Robert Lodi

It’s quite a ‘site’ to behold. 

Quick poll:

Which version of PHP is your WordPress site using?

__ What’s PHP?

__ Huh?

PHP is the scripting language that lives behind the scenes in WordPress (and other) website platforms.

It’s software, and, like any other software, there are updates and patches and security releases over time. 

Which is great and all, and helps keep everything secure. But it can also mean trouble, if your site is out of sync with the latest versions. (If you’ve ever had an older phone or computer that updated to a new operating system, and things went a little wonky – that’s very similar to what I am talking about here.)

So if you have an older WordPress site, and by “older” in this case I mean “built or launched before 2020,” now’s the time to check your PHP version, especially because in just the last couple weeks, I’ve run into two different sites that, well, died, when the server updated to PHP 8.

You can check your version by going to the Site Health screen in WordPress (under Tools) and clicking the ‘Info’ tab at the top and going to the ‘Server’ accordion item.

If you don’t see a PHP version that starts with 8, then the next step is to see if your hosting company lets you test an update. If not – then – the next best thing is to make sure everything on your site – plugins, themes, WordPress version, is relatively current.

Because: PHP 7.x hit ‘end of life’ last year. 

Which means, at some point, web hosting companies will be forcing every site to PHP 8. The hosting companies already did this years ago, when PHP 5.6 hit end of life and they forced everyone to PHP 7. 

Now – this doesn’t mean your site will automatically break.

But this is something to check, and be aware of before it becomes a problem. 

And as always, if you’d like help figuring out what your site is doing and making sure it will keep running as the hosting companies update their software, we’re here to help. 

Day after day I’m more confused
Yet I look for the light through the pouring rain…

So this song came up on the radio the other day and it reminded me –

It doesn’t matter what it is, or how easy anyone else says it is, or how easy it’s supposed to be, if you don’t know what you’re doing, for whatever reason, stuff – any stuff – can be confusing.

Beginning to think that I’m wastin’ time
I don’t understand the things I do…

Which is why we try to make websites that our clients can work with. But even so – that isn’t always perfect. Which is why we also offer training. 

And I’m countin’ on you
To carry me through…*

For any site we build, if you want, we’ll jump in a Zoom, sometimes even meet in person, and show you how to use it to do the day-to-day website tasks that you need to do.

That way, you’ll know how things work, you’ll have seen the various fields and interfaces, and be familiar with updating a page, changing a picture, making a new press release, adding a form—whatever it may be that you need to do with your site. 

We’ll make sure you know what you want to know about your site with this customized training.

So while we can’t possibly give you the beat, boys (and girls), we can at least help with your site and make sure that it does what you need, and also help ensure that you know how to work with it.

Even if we didn’t build it, if you have a website that’s giving you trouble – let us know and we can talk about how to make things work better.

* From Mentor Williams’ “Drift Away”, sung by Dobie Gray, 1973

I meant to post this yesterday, but I couldn’t bring myself to post something on 3/1 with a 1973 song that wasn’t from Dark Side of the Moon.

Have you ever needed a pizza form? 

Last month I was asked to help out with streamlining a school lunch pizza ordering system, that seemed to rely on a series of spreadsheets and PDFs and Google docs and abaci. As part of the solution, I was looking at forms and ways to have the web site do the math for us.

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t do my job alone. I have help from many people, near and far, some regularly and some only as needed, depending on the project or problem.

But an entire group I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet are plugin developers. 

Like any WordPress dev, I use some plugins. And while I try not to overdo it, there are some that I rely on to help build the functionality that clients want.

Lately however, I’ve had some issues. Questions. Tech support needs.

And just in the last month – these people rose above and beyond to help out and sometimes even write plugin feature updates to do what we needed.

• Liam at Gravity Wiz/Perks – I sent in a ticket to Gravity Perks asking if one of their Perks would do what I needed. Instead, Liam recommended a competitor’s product that had exactly the features needed to make that crazy pizza form work. I’ve used (and totally recommend) their Perks for other projects, so they were my first stop for pizza help. I really appreciate them making a recommendation instead of just saying “no.”

• Tech support at at Search & Filter –my favorite, well, searching and filtering tool, answered all my support tickets with patience and professionalism even when I asked what ended up being obvious questions. D’oh.

• Support at at PickPlugins – makers of Post Grid Combo, actually got a feature I needed added to a special plugin update. Like, almost immediately. Just for me. Well, for my client’s site.

• The team at Facet WP  – this plugin was installed on a site I took over. I don’t have my own license and had never used them before (see above for Search & Filter), but they were great, and helped get the weird duplicate listing problem solved anyway.

• Rafael at Gravity Kit – this is the company recommended by Liam, and he has been helping with pizza math for days now. Who knew this needed to be so complicated! Their Gravity Math plugin lets you do exactly what you need to do to count pizza slices with different toppings and turn that into an actionable pizza order for different weeks and classrooms.

