As I was mentioning, we are on 6.1.1 version and we just moved to 6.1, which is a lot different than 6.0. There are some things that are interesting. I haven't gone deep or dove deep into it yet. I would like somebody else at some point in time to do a presentation, maybe do a presentation on it. That would dive deeper into it, and that could be its own presentation about what is the pros and cons, or what are the cool features of 6.1 versus 6.0, since there is a major difference. Let me go to the settings here real quick. This is pretty much what we talked about in the last, I was going to say the last episode, right? But no, not the last episode. In the last session for part one, we were going over the general settings and then we talked about, well, we didn't really touch on the writing. I would leave that alone. If you're a blogging with WordPress, we touched on just how many posts you wanted to show, you would want to set up your reading. Discussion-wise, this is where things can get a little interesting, because it just really depends on a lot of the commenting features that you would have, how you want to set that up. Let me, this as well too, still getting some people coming in. Sorry if you hear me, all right. And then the media settings, I really wouldn't touch unless you want to get a little more grant, not to say granular, but a fine tune to more of this, but I would just leave the media alone. Permalinks, it's really good now that it starts with post name. I would keep it there unless you have a custom structure that you do want to use. Otherwise, I would just leave your permalinks as post link and for the category tag base, that is a little bit more advanced. I'm not going to touch on that right now. Most people are going to have post name as far as their permalink structure, which just means your URL, how your URLs are displaying for the most part. And then privacy, which really is cool about WordPress is that they do create a privacy page for you. You can create one yourself, but they do create one for you. You can set it up. And then that way you have a terms and conditions and you have a privacy policy there. So I do like that WordPress gives that out the box for you. So those are the main parts that we touched on in the last session. And then we touched on adding the theme. So there are a few themes that I would recommend, right? They're really good. And I'm talking about themes outside of the native WordPress themes that come with it. So isn't it interesting that now we just hit to 2023? I haven't played with this theme yet, but I'm assuming it's a full site editing based as well since 2022 was. That could be another presentation and topic working with full site editing. I don't work with it yet, particularly if somebody else does, hey, you have the floor. We can set you up if you want to do a presentation on that because there are some people that do want to take advantage of it. I just don't feel right now for me, it's ready for prime time. But I would say it's how a lot of people felt when it came to Gutenberg, right? It wasn't ready a couple of years ago. And now look who here we are. So I thought that is interesting. But as far as themes are concerned, Astra is really, really good. Let's see, let's see, let me move this real quick, sir. Astra is really, really good. I would say Ocean WP is really good. I always mess this up, Neve or Neve, that's my, you know, my bad if I don't get that right and generate press. Those are some really, really good things. And if you are looking for, if you're like you're using a page for like Elementor and you want a plain, I don't want to say plain, like I feel bad for the James in the world when you say plain Jane. But, you know, you want a theme without any type of styling features and capabilities and things like that. It's just really, really, like plain, it's very light, a lightweight. That's a good way to say it. You can use Elementor, but just remember, I mean, hello Elementor, but remember you have to make up for that and actually do your theme building in the settings of the Elementor page builder itself. But it still is a good thing. That's why it's here at the top. They don't put themes at the top on accident. I promise you that. So these are the theme, things right here, but I use Cadence. It's a, and I don't just use it because it's a theme. I use Cadence because of the ecosystem that it comes with. It's a very robust ecosystem that has a lot of different plugins done very well. And they're a really good company. So their theme is very flexible. It's one of those kind of like general based themes where, example, oh, I'm going to customize, where you can use it for a lot of different business purposes. That's the best way to say it. There's some themes that are specifically created for certain, you know, industries, right? Like a barbershop theme or a, you know, MLM theme, that's how you say it, right? E-commerce based theme, you know, there's certain ones that you can get on ThemeForce, like the template monster, the landing page factory, certain themes you can get specifically for industries. But there are themes that are like general based themes like an Astra, you know, like a Cadence or Generate Press, where you can use it for any kind of business. It's just really about the functionalities that it comes with that you prefer, you know, what you like. So that's something that I think a lot of people don't really talk about or touch on most of the time when we're talking about themes. Because I feel like a lot of people get confused. You know, do I have to have a specific theme type that goes just for my industry versus can I use a theme, a really good theme that could be used across the industries and still get it to fit my needs? Can I still customize it to fit my industry? I think that that's something that I just wanted you all to kind of keep in top of mind. So, you know, you'd be able to change your colors and your fonts with most themes, right? And your typography. Some people say font, some people say typography. I know there's a distinction between the two, but for lack of a better term or my ignorance, I'll just say fonts for now. So your fonts, you can change all this. And the cool thing about certain themes, I know Astra has it now. And I did touch on this before, but there are some people in here that are new that didn't go to part one. So I just want to touch on this again. Now you want to work with the theme that gives you the capability of what is called like a global palette. And what this means, and this is this is some strategy here you are. I'm telling you, it's not just, you know, nerdness or development talk, but this is strategy behind this. When you work with certain themes that have that global palette, you're able to easily create your new pages, create more pages on your website and inherit the colors, meaning it will bring in the colors from your global palette. That way you don't have to put all your colors in all the time. You don't have to manually add them in for certain sections, for certain buttons, for certain fonts, for certain layouts. It will just automatically add your brand colors on top of that new page you just made that saves a lot of time. And I believe a lot of us in here are trying to save some time. We got better things to do. Right. So just think about that, you know, using a global palette when it comes to your theme. And in that way, when you see a symbol like this, some themes have a different type of a symbol, right? But when you see a symbol like this, thank you, Audrey, for the for the heart. You are able to add a global palette to it. Yeah, that's me. It means it is the global. It's globally linked. That's the best way to say it. I'm going to say it that