Why You Don’t Know Jack About WordPress Migrations

Computer specialist working in a bright office

We are migrating our WordPress blog to a new host.

We will add the Woocommerce plugin and then migrate all the data from our current zen cart ecommerce store to the new woocommerce store

 

my short list is

 

https://getflywheel.com/pricing/

https://pressable.com/pricing/

https://www.greengeeks.com

https://www.dreamhost.com/website-builder

https://www.a2hosting.com/solutions

https://www.inmotionhosting.com/wordpress-hosting-promo?

https://www.siteground.com/speed

 

I didn’t see pricing on hyve.com

 

I may go with 2 hosts because we have 4 

‘hobby” sites that are really small but our current site gets 100,000 page views/mo and I like dedicated servers.

 

Flywheel is cool (I thought) because you can build your dev site on your desktop for free and when you’re ready to go live you can just push it to their servers  – no muss no fuss,

 

They also have something called “Blueprint” which maps out any number plug-ins that you use on a regular basis.

 

They (the plug-ins) can be added to any new site with a single click

 

Stay tuned

 

I’m old enough to have a Medicare card

 

Yet I Lord also over a dozen websites on three hosting platforms.

 

I make my living in have done so from e-commerce for 15 years.

 

Have 400,000 social media followers because of my expertise in captive bird husbandry.

 

I still have a thirst to learn something new every day.

 

My day gig is WindyCityParrot.com, which has been around since New Year’s Eve 2002 when my wife Catherine launched it.

 

Since then I’ve built dozens, maybe a hundred or more websites.

 

You get the picture. I know e-commerce.

 

3 WordPress hosts – reviewed 

For a convoluted set of reasons, our current eCommerce platform is a hybrid WordPress/Zen Cart.

 

This combination is not working on a number of levels especially for SEO.

 

There are many reasons for it but I’ve suspected several which I’ve recently confirmed.

Continue reading “Why You Don’t Know Jack About WordPress Migrations”

Why I’m Gifting SCORE a Holistic Marketing Evaluation

woman social media

 

Editor’s note:

 

When it comes to digital marketing evaluations, I am a mercenary, some of you will need steel-toed boots to read this.

 

Endnote.

 

Prelude:

 

I’m dedicating this to Bill Herring, chapter’s 310 chair, who can now throw away his diagram.

 

I’ve been with SCORE for 5 months.

 

I’ve been the director of digital marketing for chapter 310, Valparaiso IN, since December 2019.

 

I have my own digital marketing agency.

 

I’m doing this pro bono in addition to mentoring for SCORE.

Continue reading “Why I’m Gifting SCORE a Holistic Marketing Evaluation”

My exit interview with MailChimp and why I’ll send a million emails a year with a new ESP

many chimpanzees working on computers

This part of the post was published August 6th, 2019

Question:

My email list upload has been rejected to the list info_507995

This list was exported from our e-commerce web site of customers who have
purchased from us
Attachment (1): (A CUSTOMER list)

support
11 days ago
26 Jul, 2019 at 21:18:17
Hello,

Thank you for contacting GetResponse.

I’m sorry to hear you are having issues with your account.

In order to look into this issue for you, can you please provide the email address login of
the account in question, as well as the last four digits of the card on
file for the account?

This is to ensure that you are the account owner so that we can share account information with you.
# 28033922 / Response / Support Panel Message was sent to customer. To: [email protected]
action
11 days ago
26 Jul, 2019 at 21:18:17
Status change to: Answered
Answered
# 28033923 / Action / Support Panel
[email protected]
customer
5 days ago

Hello,

Thank you for the reply.

I forwarded your message to our Compliance Team
and asked them to get back to you as soon as possible.
# 28053672 / Response / Support Panel Message was sent to customer. To: [email protected]
action
4 days ago
02 Aug, 2019 at 08:14:52

Hello,

You have reached GetResponse Compliance Team.

We regret to inform you that we will not be able to import this
contacts list.

