[Update: In April, 2021, my 3-year contract with Siteground was ending, which meant I was facing a steep price increase (typical with other hosts I’ve tried). Besides the price increase, Siteground also removed cPanel in favor of their own backend management system. Soon afterwards I realized I could no longer post to WordPress from the app on my iPhone. To avoid the steep price increase and reinstate my ability to post from my iPhone, I migrated to Chemicloud. But I do still like Siteground, and had good support while I was there.
Howdy, Smarter Moms! To make a long story short, my blog posts from A Smarter Mom dot com are moving here.
Why I Moved A Smarter Mom
There have been many twists and turns in this saga. I was so happy with the progress I was making on the blog: I’d been published on Unveiled Wife (Yay Jen! She’s my hero, ya’ll!), added subscribers to my email list, and was even selling products on Amazon.
(By the way, if you landed here from Unveiled Wife, please sign up here for your free download, 15 Ways to Bless Your Husband.)
All that progress came to a screeching halt when the site was hacked via an errant plugin (and its unscrupulous new owner).
Soon after cleaning up the mess (but before restoring things), I ended up on a looong detour. Part of it led me through a self-education on trademarks and branding.
Research convinced me that “A Smarter Mom” might not be good to build a brand on. I’m in this for the long haul, so … (drum roll, please!)
The mommy blog will be showing up here for now. I’ll share mom life hacks, easy healthy meals, nutrition/health research, business tips, encouragement, and whatever else I can from my 23 years and 6 kids-worth of motherhood to help moms “in the trenches.”
For Bloggers: Fixing My Site Security
When my other site was hacked, I spent many long days of research to learn how to fix things AND put better security in place. That’s what happens when you don’t have the moolah to pay an expert (or when you just want to do it yourself and be sure you get it right!).
I learned that my former, very popular web host had a not-so-great reputation when it came to security. This was also my experience; for example, the tech support person who later helped me restore the site assigned me the username “admin” — a BIG no-no!
This led to even more research to find the best hosting company. I settled on SiteGround. SiteGround is faster (SSD drives are included in all shared and cloud plans), safer (they even block brute force attacks before they can get to your site; read more here), and much more responsive than my previous host. I’ve contacted them oodles of times (did I mention I’m a domain junkie?), and always had my issue solved in minutes.
SiteGround makes it easy-peasy to build a safe website, even for blogging newbies like me. They offer free site staging, so you can test website redesigns, new plugins or themes without breaking what’s working. And they practically force you to use strong passwords everywhere.
(Multiple blog posts, books, and the paid site security course I completed convinced me, having strong passwords is the #1 thing you must do to protect your site. Other things: minimize plugins; update themes and plugins often; password protect the wp-admin directory). Let me know on my Facebook page if you need help doing any of these things.
What’s Coming Next?
As an Abstract Random with a heavy dose of Squirrel, my current priorities are:
1. launch the motherhood book that led me out of dark days of disconnect and depression (a tribute to my mom, who is 91 years young);
2. host my “fighting questionable trademarks” info here (to fulfill a promise);
3. create products for my Etsy shop and Amazon brands; and
4. set up my personal blog and business page on the web.
Follow my Facebook page where I share encouragement and life/business tips, or sign up here for all the latest (and my BEST stuff! wink, wink!).