Two Weeks As An Accelerator Plus Member- an update with the Good and Bad
It is exactly two weeks today since I joined the Accelerator Plus program, which gave me a 100, 000 words a moth extra.
The Ugly and The Good are both one
The intention was to use 75.000 words a month, creating in-depth human-researched product reviews across a wide range of niches to sell. How has that gone ..................Well nowhere I have 102,115 words to use in nine days.
Well why you may ask.
Some of you know I use Kadence theme and like Brenda had the white screen of death. How did that pan out, well slowly but it did
What Happened First
Carson came winging in in his Superman cape. Many of you may not know what Carson even does. The answer he does the techie bits behind the scenes. As you know I am not techie and that is the best I can come up with.
First of all he put his team of developers on the case to try and replicate the error they could'nt. That means virtually all my sites were down except one I moved to alternative hosting.
it frustrated me because I just moved it and everything was normal. In the mean time I also decided to be proactive and developed a child theme.
This was good for me independently of this issue because
Benefits of a child theme
A child theme allow to seed me to separate my custom code and modifications apart from the parent theme's code. This means that if there are any issues or errors in the parent theme, they won't directly affect my your customizations in the child theme. This separation can help isolate and troubleshoot server issues more easily.
When I use a child theme, I can safely update the parent theme without overwriting my custom code. This is because my modifications are stored in the child theme's files, separate from the parent theme. By updating the parent theme to the latest version, I ensure that I have the most recent bug fixes, security patches, and performance improvements, which can help prevent server issues.
A well-designed child theme encourages me to follow modular and clean code practices. By keeping my custom code separate and organized in the child theme, I can avoid cluttering the parent theme's files and potentially introducing conflicts or errors that could lead to server issues.
If I encounter server issues or errors, having a child theme can make troubleshooting more efficient for me. I can temporarily switch back to the parent theme to determine if the issue lies with the parent theme or my custom code in the child theme. This narrowing down of the problem scope can help me identify and resolve server issues more quickly.
Using a child theme allows me to make targeted optimizations and performance enhancements specific to my site's needs. By optimizing my custom code in the child theme, I can improve the overall performance of my WordPress site, which can indirectly help reduce the likelihood of server issues caused by poor performance or excessive resource usage.
None of this Solved the Issue
A good child theme is good practice and in my case long overdue but it didn't solve the problem, as i knew it couldn't and wouldn't. Coupled with the fact that my websites ere moved to a new server. This has a more up to date PHP and that made an immediate improvement. Although I still have caching issues.
However I can access my sites in a private window so I can live with that.
The long and the short of it. I very very nearly left WA and I thought that would never happen. Ironically after 17 years here I was inspired my Brenda to promote WA, and have referrals. Of course, I didn't want to leave my fam, but I felt I had come to the end of a long road.
Now thanks to Carson and his developers I can move forward and write those 102,000 words in 9 days. Not sure I can but I am trusting that Kyle mark 2 can. It is going to be a stretch to write them, as I have not got my research done yet.
I am determined to use them and the plan always was when I have to pay I will give myself three months t make it pay and get that money back and more.
THE FINAL FRONTIER
When Kyle and Carson say contact me with any problem, they mean it. They will reach out and help. Like most people I find asking for help tough, (any advice here, bung it below in the comments). In this case I decided to see it through and while it has taken weeks I am now happy i can move forward.
A big thank you again for Carson, who even sent me Pms on a Sunday and as I know he has a family, it touched me.
How off to get Kyle mark 2 working. I will update you all at the end of the month. I certainly wont get all of those words, personalised, they will remain in drafts. Then we will see what happens next month .
In Short Dont give up
Recent Comments
52
It seems pretty complicated. I have to go back and look things over to understand some of the terms in your post. However, at first reading, I am not sure that I would be able to cope with this as well as you have. Thanks for filling us in.
Jim
I too am experiencing some issues (different area) waiting my turn...lol my superman will soon show.. until than I think I should dance and release some frustration..
