it over because it does work. But I'm not paying $4000 anymore when for another, I think, $197 license, you know, I can have a membership plug in like this that works like a charm. But anyway, the recurring revenue is a great model, still good. If you have membership sites, that money comes in and it's the same amount of work. If you have one hundred members or a thousand members, say so you can you get that recurring revenue? I call it like an insurance policy for your for your family, because if you're sick or hurt or, you know, just don't feel like working that day, money keeps coming in. So we love that, that plug in. And like I said, there's all kinds. There's so there's thousands and thousands of plug ins for do different things on your site, just depending on your requirements. When you start searching it out and looking into it, you'll you'll start seeing, Oh man, I didn't know it could do that. I didn't know it could do that. So there's lots of now tell them about keeping them updated.

[00:48:28] Ok, so far, we've talked about which ones you should use, which ones you should install and activate and get configured on your website. That's half the process. The other half is to make sure that the plugins that you install on your website stay up to date.

[00:48:45] And why do you need to do that? Because plug ins are really no different from any other piece of software you've ever used on any computer you've ever used in your entire life. That includes your cell phone. It's all software driven, so if every so often you go in, if you have an iPhone, for example, and you see 15 apps that need updating, plugins have the exact same situation. Plug ins go through feature enhancements. They go through fixing security holes. They have patches to fix bugs, that kind of thing. So there are two main ways to do this. One. Your hosting company, whoever it happens to be, sometimes gives you the ability to turn on and off the ability to do automatic updates within your hosting plan. And when they do that, that means you don't really have to worry about it because they're going to handle updating all of your plug ins whenever there are new updates. The other way is if your hosting company does not do that, or if you'd rather be in better control of it when you're on your website's dashboard. And as I mentioned earlier, you click on plug ins, there is a column that WordPress provides that says very simply automatic updates, and it gives you the option on each plugin you have installed, whether or not you want to enable auto updates, which means it will update automatically when a new release comes out. Or you want to disable auto updates so that you don't get an update when a new release comes out. Now, why would you do that? You may do that because you might be working on something which is dependent on the particular version of the plugin you're using right now. We ran into a problem like that with the player that we use on the commute. If we went past a certain version with the latest update, something broke and we wasn't sure we weren't sure what it was. So I reached out to the support group and while they were working on it, what I did was I reverted back to the older version and I turned off auto updates just to make sure it wouldn't do it accidentally.

[00:50:47] Once they fixed it and they released a new version, I turned auto updates back on and everything's been fine ever since. So those are the two main ways that you can keep your plug ins up to date, and with all the security enhancements and bug fixes and enhancements in general that they need to have. And it's very, very. Very, very important that you keep those plug ins up to date for a whole bunch of reasons, but the biggest reason is that WordPress itself gets updated on a regular basis. Anybody that has a WordPress website knows they see minor updates every so often come out. So in this case, WordPress is on version five point eight. Lately, they just came out with five point eight point one, and then there was five point eight point to that point. Two of the point one is called a minor update. If it once it jumps to 5.9, it's more like a major update. So WordPress keeps evolving and updating the plugins themselves have to keep evolving and updating along with WordPress so they can continue to work together correctly. So that's why keeping your plugins up to date is extremely important, and you have to do that. If you can't do it yourself and your hosting company isn't doing it, you need to get someone you can trust to get in there and make sure those plugins stay up to date so that your website is not subjected to hackers and and crashes and stuff like that. Because it's just too old and that's the best way to do it, though, is just to keep it up to date. All of the developers that work on these plugins are very, very well aware of what's going on with WordPress. So they try and keep these up to date so that when you update WordPress, the plugins themselves get updated and they all stay in sync and everybody's happy.

[00:52:33] Yeah, those are your two methods. Yeah.

[00:52:34] And of course, you know, we will check this for you and then teach you how to do it. And you're in my mentor program now. Don't we have a broken link checker?

[00:52:43] We do, as a matter of fact about that one. Yeah, that is one of the that's one of the best things since sliced bread I got to tell you. And for a lot of reasons, there are, if you do a search for broken link checker plugins, you're probably going to get dozens and dozens of them come up in the list.

