Blogging Monthly - Get All The News & Updates About Blogging Sanjeev Mohindra

In this monthly episode we will discuss about the Thrive Automator Launch, WordPress 5.9 development and Divi latest update for speed optimization.

With this monthly episode, we will discuss the upcoming WordPress 5.6 release, latest Black Friday deals for Bloggers and Genesis Block Theme BETA for WordPress.















Blogging Monthly 007 Episode















Hey Everyone, Welcome to the latest episode of Blogging Monthly. This is Sanjeev Mohindra from MetaBlogue and in this episode, we will talk about the latest updates around Blogging and WordPress.







We are coming close to the end of 2020 but before that we have to brace one more major update of WordPress - WordPress 5.6. So, let’s start this month episode with talking about the upcoming features in this release.







WordPress 5.6 Features







Currently, WordPress 5.6 is slated to launch on 8th December unless there are some serious issues in BETA testing. This will be the last major release for WordPress this year and packed with some of the key features.







PHP 8 Support







The first feature coming with the update is support for upcoming PHP 8 upgrade. PHP 8 upgrade will be launched at start of December 2020 and WordPress will have support for it within a week.







Since PHP 8 is a major upgrade and contains a lot of features, you may not want to move your WordPress sites to PHP 8 right away. The WordPress themes and Plugins which you use on your blog also needs to be tested with the latest version before you can think of upgrading the PHP version.







Though, it’s nice to know that WordPress core will have compatibility with the latest version and as soon as other plugins are certified, you can plan the move. PHP 8 comes with many enhancements including JIT (Just in Time Compiler).







For novice, the JIT will convert the PHP byte code to machine code removing the intermediary formats with the help of Dynamic Assembler. This should speed up the PHP code interpretation which intern should help WordPress improve the page performance. If you want to know more about the PHP 8 changes, Kinsta has a good article on it - Check Here.







I use Plesk for managing most of my WordPress installs, so I will be looking for Plesk support of PHP 8. Plesk allows to install multiple versions of PHP and attach web apps to specific PHP version. It means, I can install and test staging sites with PHP 8 before making it live for my sites.







The idea should be to look for sites with a smaller number of plugins and traffic, to see the compatibility with PHP 8. Those should be the sites to move to latest version and see the performance enhancement before moving the real money sites.







Gutenberg Editor Improvement







The upcoming release will pack as many as seven Gutenberg plugin release. All the updates for last seven releases will be pushed into WordPress Core with this release.







There are some minor enhancements on the Information section to communicate the structure and word count more clearly for your posts. Typography section gets an option to set the line height along with font size and weight.















The Block patterns was introduced in WordPress 5.5 and they are getting some nice UI enhancement. Now, they will be organized under category so that users c...

With this monthly episode, we will discuss the latest WordPress 5.5 release, five weeks ban on Astra WordPress theme and other security issues relates to WordPress.























Hey Everyone, Welcome to the latest episode of Blogging Monthly. This is Sanjeev Mohindra from MetaBlogue and in this episode, we will talk about the latest updates around Blogging and WordPress.







WordPress 5.5 Release







So, let's start with one of the biggest news of the month – WordPress 5.5. release. WordPress 5.5 is a major update that will bring a lot of performance improvement and editing enhancement to the core of WordPress.







WordPress 5.5 combines the Gutenberg update for version 8.5 and 8.6 to deliver major editing enhancements to the block editor. It also combines some of the basic requirements like XML sitemaps, Lazy Loading in the WordPress core. Earlier, webmasters were using external plugins to get these functionalities but now they can get these by default with WordPress.







Automatic Themes and Plugin Updates







The first change coming to WordPress Plugins and Themes is automatic updates. You can enable the automatic update for installed themes and plugin individually. Till now, webmasters have to use Jetpack or some other plugins to provide this functionality but now it has been integrated into the core.







This means now every webmaster can choose and select which plugins and themes can be automatically updated. You can also pick and choose to only select the items which you trust will not break your site. So automatic updates can be enabled for individual items.















