WordPress 5.0: The pain, the gain, and why you shouldn’t update yet

This post is especially for my beloved folks out there whose professional websites are built in WordPress – about a third of the world’s websites by some estimates.

Today is the day the benevolent geeks in charge at WordPress released their spiffy new version, WordPress 5.0. You’ll start seeing the graphic above (absent my embellishment…) when you log into your site.

I see you yawning out there. Software update? Dull!  But bear with me for just a second.

It’s not like most web software updates, which just replace the old with the new, in a calm and orderly fashion, like the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. This one has the potential for causing some mischief that could be, shall we say, “stressful.”

It’s all about “Gutenberg,” the editor. That screen you’re on when you’re creating or editing website posts and pages? That. I wrote about it this past Fall and posted a little introduction to it here in my post, “Guten-who?

The good part:

It’s pretty neat. The new one uses a system of blocks to let you arrange things on the page in ways you sometimes couldn’t before, embedding different kinds of content (pictures! text! columns! yay!). For non-technical folks who would love to be able to easily create and edit their own pages, and do more than just the one-long-column-of-text thing, it’s going to be awesome.

The bad part:

Many website designs, frameworks, plugins, add-ons are not compatible with it and thus your site might spit up hairballs when it’s installed. That could mean anything from “no effect whatsoever” to the white screen of death, with no way into your site. Especially if your site is more than a couple of years old and hasn’t had any sort of updating of its “guts,” it could be messy.

It is already causing a bit of mayhem, the same sort of mayhem you might expect if you decided, for example, that you wanted your own personal pet rhino. It’s very possible upgrading to 5.0 right now will break your existing website into smithereens unless you follow some special procedures – and who has time for that right now right before the holidays, seriously?

For the do-it-yourselfers:

But okay, to stay solution-oriented: I’m going to list these procedures below for those who care for their own sites. Before updating, you’ll want to do things like:

  • Take a complete backup of your site and download it to your own computer. NOT just your files and database. The whole directory. Your website host can point you in the right direction there.
  • Update your website’s “theme” – the design framework that it’s running (in your Dashboard, go under Appearance>>Themes to see what I mean) – to the newest version available.
  • Also update your site’s “plugins” (Dashboard >> Plugins) which are the little programs that enable your site to do things like cool contact forms, shopping cart, security, automatic backups, etc.
  • Install a little plugin called “Classic Editor” to switch your editor back to the way it was.

See what I mean? Who has time? Even after all of that, it may still alter your finally-beautiful website, so have your web person’s email handy and consider letting them know before you plan to do that (or have them do it for you, and save a few brain cells).

BUT once the WordPress gods get the kinks worked out, it’ll be a pretty nifty little update to WordPress that’ll help zillions of people work with it more easily and create more beautiful things with it. Totally worth it. No, I mean it, it’ll be good for a lot of people.

They are already apparently working on a revision to fix some of the bugs, and should be publishing a cleaner version (or two, or three) of it in January 2019.

SO, TO RECAP:

  • Don’t push that blue “update to 5.0” button. Just don’t do it. At least not for a month or more.
  • If you can’t resist, take all of the steps above FIRST and light a green candle, burn some incense, recite some incantations from the Necronomicon, etc. If you’re not a WordPress geek, coordinate with your web person before you do.
  • Wait until late January at the very earliest. There’s no compelling reason to upgrade right now. None. So let the dust settle, let the geeks pick it apart and let WordPress fix all the bugs.

If you are hosted by Hostgator, and here are all the reasons I still advise against that, you may want to check with them to make sure it’s not going to automatically update itself.

I’ll update this post as things get sane again.

Peace, all.

P.S. If you’re interested in having us do regular updates to your website so you don’t have to worry about this (including security, backups, updates, and all those geeky things), please reach out.  Learn more about how to buy an hour, or five, or ten, to make sure you can focus on doing the work you love rather than trying to be a website expert too.

Why even the smallest of businesses need Zoom: 50 ways to connect, serve, and earn income

Many of my small businessfolk friends either already use Zoom—the groovy online tool that lets you hold inexpensive video conference gatherings on the web—or are “Zoomcurious,” wondering how they could use it to benefit their work. Even I was intrigued . . . and I’m known as being terribly camera-shy.

small business online meetingsThings like Zoom weren’t always something solo entrepreneurs or small businesses had to think about. Not too long ago, video conferencing was for corporate types, with 20 people sitting around a polished boardroom table looking up the table to a screen where a ghostly head from Corporate was droning on and on.

