What should have taken a few hours it went on for 8 long days… The objective was to migrate one of my sites from WordPress.com to Hetzner South Africa.
Continue reading Pitfalls when Migrating a Website to a New Hosting Company
Why do I ENJOY WORKING with HetzneR?
Hetzner is a reputable hosting company with competent, friendly people. This is applicable to Hetzner South Africa and to Hetzner anywhere in the world.
Over the past few years I have experienced different hosting companies. It is incredibly frustrating when you are notified that “your website is down…”. This is not just bad for one’s visitors and Clients but very bad for your site rankings on Google and other search engines.
I have never had this problem with Hetzner. No silly excuses – everything just works!
Continue reading Why do I ENJOY WORKING with HetzneR?
How to DElete A Gravatar Profile
How to Delete a Gravatar Profile
Somehow I ended up with two Gravatar Profiles and the old one kept displaying every time a visitor clicked my Gravatar.
It is quite easy to delete a Gravatar Profile.
Visit your account by logging into WordPress.com with your username and go to https://wordpress.com/me/account. Once the page opens scroll down the page to “Close your account permanently” option at the bottom of the page.
Continue reading How to DElete A Gravatar Profile
My GravaTar Profile Has Been Updated
What is a Gravatar?
An “avatar” is an image that represents you online—a little picture that appears next to your name when you interact with websites.
A Gravatar is a Globally Recognized Avatar. You upload it and create your profile just once, and then when you participate in any Gravatar-enabled site, your Gravatar image will automatically follow you there.
Gravatar is a free service for site owners, developers, and users. It is automatically included in every WordPress.com account.
Continue reading My GravaTar Profile Has Been Updated
MailChimp – How to Create Landing Pages
With Mailchimp, you can design beautiful landing pages in just a few minutes. Create a clear call to action that makes it easy for people to join your list or buy your products.
Continue reading MailChimp – How to Create Landing Pages
The Reason I Moved from Telkom’s ADSL to Vumatel’s Fibre (done and dusted in 3 days)
Telkom’s Performance
I have Telkom ADSL that I use for my landline (telephone) and internet. I pay for a 10Mbps Telkom line yet I only get about 1.35 Mbps!!
[Click on screenshot to enlarge it]
Last week 5 different Telkom technicians visited the premises and when the last technician left on Thursday he stated that the speed had been increased to between 8 and 10 Mbps. When I did another speed test it actually showed 0.7 Mbps. To add insult to injury this particular technician ‘cleared the Fault’ as “the issue had been resolved” (details below).
Continue reading The Reason I Moved from Telkom’s ADSL to Vumatel’s Fibre (done and dusted in 3 days)How to Easily Install WordPress with Hetzner
The complete installation won’t take more than 5 minutes.
Continue reading How to Easily Install WordPress with Hetzner
Having Problems with the Gutenberg Editor? Change Back to the Classic Editor
The Gutenberg editor has introduced many useful features to make editing of a WordPress website so much easier. The problem is that Gutenberg has technical glitches…
Should you be experiencing difficulties with your new Gutenberg editor (version 5.0 and up) go back to the Classic editor.
Go to your Admin Area > Plugins > Add New > search for ‘Classic Editor’ > Install Now > Activate
[Click on a screenshot to enlarge it]
And that’s it. You now have your Classic Editor back.
A word of caution: changing from Gutenberg to the Classic editor may mess up your photo Gallery(ies). You may have to create a new Gallery/ Galleries.
Which editors may I using? On my main website https://www.wordpresstrainingjohannesburg.com/ I have reverted back to the Classic editor. On my hobby website I am going to continue using the Gutenberg editor. New features are being added all the time to the Gutenberg editor and the technical glitches that many users are currently experiencing with Gutenberg will hopefully, in the not too distant future, be resolved.
WordPress announced that whilst new features are being added to Gutenberg on an ongoing basis, they will continue to support the Classic Editor until 2021.
LTE Mobile WiFi Router to Keep your Laptop Connected to the Internet during Power Outages
Without any warning South Africa was plunged into darkness with Stage 4 Load Shedding (rotational load shedding, 4- 5 hours at a time). Load shedding continued for five days.
You can keep your laptop connected to the internet through your smart-phone.
There is an alternative way. Connect your laptop to the internet by using a mobile WiFi router. You can connect up to 5 laptops to the WiFi and once charged this WiFi router will keep you going for 8-10 hours.
The cost is approx R1200. I purchased mine (a M7300 LTE Advanced Mobile WiFi Router) at Matrix Warehouse but there are various retailers selling the device. You will find them on Google.
Why Switching from http to https needs to be a priority
Do you still have a http:// website ? NOT GOOD!
If you have your own website or if you are managing the website for a client make sure you move from http to https ASAP. Here are the reasons:
- Website not secure. Google Chrome warns users that the site they are about to visit is not secure. If a user about to visit your website gets a warning that your website in not safe then the probability is high that the user will will not visit your site
- Ranking boost. Google gives a slight ranking boost should your website be https (this means you will be ranked higher when a user does a search on Google)
- Encryption. Encrypting the exchanged data to keep it secure from eavesdroppers. This means that while the user is browsing a website, nobody can “listen” to their conversations, track their activities across multiple pages or steal their information.
- Data integrity. Data cannot be modified or corrupted during transfer, intentionally or otherwise, without being detected.
- Authentication. Proves that your users communicate with the intended website. It protects against man-in-the-middle attacks and builds user trust, which translates into other business benefits.
Is it difficult? Not all all. You simply have to phone your hosting company and request that your URL be changed from http to https. Once this is done remember to:
- update your Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools (for all of you who attended the SEO Training Course)
- change the urls on all your Google Ads (should you be running Ad Campaigns on Google Ads).