[00:53:03] But there is one that we use exclusively for two reasons. One, it's the only one that really worked well. And two, it's been updated recently and is now being kept up to date by the company that now owns the code, which is a great which is great news for me. It's actually called very simply broken link checker, and what it will do is exactly what it sounds like. It will go through your entire website. It will find every single link, and it will test those links to see whether or not they're valid if they're not valid. It will display it for you in part of the dashboard. There will be an entry there for Broken Link Checker. You can click on that and probably send you an email to write.

[00:53:47] It will send you an email if it does find a whole bunch of links that are broken. Yes, you can configure it to send an email. And that's and that's what I do. I have all the websites send me emails when things are broken. This way, I can see whether or not is it a temporary thing or is it something different? Like if it's a major website and I see it says it can't reach it, I'm thinking, all right. That just had to have been a temporary blip.

[00:54:09] If it's some other website that's a little bit more obscure or maybe more private, or it goes blank or something like that. Exactly. It could be that the affiliate link is broken, or it could be that the company that has the affiliate link wasn't responding at that time. So the Broken Link Checker said, Hey, there's something broken here. I don't know what's going on. And then that'll give you the opportunity to go check. But Broken Link Checker is so good you can configure it to check every day, every week, every month, however you want to do that. And it's Tom mentioned it will. It is configurable to send you an email that will tell you, Hey, you got broken links, you go check it out and then you can go in there to all the different pages and posts and fix them. Or if you know, for a fact, the link is not broken. There's a button there that says Recheck, and it will go ahead and recheck that link. And if it's good, it comes off the broken list and you're finished. So it's one of those things that will prevent you. From having people come back to you, either via email or something else to say, Hey, I went to your website and I clicked on this link over here and it's broken.

[00:55:12] Well, you're actually lucky if they do that, because most of them will just say, you know, well, they don't take care of their site and they'll leave, you know?

[00:55:21] Yeah, that is actually the worst case scenario. People will look at that and say, Hey, I don't want to be bothered with this. They don't even take care of their site. Well, so I'm history. Yeah.

[00:55:28] And so folks, any time any of these things we talk about and then hundreds of other things that you can get a notice, it's best because if you get serious about this and have lots of websites and lots of stuff going on, it's easy for stuff to just fall to the wayside. And then you might have been killing yourself to get traffic there. And the people say, Oh, they're not taking care of their site or, you know, the thing is broken and you don't know about it. So, you know, after almost in January 28 years, I've been doing this thousands of websites that I've had and blogs and, you know, so anything that can notify me. And then also when comments, you definitely want to engage with people if they actually take the time to comment. So if you can get notice of that, you can set your YouTube channel to notify you when you get comments for different. And we have a bunch of different YouTube channels and each channel has a bunch of different videos. You couldn't possibly review all of them you one time, so you have to use this technology. So, so we're going to take a brief sponsor break. When we come back, we're going to let Larry take a Pepto-Bismol and tell you about what it's like when we review a site that's got I think our record is 39 or 41 plug ins, and most of them were just not even connected or working. So, so, so folks just want to remind you about this great pilot program we have that's helping the persons with disabilities do this kind of work so they can get good jobs and they can start their own business or both.

[00:57:03] And I'm just so proud of it. You know, I've raised a lot of money for kids and animals and all kinds of stuff over many years. But this is I'm looking at as like my crowning glory. I'm going to change these people's lives forever. And then I took a grant writing course so that I can prove the concept with these people and then roll it out really big for foundations and corporations to to fund loads of people to get this kind of training. Because you all see with these mandates and lockdowns and supply chain troubles and all this stuff, it is really powerful to be able to work from home and especially powerful if you're not mobile or you can't see, you know, so you can still have a very lucrative career if you have these skills. So I'd love to have your help with this. We're going to use some of the money to hire people with disabilities to help run the program. So check it out at IMTCVA.org/disabilities. Check out the Go Fund Me campaign, and any little bit you can chip in is great. And hey, if you're really flush with cash, you can sponsor a person yourself and something you can be proud of the rest of your life. All right, let's get back to the main event. I think Larry's had time to take his Tylenol and Pepto-Bismol, so tell them about when people come to us and we evaluate their sites.