If you’ve encountered any great tech support, feel free to tag them here too and or add your favorite plugin, and let’s make this a resource of great tools that we can add to and grow. 

So – if you read part 1, you may recall that having relevant page titles and meta descriptions on your web site pages can help boost your SEO and search results.

But you still need to know what words to put in there!

The short answer is, put in words that your customers will use to find you.

The long answer is – research, trial and error, and testing are all very likely involved to determine what those best words and phrases may be.

Here’s an example. Back in the olden days of the web, airlines optimized their sites for “low fares,” using the words familiar to them as insiders. Turns out customers didn’t want low fares. They were searching for “cheap flights” instead.

Using the words your customers use is a great place to start.

Though, honestly, using anything more specific than “Home” and “About Us” will help you stand out at least a little.

Another thing to consider is consistency. There are several page elements that search engines check on any given page. If you use the same words and phrases across the page, assuming they are helpful and relevant, that will help you score higher for that given search. The plugins like Yoast that show the green, yellow, and red dots – they are basically checking for the same terms in a few places and scoring you accordingly. Which does not mean you can simply repeat everything and boom! Instant success. That’s where testing, research, and also a good content or SEO agency (like the ones we work with) can really help.

But – if you sell fancy pies, and your page title includes ‘fancy pies’, and your meta description says ‘fancy pies,’ and your heading tags include ‘fancy pies’ and your page content mentions ‘fancy pies’, and so on… anyone searching for ‘fancy pies’ is more likely to find your page. And if you’re lucky, they also buy a pie.

(Is that good or bad? I think it’s good.)

When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was “Carry on, Mr. Bowditch” by Jean Lee Latham.*

It tells the story of Nathaniel Bowditch, who grew up in Salem, MA, in the late 1700s, in the time of tall ships and the spice trade. 

(spoilers follow)

At age 12, he became indentured at a local ship chandlery, and throughout his indenture, taught himself math, languages, physics, and more. He ended up writing a book about navigation, first published in 1802, that saved lives, revolutionized seafaring, and that the US Government still publishes and updates today. 

One chapter, early on in his indenture, has young Nat regretting being chained to this store for 9 years, when he wanted to be going to school and moving on with his life. 

A retired sea captain replies, “Only a weakling gives up when he’s becalmed! A strong man sails by ash breeze!”

When a ship is becalmed, the wind died down, sometimes the sailors break out their oars. They’ll row a boat ahead of the ship and tow her. Oars are made of ash, white ash, so when you get ahead by your own get up and go – that’s sailing by ash breeze.”

Nat straightened up “I like the sound of that,” he said.

So did I.

Years ago, when I was laid off from a large telecommunications company, I had decided that I was done with other people, who I’d never even met, deciding whether or not I had a job. 

So I went solo.

Running a business isn’t easy, at least, not for me. 

And I am very lucky – I work with great clients and great colleagues. And it’s not like I am the only one on the oars, either – I have and have had some amazing help. But it’s still a challenge, especially these past few years. 

But by sailing by ash breeze – I (we) am (are) getting it done – staying in business, getting new work, and looking ahead. 

And this month – January 2023 – marks 10 years since I got serious and incorporated as Rock Pixel Scissors, Inc. 

So – thank you. 

Thank you to my clients for trusting me with your work and your businesses, thank you to my friends and colleagues who help in ways both big and small. 

And here’s to another 10 years – or more – of website building and fixing and getting stuff done.

*Recently I was reminded of the Bowditch family which inspired me to dig out the book – I still have it! (thanks Jessica).

So I had to make a pie. My Pie Poll called for apple.

Though I am practically surrounded by cookbooks, my pie-making history has not been the best so I headed online.

When you put “pie” (or any search) into Google, a few things happen. 

First it checks domain names for your search term(s). So if there was a pie.com (if only), that would show up at the top of the list because the domain name scores high in search results.

Then it checks page titles. And meta descriptions. 

And page content, and h1, h2, etc. tags, and links, and image alt tags. And so on.

But to start – after the domain name, page titles and meta descriptions offer a lot of SEO impact and are both easy to edit. They are the low-hanging fruit to get your SEO started.

Overly simplified – here’s how they work.

Those blue links? Those are your page titles. The words under them? That’s the meta description. 

As you can see – the page titles and meta descriptions are directly related to enticing people to click through to your site. And make a pie.

I clicked the first one. And look – the page title also turns into the tab label. And the meta description is also repeated in the first paragraph, though you can also have separate page content and meta info.

And checking the code – you can see the title and description the way Google sees them.

Updating your page titles and meta descriptions with words that help make people want to click to your site can have a big impact in where your site and pages show up in search results. 

Knowing which words to use, of course, is another thing entirely, and I will talk about that more in part 2. But – you can certainly see how a title of “home page” would not be as clickable or searchable as a title like “easy and delicious holiday pies”.

PS. I gave up on pie and went with an easier/simpler apple galette. It was quite good! I should have got a picture. https://food52.com/recipes/81985-easy-apple-galette