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Weekly Links Roundup – Clean Up Your Media Library, Remote Working Toolkit, WooCommerce Catalogs, Spamdexing

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Here’s our latest selection of curated WordPress and web marketing links to help your business thrive.

Do you have dozens (or hundreds? Or thousands?) of images in your Media Library that you know or suspect are no longer being used? All those extra images can slow down your site, first by taking up lots of extra space on your web server, and second by making backup files huge. Fortunately, there are some fairly easy ways to identify and remove them without having to go through every image one by one. Learn about how to clean up your Media Library without too many headaches.

A timely article called Make It Remote shares work-at-home knowledge gained over a decade of managing remote teams. This is a pay-what-you-want toolkit.

If you want to use WooCommerce as a product catalog instead of a sales machine, there’s an extension for that. I used this in a client’s site last week and it’s super-easy to hide the add-to-cart functionality and replace it with custom messages or links of your own.

Finally – all about spamdexing, where websites get hacked with injected nasty keywords and links to manipulate search engine rankings for another web property designed to rip people off. You can avoid being the target of one of these hacks by keeping your site up to date, using strong passwords, and using a good security plugin properly set up to scan your site regularly.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Sidebar issue with Genesis theme after updating to WordPress 4.7

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A number of my clients have brought this problem to my attention – in their Genesis-based site, suddenly their right sidebars had moved to the left of the content, and they had a new ‘Secondary Sidebar’ pop up at the bottom of the old sidebar.

If you go look at Genesis > Theme Settings, you’ll see it’s missing the Layout information completely. Below is what it should look like:

Genesis default layout

This is easy to fix. You’ll need to download a fresh copy of Genesis from StudioPress (even if your version of Genesis is completely up to date).

Make a backup of your site so you can roll back if needed. Then switch from your active child theme to a different theme (any theme like Twenty Sixteen will do).

Then, delete the Genesis theme (don’t worry, your settings will be saved!). After that you’ll want to upload the zipped Genesis file.

Once it’s uploaded, reactivate the child theme, and go check Genesis > Theme Settings. Your layout options should be back and the sidebar issue fixed.

Friday Link Wrapup – Calenders, Premium Themes, Local SEO

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

Yesterday I was researching calendar plugins for a client project – there are a lot of them out there. This guide to WordPress event and calendar plugins was one of the better resources I found.

What did I use? I wound up going with All-in-one Event Calendar. The reviews are mixed, but don’t let that throw you; this is still a really good plugin with lots of features (I’ve used it many times in the past). The main features we liked are the widgets that you can customize to display specific categories, and the event list feed that can be used on pages and posts.

If you’re looking for a commercial WordPress theme instead of a custom solution for your business, the premium themes directory is a good place to start.

Are you lucky enough to blog for a living? If you are, here are some tips on staying productive when working at home.

Finally – if you have a brick-and-mortar location and are interested in getting started with local SEO, here’s a detailed guide for setting up the commercial Yoast Local SEO plugin.