I Would Have Screwed It Up…

Well, I’m a wee bit late getting the newsletter out today, but I managed!

Out camping with my son and his friend and they’re spending the next couple days fishing their brains out. But, I didn’t tow a car over this time… and the tire POPPED on his bike. And this is a big park to get around just by running it!

So this morning, I had to pick up camp and head into Walmart to buy him another bike. Then deliver it to him at the pier. Like I’m some kind of servant.

Funny thing is… he’s less than a year from being able to drive and buy a truck. But, that’s fine. The bike only cost $168. Walmart bikes are cheap. Wasn’t worth it to do anything else.

So, the rig is back in the campsite and now I can finally wrap up this newsletter and get it out to you.

And last week, something happened. Something that if I had gone with my original intention…. would have turned out badly.

I’ll tell you about it. Because, there’s a business lesson there, to be sure….

I Would Have Just Screwed It Up

In my backyard, I have this metal building where I store my RV. It also has a nice-size storage room and workshop. The building was recently renovated to get everything just like I wanted it, but there was one thing still missing…

The electrical.

The previous electrical work was pretty hodge-podge. But, even what was there I had to tear apart in order to do all of the renovations. So, now it was time to put it all back.

Now, I tend to be a DIY kind of guy.

In fact, I take some pride in that. And most of the time, I kinda enjoy it.

Even when I think something might be above my pay-grade, I might try it anyway. I’m funny like that.

So, at first, I proceeded to try to put the electrical back in myself.

I plan it out, first. Run a wire up to a switch… which will power a plug which will power the new shop lights up on the ceiling. Run another line to the workshop bench with a nice plug there. And then send electrical up to the ceiling to power up those garage lights above the RV.

I first look at what tools and parts I have. Other than a few plugs, not much. So, there would be trips to Lowes in my future. Perhaps more than one, because you know how it is…. you might buy the wrong part and you end up going back-and-forth as you attempt things. Lowes loves me.

Plus, Lowes parts aren’t cheap! Full retail pricing on everything, so even the cost of parts can add up, right?

Then, there’s the experience. I mean, I’ve done some basic electrical, but I’m a newb. I’m the guy who will bust out Youtube on my phone and see if I can find out how to do something. How do I wire up that switch again? How do I send electrical two different directions?

How many Youtube videos, searches and stupid chats with AI would I have to have to try to figure my way through this thing?

As I sit there in the Florida heat pondering this whole thing, I realize I just might be doing something rather stupid here.

Between the Youtube videos, the searching, the going back and forth for parts to Lowes, and the trial and error, I could see this project taking me multiple hours. And even then, the result might not even be any good.

And mind you, I know what my time is worth. When I am in my office doing work for clients and that’s something I’m quite good at, I know what my time is worth.

So, I do those calculations in my head and realize…

I’m burning time and money like there’s no tomorrow trying to do this electrical work myself. In fact, even to get to the point where I realized I’m probably doing the wrong thing here, I had already spent 2-3 hours on it.

So, I stop. And I go back inside.

And the next morning, I call an electrician.

(story continues below….)

This Week In Concierge

So, I had an idea…

In addition to the premiums tools that I license and make available in the Concierge Toolkit for my clients, I’ve been dabbling with the idea of creating a small library of exclusive tools and potentially even plugins that would be available to clients.

Could be custom code snippets… or full plugins. To help solve problems my clients have with their sites… or just to make life a little easier inside of WordPress.

So, to that end…

Have any suggestions for me?

Are there are plugins, features or “fixes” that you would REALLY like to see available to run on your site?

Hit the reply button on this newsletter and let me know what it might be.

WordPress Quick Bits

Yoast SEO Bug. A bug was reported on LinkedIn where Yoast was inserting “AI Optimized” markup within content and leaving it there… even when the AI stuff is turned off. The fix has already been pushed into the next release candidate.

WordPress 6.8.2. The 6.8.2 release of WordPress is being slated for a July 15th release. This will be pretty much a maintenance release focusing on a few bugs introduced in 6.8.

Google AI Audio Overviews. Google is testing out adding audio overviews to the AI summaries in search results. It is a feature you would need to turn on to use it. Basically, in the AI summary, you will be able to click a button to generate an audio version and then just listen to the results. Not a surprise they’re working on this. If you ever check out NoteBookLM (also from Google), you can compile a ton of resources together and then “chat” with it. But, also interesting is that you can generate what is basically… a podcast. Where two people will be sitting there talking about the topic. If Google is doing that, you know audio is going to play a big role in things moving forward.

WP Rocket And Godaddy. WP Rocket continues their distribution strategy of partnering directly with hosts… this time by partnering with Godaddy. WP Rocket will now be included automatically on all sites built by Godaddy’s web design service.

