CodeBard

Member Plugin Pro now has a Member-only Content block for the block editor. Nest any WordPress block inside gated sections - images, columns, videos, whatever you need. Partial post gating, redesigned. Learn how to use it here: codebard.com/member-only-co… #memberpluginpro #patronpluginpro #membership #wordpress #plugin #membershiplugin #patreon

@KatieKeithBarn2 It's also a double edged sword for those who create content - AI trained on your content would include your views too. AI not trained on your content would not.

I saw a talk at WCEU that advised using robots.txt to block training bots. Since then, I have researched this and discovered that while it's good advice for publishers e.g. news outlets who don't want to give content away for free, it's the absolute wrong advice for software companies wanting AIs to recommend their products. Glad I checked, as that could have been disastrous 😬

Can you use on-site memberships alongside Patreon without extra fees or double-charging members? Short answer: Yes. Long answer 👇 codebard.com/frequently-ask… #WordPress #Membership #MembershipPlugins #MemberPluginPro #Patreon #MembershipSite #Memberships #Creators

My experience has been that while there may be a few outdated things in the average WPBeginner article, the tutorial itself works. This is no different than the rest of the content google shows. As a result I don't think it's a differentiator. And let's face it - WPBeginner isn't the only site experiencing this kind of traffic drop. So it can't be rankings.

That’s the key difference: WPBeginner isn’t mainly news/non-evergreen content. It’s mostly evergreen WordPress tutorials. And with tutorials, Google may not instantly know the information is no longer accurate, but users do. For example, if a tutorial tells people to use a deprecated WordPress function, they follow the steps, the code fails, and they bounce. Over time, if that happens across many indexed pages, Google can read the user experience pattern and lose trust in the site. The issue isn’t old content. It’s evergreen content that became inaccurate.

Everyone is talking about @wpbeginner collapse. 2.6M monthly clicks down to 27K. A 99% wipeout. In a recent YouTube video, @edwardeachday pointed to what many people are blaming: “Too promotional.” “Too much fluff.” “They ranked their own plugins #1 everywhere.” I don’t think that’s the full story. So I ran WPBeginner through EEATClean. I scanned only 30 articles out of their 3,000+. The result? 29 were hurting the site. 24 should probably be deleted. 5 needed serious updates. Only 1 was worth keeping. And if 30 random articles look like that… Imagine what the other 3,000 look like. The real problem may not be promotion. It may be outdated information. And the data is brutal 👇 Example 1: “WordPress 3.3.1 – Security Update, Upgrade Now.” Published in 2012. Still live in 2026. Still telling readers to install a WordPress version that is now ancient and full of security risks. Score: 12/100. Risk: 8/10. And here’s the kicker: No archive notice. No “this is outdated” disclaimer. No noindex. It’s still fully indexed and presented like fresh, valid content. So Google may read it as a current signal of the site’s expertise. Example 2: A tutorial about getting logged-in user information. The whole tutorial is built around get_currentuserinfo(). That function was deprecated back in 2016. So the code simply doesn’t work anymore. Here’s the real story: A WordPress tutorial site lives or dies on one thing: Is the information still accurate today? WordPress moves fast. Functions get deprecated. Versions become security risks. Methods break. Interfaces change. WPBeginner built thousands of tutorials over more than a decade. But a huge share of those tutorials now describe dead code, risky versions, and steps that no longer match reality. When a reader follows a tutorial and it doesn’t work, trust breaks. They bounce. Google reads those signals across thousands of pages. Self-promotion in small doses is survivable. A decade of decaying tutorials is not. Everyone focused on the plugins because they are visible. But the real killer was invisible: Thousands of pages quietly going out of date. Still indexed. Still ranking. Still treated as current. I scanned just 30 articles with EEATClean. It scans every article and shows exactly: What’s outdated. What needs fixing. What should be removed. What needs to be added. Because old content isn’t neutral. Every outdated tutorial tells Google your expertise expired.

Except the 'landing on outdated tutorial' doesnt happen - Google has been deprioritizing non-evergreen content since a long while now, and an article about a software version from 2012 has no way of appearing in search unless the user specifically searches for it. As a result, there is no reason for google to penalize them. It has been able to just ignore low quality backlinks since a long while ago, so it's certain that it can just ignore non-evergreen content that is way too old.

Google doesn’t need to know every article is outdated, because users know. When they land on a tutorial and the code doesn’t work, the ui is different, or the version is ancient, they bounce. And when that happens across thousands of indexed pages, Google eventually sees the pattern. So yes, AI overviews reduce clicks, but they don’t explain ranking drops. Inaccurate and outdated content kills trust.

@BillErickson Just vanilla WordPress + a caching plugin like WP Super cache makes the site basically static and accomplishes the same thing. And without losing any other functionality.

I have spent 20 years building WordPress sites. Now I'm moving some client sites to Astro instead. A lot of sites don't actually need a live CMS, plugin stack, database, PHP runtime, admin area, and managed host sitting behind a few pages of mostly static content.