Though I would have loved to add a pre-defined delay while enabling the automatic updates. Something like, update the plugin with 3-4 days delay after detecting a pending update. This way if there are any bugs or issues, you will have fixes rolled out before it breaks your site. I always update WordPress plugin and themes for my sites manually after waiting for almost a week from the updates rolled out date.







One hidden feature is the ability to block auto-update for specific plugins remotely. So, in case they find any issues with plugin or theme, they can set a flag at the repo level which can block the auto-updates. This is a good security feature to stop impacting multiple sites due to faulty codebase.















XML Sitemap







XML Sitemaps are one of the important requirements for good SEO. Till now webmasters have to rely on external plugins to generate XML Sitemap but now WordPress will generate the XML Sitemap by default. You can access the sitemap at /wp-sitemap.xml URL of the site.







There are filters and hooks available to customize the Sitemap output which can be utilized to make changes in the final Sitemap. Though many webmasters might still depend on SEO plugins to create sitemaps which have already spend a lot of effort on customizing the output.















SEO Plugins like Yoast SEO or RankMath has already pushed the update to disable the WordPress Sitemap functionality since their Sitemaps are more customizable.







But this will be a useful feature for the sites...

With this monthly episode, we will discuss some of the important updates and changes for the WordPress community. Google SERP update and new core web vitals which will be important for online businesses in the coming time.























Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Blogging Monthly. Last month has been very busy, not only because of Pandemic but also due to certain updates from Google.







Google has not only released a new SERP update but also updated Webmaster tools to include various new reports. They have also suggested using the new Core web vitals report to check the health of your sites as later this year they will start using those signs for SERP.







Google SERP Updates And Web Vitals







So let's start taking a deep dive into each of those topics. To start with let's discuss Google SERP update for May 2020.







Google May-2020 SERP Update







Google has released a major SERP update last month. The update started rolling out on 4th May and got completed around May 18th. This is one of the major core updates after what we have seen in last September.







This update has given a lot of fluctuations to the first page rankings. Even worst, many webmasters have reported that their first-page rankings were moved down to 9th or 10th pages.







Google's official response is similar to any other core update that the webmasters can't do much about it other than creating user-friendly content. Though the rating volatility impact across the industry is huge for this update. You can check the chart from SEMrush to see the SERP variations for last month.















Who Is Winning?







So who is winning and loosing in this SERP update?







Let's talk about my sites first. Last time when I talked about COVID-19 impact on Blogging in the last episode, I told that I am seeing an increase in the traffic on a few pages. Those pages are related to how you can work from home or things you need to set up a home office.







There was a surge of almost 100% increase in traffic on those pages but with this update, I have lost that surge. I checked and most of the traffic loss is due to the lost rankings. Some of my keywords where I was ranking in the top 3 have moved out of the first page.







On MetaBlogue, the impact is minimal and I have not lost much of the traffic with this update. Small ranking changes but some of the pages have also improved which has kept the overall traffic about the same.







So what's happening overall industry?







The update was not targeted to any specific geographic or niche, the impact is worldwide and across niches. The major gainers look like news articles that have started getting more prominent locations on the front page.







Along with news, another major change is for online forums. Many webmasters have reported that they are seeing the online forum pages gaining in the SERP. Articles are being replaced with more user-generated content on the 1st page of search results.







What happened with your sites? If you are seeing any impact please drop a note and let me know.







How to recover from it?







As per Google, there is not much a webmaster can do to recover its rankings. In my view,

With this monthly episode, we will discuss how blogging is getting affected with Coronavirus spread worldwide. Let's check the impact and what can we do to reduce the impact.























Hey Everyone, welcome to yet another episode of Blogging Monthly. This month we will discuss one of the hottest topics running around the world - Coronavirus and its impact on the blogging world.







Until and unless you are living outside of this world, you would have already heard about the Coronvirus which is causing the major disturbance across the world. Blogging world is no exception and we are seeing the impact of the virus on the online sites also.







Coronavirus Impact On Blogging World







Before we start digging in on the impact around Blogging, I would like to mention that across the world governments are trying hard to control the impact and loss of life due to Coronavirus. So, irrespective of where you are, please listen to your local authorities and make sure you are helping them in defeating the virus.