[00:58:36] All right, just so you know, I have a bottle of Pepto-Bismol right next to me in case I have to take a glug of it as I'm relaying this story. So a glug is also a technical term.

[00:58:45] Glug is a technical term. Yes, so Tom is correct. The total number of plug ins in this particular website was forty one when I first, when I first glanced my eyes on it and I actually have that site up in front of me right now.

[00:59:02] Don't tell me who it is.

[00:59:04] I'm not going to say who it is, but I want to make sure that I relive this glory in all of its glory as I retell this story.

[00:59:11] Ok, so I was tasked with taking a look at this website to see what's going on with this thing. And I could tell that it was it wasn't responding as quickly as it should. You know, the usual kind of stuff. I want to take a look and see what's going on behind the scenes, as we call it. So I logged into the website, I went to the dashboard. I clicked on plug ins and I waited. And they waited some more. And I see the things spinning and I say, what is going on here? And it finally came up on the page and I looked in the corner and it said all it gives you a count of the total number of plug ins, how many are active, how many are inactive and a whole bunch of others. Well, the total for all was forty one. And I looked at that said, I got to be seeing this wrong when I took a closer look by sticking my nose up to my screen. And sure enough, it said forty one. But even more horrifying to me was that the number of active plug ins was really like twenty eight at that time, which means thirteen of those plug ins were just sitting there gathering space, not doing a thing. And that is just never, ever a good idea.

[01:00:26] So after going through that and getting over the shock of what I just saw because forty one is just ridiculous, that is just a ridiculous number. I don't care what anybody tells me. It's a ridiculous number. So I took a real close look at the ones that were inactive. I figured, let me try and slice this up to make it easier for me as I go through my analysis. So I took it all, took a look at all the ones that were inactive, and I discovered that many of the inactive ones were duplicates of duplicates in function of the ones that were already active.

[01:00:59] So, for example, there was a backup plugin, but there was also another backup plugin that was sitting there inactive that had been used once before. But then they decided that I want to. I don't want to use this one, and they just left it there. And then there was another one for. They had they actually had three SEO plugins in there. Never a good idea, by the way. They had a few others that had to do with analytics. I know you pick a category and I think they had duplicates for all of them.

[01:01:24] Yeah, think of it this way, folks. You, you have furniture in your house and you say, I want to get a new living room suite. So you bring in a new couch and a new ottoman and a new recliner and a new coffee table, but you keep the other ones there, too.

[01:01:41] That's about right.

[01:01:44] So now you got two couches and two on them, you know, so that's what's happening. It's just bloating everything for no reason.

[01:01:51] And what's worse is the new stuff doesn't match the old stuff. Now you have clashing of colors. One's a plaid. One's like a one's like a brushed velour. This doesn't match. Ok, so getting rid of all the inactives actually made a big difference right there,

[01:02:08] Because even though the plug in itself is inactive, the code for that plug in is still sitting inside WordPress. So any time you run a security scan to make sure there's no malware on your site, any time you do a backup to backup the data on your site, you're scanning all those inactive plug ins. You're also backing up all the inactive plugins. And it's not just the plug ins, it's all the data that comes with those plug ins. So once I eliminated the inactive ones that were obviously not being used, that kind of sped the website up a little bit and made it a little bit more responsive. But was that the end of my nightmare?

[01:02:50] No, no, no, no, no. Because now that I'm down to twenty eight plug ins, I have to take a look at those that are now active and see, do you need any of these or their plug ins that are duplicating functions that you can really get rid of? And sure enough, right off the bat, I see two backup plug ins that are running simultaneously. One of them happened to be one of the ones that I mentioned previously. That's Updraft Plus. So they were using that one that was the right backup plug in to use. But then there was another plug in that was actually taking a backup at the exact same time that the original plug in was taking a backup. And this was Joe Smith's all in one plug in for backup. Something like that. I can't even remember the name of this thing. It was just mind blowing what this thing was doing. So I took a look real close at it, and I realized that this plugin had been installed, I think, three years ago. And we're still taking a backup from two thousand eighteen. There was something wrong with the plug in and it never ended. So the website itself has been grinding along, trying to finish this backup for three years.

