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Why You Should Avoid Blogger.com like a Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

I have moved this post and lots of other WordPress posts over to my new site at https://wpsteward.com, where I will continue publishing helpful tips for website owners going forward.

Blogger.com is like your rich and slightly neurotic girlfriend Julie’s house: Great for visits, bad place to live.

When you live there, at first it’s a storybook! She pays for everything, lets you live there rent free, makes it easy for you to do what you want, and you can just keep adding stuff to your room. Everybody is so happy they don’t even consider reading the terms and conditions. Just sign them, you love that girl!

One day, you decide it’s time to get a new couch. You find a great deal on a dual-reclining model, and the store even delivers it to your place. Oddly, as it comes in the door, your loving girlfriend insists (mumbling something about you having agreed to it) on using a branding iron to sear “Julie loves Jason” on the wooden leg. A little weird, but also kinda cute, and you do love Julie, so why not? After all, she’s letting you live in this awesome house, rent-free.

Over time, each new piece of furniture gets that same treatment. She goes back and marks all the stuff you brought in from before you even knew her. She’s so cute and quirky.

But, inevitably, feelings change. You’re just not that into how things are working out, and you need some space. After a big fight, Julie offers to let you have all your stuff.

Read the rest of this post over at the brand-new WP Steward Blog

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Maketing to Fear vs. Educated Customers: a No-Brainer.

I have moved this post and lots of other WordPress posts over to my new site at https://wpsteward.com, where I will continue publishing helpful tips for website owners going forward.
I'd rather you be educated on how the web works and not be a customer than to be my customer just because you're afraid. Creative Commons Image Attribution
I’d rather you be educated on how the web works and not be a customer than to be my customer just because you’re afraid. Creative Commons Image Attribution

I don’t primarily sell web code; I sell peace of mind.

I could easily market to fear. Fear sells extremely well: just check out the 24-hour news channel to see what I mean. The quickest way to make money in maintenance or insurance is to create a boogeyman and then be the hero who saves the day.

But here’s the thing: I don’t need to market to some sort of irrational fear that the hackers are waiting around the corner from your website, ready to pounce. They’re probably not.

I just need to educate you on how the web works. Specifically, how WordPress works.

Read the rest of this post over at the brand-new WP Steward Blog

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How to display your Favicon in an embedded WordPress Post.

I have moved this post and lots of other WordPress posts over to my new site at https://wpsteward.com, where I will continue publishing helpful tips for website owners going forward.

Today, I learned that if you are old-school and haven’t set up a site icon (a feature introduced in WordPress 4.3 I didn’t see the need for because I had already set a custom favicon using other methods back-in-the-day) , when your posts are embedded on someone else’s site (a feature introduced in 4.4 this month) they will display with a fallback site icon (the WordPress Logo).

I’m not ashamed to declare my posts WordPress, but I do like that extra little branding bump when I can include my logo in the embed, so I set out to figure out why it wasn’t showing up.

The simple (like, trained monkey simple) way to add a site icon is to…

Read the rest of this post over at the brand-new WP Steward Blog

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Sometimes it pays to Cowboy Code.

I have moved this post and lots of other WordPress posts over to my new site at https://wpsteward.com, where I will continue publishing helpful tips for website owners going forward.
Even Legit Cowboys Shouldn't Cowboy Code. Creative Commons Image Attribution
Even Legit Cowboys Shouldn’t Cowboy Code. Creative Commons Image Attribution

“Im going to regret this moment” I said out loud as I ignored my own advice about having a server-level backup before I started messing around with my server settings.

When I am working on client sites, I am beyond careful to never code on the live site, and to have multiple redundant backups, so that no matter how routine a task is, if it breaks something, I can roll back the changes and all is well.

When I’m working on my own sites, however, I often ride a little faster and looser with the code. It’s my little way of living dangerously.

That brings us back to Saturday night…

Read the rest of this post over at the brand-new WP Steward Blog

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