Most membership sites use one strategy and leave money on the table. Here are 7 monetization strategies that work together to avoid that: - Early Access - Archive Vault - Seasonal Pass - Tiered Articles - Premium Login - Category Pricing - Content Drip Each one engages a different type of fan. Here's how to set them all up: codebard.com/membership-sit… #contentlocking #contentmonetization #creatoreconomy #creatormonetization #memberpluginpro #membershipplugin #membershiprevenue #membershipsitemonetization #membershipstrategies #monetizationstrategies #paywallstrategy #wordpressmembershipplugin #wordpressmembershipsite via @codebardcom

I just gave an example over what would happen if the WP org plugin repo allowed 3rd party Google Analytics. The same principle applies to Woo marketplace or any place where you allow 3rd parties to add scripts. There's no issue with having 3rd parties have listings in any directory. But allowing them to run 3rd party trackers is a legal mess.

The link that I sent is not of a plugin, it is WooCommerce Marketplace link. Basically I’ve already added Google Analytics tracking to my plugin there. That’s why I’m saying it should be possible because WooCommerce Marketplace is a public page that has 3rd party developers in it.

I still don’t understand why WordPress org plugin pages don’t offer Google Analytics integration. It feels like a simple feature that could give plugin authors so many useful insights

It's not a matter of plugins - it's a matter of law/regulation. You can't control what a 3rd party does regardless of whatever ToS they agree to. One plugin dev agreed to the terms, even signed a data processor agreement but then turned on 3rd party data sharing in Google Analytics and it got out? The regulators will come after the first party (Wp.org), and if WP.org says "But this person agreed to our terms and promised he would not do X", then the regulators will tell you "Ok, you sue them while we sue you. It's your problem"...

@codebardcom woocommerce.com/products/ has for the plugins in it, so I don’t think it is impossible

If any of you were having issues with your licenses & updating Member Plugin Pro, you can try again now.

Member Plugin Pro 2.0.1 Brings Customizable Unlock Buttons, Member Display Name Change codebard.com/member-plugin-… #creators #memberpluginpro #membership #membershipsite #newversion #news #patreon #patronpluginpro #update #version #wordpress via @codebardcom

@jeffr0 The terms and conditions one is something legally inescapable unfortunately - both on the plugin developer side and the user side...

OHHHH THE HUMANITY!!!!

Patron Plugin Pro is now Member Plugin Pro and it allows you to run on-site memberships alongside Patreon! Same content, same features, more ways for fans to support you. And setup is simple.👇 codebard.com/patron-plugin-… #memberpluginpro #patronpluginpro #patronpro #membership #creators #wordpress #patreon

I think WPML is the general all around choice for multilingual features still. It used to have performance problems if you publish too many posts in many different languages when you combine it with many tags and taxonomies (results in many joins). But I don't know whether they have already addressed that.

Multilingual WordPress As an agency, this is the one thing I can honestly say I don't have an answer for when clients ask how they should approach it. I asked AI to give me some data, but I'd love to hear what's working for ya'll.

Not much difference. Though these keys can use up significant API quota, therefore money. Although, encryption wouldn't make a lot of difference - if the site is compromised, the attacker could have gained access to the encryption key as well. It could only help in the case of a database-dump only attack, if the encryption key was in server env variables etc and the attacker wasn't able to access it. The AI API providers need to introduce spending caps like some cloud providers to address such things.

Can someone explain the FUD around WordPress storing AI API keys to me? How is this different than storing Stripe or other API keys? Genuine question.

@johndsaunders @webflow Or just use WordPress. It was built specifically to accommodate non-technical users in using their sites. It already has APIs for anything AI related.

I will tell y'all this now: YOU CANNOT PASS AN AI WEBSITE TO A CLIENT. Not yet, at least. YOu need a CMS like @webflow or go headless with #SanityCMS layered on top. They need to be able to make updates quickly and efficiently. I'm not saying to stop using LLMs, MCPs and all the other alphabet we all lvoe to augment it, but you need a repatable database.

What's more, most of those posts are from people who are developers. Not any average user. Naturally, since there is no way a flower shop owner who uses his/her WordPress site to run his business would spend his time managing a 'modern' frontend stack instead of concentrating on his business.

Every “leaving WordPress” post I come across seems to point to Astro. But when I dig a little deeper, I often don’t see any prior conversations or context showing those people were actually using WordPress in the first place. To me, it starts to feel less organic and more like a coordinated narrative almost like a well-planned negative campaign against WordPress. It even makes me wonder whether some companies might be incentivizing this kind of messaging for their own business gains. I could be wrong, but that’s honestly the impression I’ve been getting.

@rayhanarif07 @willya_rnd Yep. You can get it out of the box without any effort: pressbard.com/wp-cloud-fresh…

@willya_rnd Such a site built with Gutenberg would result in a similar score on PageSpeed Insights.