I know it is frustrating to wait, and I did take my frustration out on Carson at times, but he did come through in the end, and I am sure he will for you too.
Wow, that's quite an ordeal, Catherine!😱
Hopefully, all will be well now.
I agree; Kyle & Carson are awesome!
Frank 🎸
Exactly, Im still working on mine. Im cleaning up the home page in Kadence. So far, it's ok, except my speed is no longer set at the extreme. Carson had to put it at Accelerated. That is found in the SiteManger when you go to the far right that says details. It shows the speed at Accelerated. Right now, mobile speed sucks. If I use it at Extreme, it gets bumped up much better. The photos have the largest paint content (LCP), which causes slow loading on mobile. I made the images more smaller, but that doesn't make the difference, so it's best not to have photos on the home page but only on the blog post. If I have the speed on extreme, it causes the white screen of death, so now I can't ever use extreme speed. If I go back to the child theme, it will be like a blog roll, and the speed gets better there, but it doesn't look clean. The home page looks good; it's just that the mobile speed is terrible now. It's at 77, according to Google Page Speed Insights. I will work on removing the photos using words to see if it improves my mobile speed.
I agree with you it does look good, clean and modern more so than mine. However the only way I like a static home page is not to use one but I have a home page marked start here.
my speed has always been accelerator; I have never found it useful to have more than that.
I have found a free plugin convertor for media and it makes all the jpegs convert webpage images. It is retrospective if you want to try it.
Keep me updated on your progress, and I will do the same.
I have Optimole as my media plugin. I will look at that plugin to see if it works better than Optimole. I cut the photo out in the middle. The last two are on the bottom. The images are ok. It's just mainly at the top. The only thing I need to fix is to insert the HTML code from my email list Convertkit. I have my logo there, and Page Speed Insights complains it doesn't have alt text. ChatGPT gave me the HTML alt text so now I have to insert it in the right place of the HTML code in block editor
Yes I am looking at convert kit and will let you know. I have never heard of Optimole, but I will try that too . At the moment I am not really looking at site speed just grateful I can edit and add content to my sites.
Optimole isn't that good. I thought it did its job. But I still show the largest content paint (LCP). I am using a converter now. Im checking to see if my mobile speed has improved. Most people use mobile these days, so even Google Search console indexes our posts through their mobile smartphone so Google does look at mobile access to make sure it's mobile friendly. I had mine deindexed a few times because LCP was too large for mobile speed. It's a struggle. Finally, I got it smaller; it indexed a post. I will let you know how successful the convertor is as compared to Optimole.
I tried the Convertor, but instead of converting my existing photos, it removed all of them. No way! I moved back to Optimole. Luckily, it saved everything, so I didn't lose the images. I guess Im stuck with it, but I did remove my logo from my autoresponder form and only has a plain one with no photo. My mobile speed finally improved. Now it's 88. All others look good on a desktop, so it's best not to have a photo hero image at the top for mobile speed unless you have an ultra-fast website server.
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You lost me at child theme, but that is okay. I kept reading and I still don't know what that means but I did see that you got help through what sounds like a work around of sorts.
I am not high tech and neither are my websites. I am not sure how all those things work together (or apart) I am just glad that you are still here!
Karin
Lol, my eyes glazed while reading about the child theme...I understand it, yet, don't really get How to Use it...
Rudy
I am not high tech either, Karin, my work is creative
I've checked out a couple of your sites. They are very nice looking. I even learned how to create my own GPT from one of your posts. I shall have to go back to that one and comment because it worked great!
Karin
I am so happy it was useful to you
You do not use a child theme differently than a parent theme. The child theme holds ALL the customizations that you make. it is never updated. Often when you update your theme parent theme you lose customizations but not when they are a separate theme they remain constant in the child theme
Ohhh, ok. Thanks for the explanation!
Rudy
Says Rudy with glazed eyes
Grin....I've never used a child's theme. The concept is one I just don't get...
Rudy
I hear you on that, Rudy. But it does make sense, I just sit clueless! 🤓
Karin