[01:04:04] So I'm sorry, I couldn't help but stop laughing myself. I just couldn't believe it.

[01:04:09] I mean, it's sad, sad. But I mean, it is so sad, so bizarre. And this happened to thousands of you out there listening to this. And if you don't, if you're not keeping up with this stuff or having somebody like Larry, look into it and double check it for you and you can't trust your web designers. I get all the time people are saying, I just love my web designer. She's so nice or he's so nice and. And then we look at the stuff and they're totally incompetent and hurting the person and they feel bad. And in the principal, the website owner feels bad about it because they don't want to hurt the feelings of the person that's been screwing them over with incompetence for sometimes years. And you know, I'm all for treating people nice. But I mean, business is business. If it's this thing isn't doing what you need to do and you're paying this person to be incompetent and hurt you just because you don't know any better. That's I can't go along with that.

[01:05:06] Yeah. And the other problem is, too, that in many cases like this, you'll never know how many sales you lost because something went wrong on the website and people just gave up and went somewhere else.

[01:05:18] You'll never know that. And that's usually what happens in cases like this. Sometimes the website will hang, or it'll take too long to respond. And as we know in today's society, in the 21st century, with the rise of social media 2.0 and all this other stuff, people's attention spans are pretty short. Well, not only that, Google demands that your site load instantly, you know, and that's on that mobile and desktop.

[01:05:44] That is really one of the things that people need to be aware of much, much more. Google will penalize you if your site doesn't respond fast enough. Period. There's no ifs, ands or buts about that. Now, what does that mean? Practically? It means that if you are showing up on Page one for a given set of keywords, you're not going to be on Page one anymore. In fact, it's a crapshoot what page you might show up on which nobody will ever see.

[01:06:13] Nobody will.

[01:06:14] Nobody, yeah. Nobody knows that.

[01:06:16] No, nobody goes that deep anymore. So yeah, it really it can hurt you in many, many ways. Even though you may not see it up front, like on your it doesn't show on your front page, Hey, I'm running really, really slow. You got to fix me. Google notices and Google will penalize you if the user what they call the user experience is not up to their standards, and that means desktop, laptop and mobile. It's got to be both. You can't just have one over the other.

[01:06:47] All right. So out of twenty eight, how'd you get? How many did you get down to?

[01:06:50] Ok, I think I got down to seventeen was the final number. And seventeen turned out to be the right number for the functions that that website was to perform. It was collecting email addresses. It was doing connections with, I think, some email provider. It was also allowing people to download PDFs and a few other things. So taking a look at the list that we finally wound up with turned out to be the correct number. But 17 is a long way from forty one.

[01:07:26] Yeah, I mean, if you had if if all forty one, let's just say all forty one of those were reasonable and good, you should have multiple websites. You could you couldn't possibly need that many functions

[01:07:39] On one website. Yeah, I would. I would definitely say that that website's way overloaded. There's too much going on. Yeah, way too much.

[01:07:47] So folks, if you're in my mentor program, we would take care of and teach you about all this stuff and make sure it wasn't hurting you. Or we do have a service that for a fee, we will do a complete evaluation of your website. I'll do all the usability and the marketing and all that stuff on the front end. Give you a report and Larry will do the back end report of all this kind of stuff that's going on. So that's also available to you. But you're better off in my mentor program. That way, you can get the whole shebang of all the things we teach our folks. So I'm sorry, Larry, about making you so sick at this at the end of this, but I just took another glug of Pepto-Bismol working out.

[01:08:29] I know the butler will give you a massage and and draw your bath water for you with some Epsom salts and stuff like that.

[01:08:38] Oh, fancier than that, probably caviar. You know our bath for, uh, for you, rich guys, so, yeah, so anyway,

[01:08:47] Thanks a lot. Yeah, folks, Larry's awesome. He's an IMTC graduate and he's got a million different certifications for stuff I don't know, and I've been bugging him to get his book done here pretty soon, but it's.

[01:09:01] In progress in progress.

[01:09:02] All right. So thanks, Larry, for coming on.

[01:09:05] My pleasure. It was a lot of fun. Thanks.

[01:09:08] All right folks, we will catch you on the next episode and happy Thanksgiving. Catch you later.

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