Nowadays, services like Zoom, Skype, and Go To Meeting give service providers like us the ability to have meetings with faraway clients, prospective clients, audience members, potential partners, buyers, donors, virtual assistants . . . anyone. This gives us a much greater reach, widening the circle for the work we do.

Overview of its top benefits

small businesses can earn income and grow with videoconferencingIt has benefits for many types of businesses, even though it might not be obvious. For me, they are coaching sessions with people anywhere in the world, website co-creation and repair, private training, weekly virtual “office hours” for client questions, and a lot more. I can share my screen, share the viewers’ screen, take control of their screen to show them how to do something, play a video or audio, text chat publically or privately, write on a collaborative whiteboard together, create breakout rooms for individual groupings…and much more.

Best of all, I can save the video recording, audio recording, and a chat transcript, and offer those whenever it’s helpful. The free version allows you to have meetings of up to 40 minutes each. I use the service level that costs $14.99/month, which allows you to do a lot more. It pays for itself a hundred times over every month, probably more than any other tool I use.

So how might this help YOU and to YOUR work?

Below are some common and a few uncommon possibilities to ponder. See if anything here, or anything else comes up for you.  And if you have your own creative use to share, please do share it in the comments!

Attracting New Clients:

Free exploratory consultation or conversation
Free group workshops and classes
Summits and discussion groups
Group meditations or healing sessions
Demonstration of a product
Demonstration of something physical, such as

A yoga pose, meditation posture, proper exercise form
Using a tool properly
Teaching a dog a trick
How/where to apply essential oils
Doing a website/social media task online
Finding images collaboratively
Finding answers on Google
Creating a helpful document for productivity…

Serving Existing Clients Better

Meetings/conversations with or without video – you can use it even if you’re camera-shy!
Client pre-evaluation for acupuncturists, naturopaths, and healers of all kinds (to determine the right appointment type for a client)
Regular/recurring coaching, consulting, or guidance sessions
Working consultations with screen sharing
Private/secure meetings for money management or confidential activities
Group, team or mastermind sessions
Customer tech support
Video demonstrations of the products/services you offer
“Office hours” — times when you’re available online to answer questions and offer help and support
Co-working sessions: Scheduled sessions to do focused work together, avoiding procrastination and powering through a project or challenge
Larger online meetings and corporate presentations (advanced Zoom packages)

Income-Producing Activities

Sell live group workshops, classes, webinars
Sell recorded (evergreen) workshops, classes, webinars  for passive income
Introduce your service business locally
Have a video or live component to an online course you’ve created
Create an entire online course
Offer 1-to-1 coaching or guidance
Offer group coaching programs
Book/manuscript/content review and feedback
Tutoring services
Music lessons
Online instruction
Certification programs – use as a meeting component
Regular meetings as a value-added service for paid groups
Optional follow-up support packages for your product or service
Consumer survey interviews

Help, Community, Business Growth

Recording a video/screenshare to share to YouTube/Vimeo or other social media
Interviews with potential employees or freelancers
Video meeting with an employee
Video meeting with a faraway virtual assistant
Group meetings for collaborative projects
Event planning team meetings
Virtual lunch meetings
Private virtual meetings with students
Listening in on a workshop or class while driving (with the mobile app)
Nonprofit board meetings
Writing group meetings
Informal “tours” of an office space, building, shop, community garden…
Interview speakers for an upcoming event
Mediation

Certainly, there are a zillion more uses, but these were the first to come to mind. Zoom.us has really terrific support, ongoing regular webinars to introduce you to the platform, and great documentation for learning how to make it work for you. There are books and videos online too, of course. And if you’re the kind of person who best learns things like this in a hands-on, one-to-one way, I also offer a bite-sized private training session for it here, where you’ll walk away with everything you need to know, without digging for it.

But no matter how you learn, I’d encourage you to give this tool a test drive if you haven’t already. It has really opened up the world to me, and to many of my clients. It might be just the tool you need to be joyfully productive, pleased and profitable in 2019.