For more details, please refer to the following information:
=============================================

Our system has detected the following problems with your import:

* Policy issues. This indicates that a significant portion of your email
list contains undesirable email addresses which, if mailed to, would create reputation
and deliverability issues for all customers using our platform.

There are many types of problematic email addresses that would fall
under ‘policy issue’ category:
– bounces, invalid domains, user unknown errors
– internal/external blacklists
– frequent complainers
– spam traps
– certain role addresses
and more.

Usually, this indicates that the list has poor quality, isn’t permission-based or has gone “stale”. If you believe that your list is
permission-based, we recommend that you first clean your list with a service like BriteVerify:

http://www.briteverify.co.uk/?pcode=getresponse

 

— Can I get more information about why my import was rejected? —

GetResponse uses a proprietary abuse detection system called Hydra, which
analyzes billions of data pieces in real-time (email addresses, subscriber
activity, message content, user behavior and more) and makes automated
decisions based on AI algorithms that are always adapting.

Because of the proprietary nature of Hydra and because it is always
adapting due to its AI algorithms, regrettably it is not possible for us to
provide additional information about why your import was rejected (outside
of the information above).

Please note that – although your import was rejected – your account is
still open and we will accept new list imports from you.

Please note that further rejected imports may have a negative impact on your account’s
standing, so we advise to fix the problem before initiating new imports.

 

We are not judging your list, or your business, however there are very
strict anti-spam rules and algorithms used by email service providers that
we must respect.

This is crucial to maintain a level playing field for all
our customers, and to ensure best sending environment for all.

Thank you for your understanding.

Actually, you do not have my understanding.

I’ve been doing digital marketing since 2003 when I started sending out emails.

I’ve sent out more than 10 million emails on a half a dozen ESP’s.

Your Artificial Un Intelligence Machine Hydra is giving you false positives because I scrubed the list manually as I have done so for 16 years.

Something similar occurred on MailChimp which is why am now with getresponse apparently a poor decision in retrospect.

30 minutes prior to scheduling an email that has not missed a single Sunday and seven years I received this message from MailChimp:

“Our automated abuse-prevention system, Omnivore, has detected an action or content in your account that may be in violation of our Acceptable Use Policy.

For more information on these violations, please review our Acceptable Use Policy”.

I was blocked from sending through MailChimp and I onboarded with GetResponse throughout one long Friday night and Saturday morning.

At least MailChimp was professional enough to work through the issue then sent the following message

Thanks for reaching out to us regarding your account status, and we apologize for the delay in response.

Our automated abuse prevention system, Omnivore, detected content, keywords, or activity that can indicate the possibility of harmful information being sent through our service.

Upon review, however, we can see that the account is fine and as a result has been reinstated for continued sending. At this point, you should be good to go.

Please keep in mind that as a strictly permission based service, Mailchimp can only support sending to subscribers who have directly subscribed to your mailing list through a confirmable process (i.e. in writing), or directly purchased a product/service from you in the last 12 months. Additionally, if permission was given more than a year ago, then a bulk email must have been sent to them and not objected to within the past 12 months.

Apparently GetResponse is just going to dig in its heels citing the new Ubiquitous customer service mantra “the customer is always wrong.”

 

And yes you are “judging my list”, isn’t that what AI is supposed to do “judge if the data is acceptable or not?

Have you or your software team given any thought to the words you’ve used to communicate to me?

As a “communication” company, you do a lousy job of communicating.

Just because you believe we have been communicating, there is no proof communication has occurred.

This part of the post was published February 4th, 2019

 

We blog about pet bird care all original G rated content plus usually a “parrots in the news” curated post.

 

File under “you’ve been warned”

 

I wrote this note to our readers 2/1/19 about 11:30 PM CST

 

A zygodactyl footnote from mitchr.

 

Approximately 30 minutes prior to sending this Birdie Brunch out, the following message popped up in MailChimp

 

“Our automated abuse-prevention system, Omnivore, has detected an action or content in your account that may be in violation of our Acceptable Use Policy.

Continue reading “My exit interview with MailChimp and why I’ll send a million emails a year with a new ESP”