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Solving a Let’s Encrypt® Certificate Renewal Failure

Let's Encrypt logo

Today I experienced a cryptic error message in my Let’s Encrypt logs about a failing certificate renewal on a customer-facing demo VPS running Ubuntu. The issue looked like a directory or file permissions problem because the Let’s Encrypt certbot couldn’t access a temporary random file it creates on the site so the certificate server can verify the URL.

The certificate renewal failure error messages include the recommendation:

To fix these errors, please make sure that your domain 
name was entered correctly and the DNS A/AAAA record(s)
for that domain contain(s) the right IP address.

Continue reading “Solving a Let’s Encrypt® Certificate Renewal Failure”

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Changing Your WordPress Theme

Banner - change your theme for a full site makeover

In this article I describe how I went about changing the WordPress theme on one of my sites to give it a makeover and provide a couple of features I wanted to experiment with.

Changing your WordPress theme can be quick and easy or fraught with dread. If you understand what you are up against, have a back-out plan, and do your homework before clicking that Activate button then things will likely go well.

Continue reading “Changing Your WordPress Theme”

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The journey to an email list – Part 1

a device with email onscreen

Why an email list?

Ask a blogger or podcaster what they wish they had known when they started out and it seems there is only one answer – start an email list as early as possible. There are many articles and podcasts that talk about building an email list so I thought I’d jump in and see what the choices are and how to integrate a solution with WordPress. Continue reading “The journey to an email list – Part 1”

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Add a FAQ section to your site

any questions? written on chalkboard

Why a FAQ?

An FAQ provides answers to questions that you are frequently asked. Well that’s how it’s supposed to work. The idea is that having an FAQ can reduce the need to respond to individual enquiries over and over again.

As your site and your following grows you’ll spend more and more time interacting with new people who maybe just want to find out a bit more about you and what you do. Having a FAQ in place lets them find the information themselves even before they may be prepared to contact you. It reduces your workload and makes for a good experience for people just discovering your site.

Another advantage is that you can put links in your FAQ answers to topics that you’ve already written about then, when you analyse your traffic, look at how many referrals come from your FAQ page. This lets you know what is and isn’t working and the types of questions people want answers to. Continue reading “Add a FAQ section to your site”

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