WP Engine Introduces Failover. WP Engine has launched a new feature called FailOver… a new enterprise-grade backup system for keeping your site online during data center outages. The system will quickly move service to an alternative data center with minimum downtime and no data loss and doing it automatically.

FluentCommunity Update. FluentCommunity 1.7.5 has been released, offering improvements to the course landing page layout, a new “Link” Space type for linking anywhere you want, and more. There’s actually quite a few pieces to this update, so you can read more about it here. The speed of updates to this platform is impressive.

WooCommerce Stipe Plugin. I got an email about the upcoming 9.7 release of the WooCommerce Stripe gateway plugin. Apparently, it will automatically enable Klarna, which is for allowing people to purchase in installments. You’re going to have to specifically disable it, apparently. Highly annoying they would do that, but come July 22nd, be on the lookout to disable that. More on this update here.

AI-Powered 404 Page. Jack Arturo (of WP Fusion fame) has built a new little plugin and put it on GitHub. It will enable the use of AI to dynamically build a 404 page when people arrive on your site on broken links. By taking the incoming info (like the URL), it will search and then use ChatGPT or Claude to build the page. Pretty cool. Haven’t tried it yet, but I will.

PersonalizeWP Pro Now Free. The PersonalizeWP Pro plugin has gone entirely open source and is now free. Interesting, too, because this plugin reminds me of Block Visibility since there’s definitely feature overlap there…. and that’s another plugin where the Pro version went free awhile back. Interesting.

The Story Continues…

So he comes out. He looks. He does this kind of stuff all the time. Just another day’s work for him. In fact, he’s probably even a little bored doing it.

He gives me a quote. He quotes me $745 for the work.

He even recommended a couple extra things that would make the job even cleaner and I would get some extra outlets out of it for that price.

I approved the job.

The day he came out to do it, he came in with a co-worker. And they banged out the entire job in less than 2 hours.

They did the whole thing in less time than I had spent pondering it.

I was in my office getting some work done. Every now and then I’d go out to the building to see what they’re up to…. and they’re just working away.

And 2 hours later…. done.

Not just done…. done beautifully.

I would never have been able to do it like that. Well…. perhaps not true. If I had persevered, perhaps I could. But, chances are my work would look kinda janky in comparison. Probably have quirks and look like a dog’s breakfast.

And how many countless hours would I have wasted trying? Between the multiple Lowes trips, the Youtube videos, the research, the trial and error. It would have been an annoyance and likely taken way longer than I expected. Cuss words would have ensued, I guarantee it.

But, these guys did it in 2 hours.

I was once again reminded…

More often than not, you are NOT saving money by trying to do it yourself when you don’t really know what you’re doing.

In fact, you’re literally WASTING time and money.

That time I would have spent fudging around with this myself in a meager attempt to do as good a job, I could just stay in my wheel house doing what it is I’m good at…. and I would make way more money than I spent having those 2 guys do the job.

Now thing is…

I see people doing this on their websites all the time.

They try building things on their sites when they’re not very good at it. They don’t know how to do it. But, just like I did with my building electric, they want to do it themselves in order to “save money”.

So, they research. They watch Youtube videos. They install all kinds of plugins…. some of which are poorly coded. And, if they get it working at all, they end up building a frankenstein website.

You know, the kind of site which is glitchy, works sometimes (but sometimes not) and is held together with duct tape.

And how many hours (much less weeks or months) did they spend trying to build that frankenstein?

Often, way more than they realized.

I have clients who have done this multiple times. Smart people… GREAT at what they do! But, building functional websites isn’t their “wheel house”. It isn’t their area of expertise.

But, that is MY “wheel house”. This is what I do all day.

I’ve also had my share of projects where I had to de-tangle hodge-podge frankensteins that my clients had some cheap dude on Fiverr or Upwork put together. Because they were trying to save the money.

Thing is… when you have a true pro do it, they might charge more, yes. But, they usually do it much faster and much better.

When it comes to getting things done on your WordPress site, remember this lesson.

It might FEEL right to try to save money and do it yourself.

It felt right to me, too, when it came to the electrical in my RV building outside.

But, that’s all it was… was a feeling. In reality, it made no sense at all for me to do that work. And I’m glad I didn’t. I was happy to write that check to them when they were done. And hell, in my business, I can make that money back in a day (and probably did).

And perhaps it is the same for you when it comes to developing out functionality in your WordPress site.

With Concierge, I am there to remove the tech headache and simplify things. And with Anytime Credits, I will go in and build what my clients need.

I have no business doing my own electrical work. But, when it comes to making WordPress sites sing, well…. that’s what I do.

Happy to help. Book a call and let’s talk.

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The WP Edge is the official weekly newsletter of the Blog Marketing Academy.