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I’ve seen a few hacked sites in the years I’ve been freelancing. It’s not always obvious that a site has been hacked, but if you look around you might see: One thing I haven’t seen until this year, though, is a bogus sitemap. Your sitemap is what tells Google and other search engines which pages…

Since 2021, I’ve been keeping track of software expenses for my business in a Google Sheet. I spend around $7K on software each year, so at the end of the year, I review and figure out what I’m actually using and what I might be able to cancel. Last year some decisions were easy. Since…

This week I had my first event in the Playhouse (and my first event in quite a while) – Website Quick Check – Simple Steps to Start the Year Right. We walked through five things you can do on your website right now: So often I see people create a website and then never look…

It’s been about a year since you’ve heard from me on this list so if you’re thinking, what is this – you can unsubscribe at the bottom of this email. No hard feelings. BUT if you’re thinking – Yay! An email from Rene! I’ve been wondering what she’s been up to, then great!  The last…

In the late 60s and 70s, my grandfather and father did a lot of scrapping. As I understand the story, they were near Herminie, PA and the abandoned coke ovens when they found many large rolls of wrapping paper. They pulled them out of the trash (very typical my dad) and brought them home. I…

In the summer of 2020, I got a card in the mail from a friend of a friend. Enclosed was a lovely hand-written note with her condolences on the passing of my father, and she recounted feelings about her own father’s passing a few years prior. It’s difficult to describe, but I was just starting…

A few weeks ago, I had a great conversation with a new connection. At one point, she mentioned that she was stuck in the middle of creating a course. One of my goals for the new year was to create additional content around this topic (beyond the podcast/YouTube show), so I decided to do a…

I came across a video on Instagram recently about defining enough. It was one of those things that you know, but it hit me like a ton of bricks. The gist was that we can do, do, do and it may never be enough. But if we define enough ahead of time, we’ll know when…

Over the past few weeks, I’ve gotten several emails about plugins with security issues. (Plugins are pieces of functionality for WordPress sites – for extra widgets/design options, forms, backups, security scans, anti-spam measures – you name it, there’s probably a plugin for it.) When I first started building WordPress sites, I was enamored with all…