So whats happening at my place?







We are at complete lockdown and can't go outside of our home for anything other than shopping for essentials (only one person per house is allowed to go out for shopping.). It's already been 14 days and we have to go another 15 days more in the same mode before we can make a final assessment. I am following the directive given by the government and local authorities and trying to remain safe.







So I would request each and everyone to do their bit in this fight as we have to come out as a winner while saving our loved ones.







Coronavirus Impact On Blogging







Now how does this is impacting the blogging community? Lets talk about that.







Lets first understand the search trends of Coronavirus. As per the trends shown in Google trends, Coronavirus was most searched last month. Which is true giving its expansion in countries like the United States, UK, and India. The search interest is substantially high giving almost no searches before the last few months.















So people are searching for the Coronavirus and search interest is peaking. How it will behave in the next few months will depend on how better we will be able to handle the outbreak.







Though if you think you have good information or any idea which can help in stopping the virus, you can handle this search term as a seasonal keyword. Don't expect it to last longer than the virus, there may be small ongoing interest afterwords.







What About Other Niches?







From the looks of it, Coronavirus is impacting the blogging community like seasonal trends for now. Depending on which niche and geography you are targeting, results are mixed.







For example, niches like Travel, Tourism, and Hotels are badly hit. Travel across the world is reduced so that the earning from that niche. Most of the sites around that niche have also reported reduced traffic.







The e-commerce based sites or affiliate marketing blogs for e-commerce sites are impacted based on the geography you are targeting. Though sales are down at most of the places, there are few countries where only sales of the essential items are allowed.







For Example, in India, Amazon or any other e-commerce sites can't ship any item other than essential things. So most of them have stopped taking orders and also stopped their affiliate programs. This will reduce the affiliate earnings for the webmast...

The last month was quite active from WordPress security front as well as Google SERP's changes. Let's talk all about it in this Blogging Monthly episode.























Blogging Monthly Episode 03







Hey Everyone, Welcome to another episode of Blogging Monthly Series. We have seen a lot of challenges towards WordPress Security in the last one month. There have been some vulnerabilities that have been identified and hackers are using it to gain unauthorized access to WordPress sites. We will talk about those in this episode.







We have also seen a lot of changes for Google SERP crawl and indexing. Mobile-first indexing is coming to every site across the internet. So if you are not aware of it, this is a good time to look at those changes and make sure your sites are ready for this.







WordPress Vulnerabilities







So let's start with the WordPress security issues. In the recent past, we have seen a flurry of WordPress plugins to get affected by security issues. The plugin includes Duplicator, ThemeGrill Demo Importer, Flexible Checkout Fields For WooCommerce, ThemeREX Addons, etc.







The good thing is that security patches are available for all the exploited WordPress plugins. So, you should update your WordPress installation and make sure you are running the latest version of the exploited WordPress Plugins.







Here is a list of WordPress plugins which you should look and update if you are using them on your site.







Duplicator







A WordPress plugin to migrate or restore your WordPress site. The security issue allows the attackers to upload the unauthorized file to a folder or export the database access credentials. This can give them access to complete sites including the database and they can insert malicious code easily to your site. ThreatPost has published a detailed article about this vulnerability on their site -> Check Here.







ThemeREX Addons







A plugin to provide many support functionality to ThemeREX WordPress themes. There has been an issue with the Addon plugin which can provide unprotected access to the REST API endpoint.







ThemeREX team has been fast to patch the vulnerability in less than a day and able to issue the update. Wordfence has a good detail article about the vulnerabilities of this plugin -> Check Here.







ThemeGrill Demo Importer







A plugin to import the demo content for the ThemeGrill WordPress themes. At the time of exploit going public, the plugin was installed at almost 200,000 sites. Since then many of the webmasters have uninstalled the plugin.







The exploit allows the remote user to wipe the database or restore it as a base install. After that hackers can access the site with the default 'admin' user and password. The exploit is also patched and you can update the plugin to get the fix. WebARX Security has a detailed article explaining the vulnerability -> a href="https://www.webarxsecurity.com/critical-issue-in-themegrill-demo-importer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Check H...