way that it's globally linked. And you'll know that through the little icon there. So that way, again, when you make your new page, the colors are automatically there. And even when you change this this palette out here, you're able to that's a and we do click this, you're able to learn like what how the palette is used. So, you know, good documentation is important with a theme, right? Because you want to know, OK, well, I got this cool feature, but I don't even know how to use it, right? So they tell you, OK, these are your accents. This is your contrast. This is your base, right? And then they give you an example, literally right here, of how it would look in this order, right? In that order, it would tell you how the colors would associate with the different parts of your. So this is with the text right here. These are the accents, really. It's the button colors right here. And a couple other things. So that's just how you want to really think when it comes to using, you know, a certain theme, your theme, same thing with the buttons and same thing with the fonts, right? When it comes to your colors, do you want to think of them being globally linked? All right. All right. So that's what we really touched on last time, when it came to thinking about your theme and being able to set up the settings as well as some of the layout settings, too. But I really want to make the predominant aspect of this presentation about the different plug-in settings for the the. For the plugins that I was recommending that I'm recommending. Let's go back here. Oh, and let me touch on this, too. So for those of you and I know it doesn't have it here, but oh, it does have. OK, so you can enable auto updates with things as well, too. This is a really cool feature that wasn't present and prior versions of WordPress, right? Older versions, I would say, being able to auto update your thing. So you don't have to worry about updating something you can literally, you know, turn the auto update on and it will just auto update on your behalf. I think again, these are certain things that either we take for granted or we just don't know about. And then, you know, we forget to take advantage of it in a positive way because it will save you time, you know, WordPress used to get a bad rep for having to auto having to update all the plugins. And I'm a fan of Russell Brunson.  And that's why I love WordPress, because I'm kind of like the the like, if he was Mr. Miyagi, I'm Daniel's son. I'm kind of like, I want to turn into the Mr. Miyagi of WordPress in a way where now I'm kind of to some degree competing with click funnels, right? When it comes to educating people and letting them know that you can use WordPress and build out a funnel factory like multiple funnels. And you just have to understand how to do it in a functional way in an easy way. So that's where I'm coming from the perspective of recommending certain plugins is how to build a website, but also how to create funnels like landing pages and check out pages and journeys and certain pages where you are putting people through. Once you get them to their website, they're coming through and it's going to kind of automate the process for them, you know, along their journey. So the colors, the fonts, site logo, we touched on that in the last session as well, too. But really, this I want to get into part two, and this is going to be adding the plugins and setting up the plugins and then touching on a little bit of setting up a Gutenberg, make sure everybody is still waiting. Y'all, is everybody there? I want to make sure everybody's good. If you got something in the chat, it's all right. Sally's cool.  Everybody, can y'all hear me? Can y'all hear me well? Everything is all good. Yo, you sleeping on me? Because I'll wake you up now and turn the next page on you. All right. All right. Alicia says, wait, Chris, appreciate that, OK, all is good. All right. All right. Let's get into the meat potatoes.  You know, you don't have to say anything. But as far as meat potatoes, does anybody have any special dishes that they're cooking up this year that they have never tried before this year for Thanksgiving? I'm pretty curious on that. Have you got something going in the chat? If you stick into your guns, throw it in the chat as well, too. Sally may try a new cocktail. OK, all right. I like that. All traditional. OK, OK. Apple apple tart. Apple tart. OK, OK, empty plate. We got some funny answers in here. That is that is funny. I hope. Listen, if anything, I hope nobody, you know, has an empty stomach for the holidays. You know, I hope I hope everybody's belly is full. I know too well how much that feels like to be hungry and it does not feel good. So I just wish everybody well for the for the season, just in general, you know, we're going into the new year. Again, this is what's starting fresh on WordPress is all about. This is why we're here to talk about how we would set up our website in a fresh way, you know, to go into this new year. And I only want to say hit new resolutions. I want to say hit them targets, right? We want to hit them targets, hit them goals. So that's what I want to do is help people hit them goals. All right. So here's a little bit of transparency for you. Because I'm all about transparency. This is this is between this is between us. I just did my taxes this year and about seven years just to show y'all. I've been in this game for a very long time. OK. I had a bit of imposter syndrome for a very long time as well, too. So I kind of really, you know, tucked my head between my legs or put my head in my turtle shell for a very, very, very long time because I didn't believe I was good enough. And I'm telling you, this is the truth, because as you can see, you know, I have about seven years. And this is just since I started my business, I was still I mean, my second business started my first business in 2018. But in seeing that, you know, once I went through this this process of being educated on taxes, not did my taxes for twenty twenty so that I can apply for the the the EIDL and the PPP. Then I went back and said, you know, it's time for me to be responsible and do them all and stop being scared or scurred, as we say. Let's stop being scurred and go back and take care of my business. So I did and I noticed a pattern of of of what can be considered, you know, showing that I've been using software for a very long time. And I saw that I spent, you know, about thirteen thousand dollars over the last few years on just software alone. So yeah, I think I know a little bit or two about vetting apps, plug in software, taking some chances, taking some risks, going through all the ins and outs of every single category you can think of when it comes to software and having to understand, you know, most of these things do the same thing. It's really just about your preference. And that's something that I learned when it comes to plugins was plugins are just apps or software, you know, within WordPress, but they also are initiating a certain process. And once you understand that fundamental concept and you start to get into the whole terminology of. Your tech stack, it's really like your business stack, right? If you were if you had a business model and you were doing the business model canvas and you were looking at your business and departments and things, how would these plugins really help you do that process? You know, do that activity, right? And so that's the way, again, that's how I view WordPress. That's how I view it's a system of systems. I'll say that again, it's a system of systems. And these are systems that are initiating processes, things that you would typically have to do manually if you didn't have this this tool or this app or this plug in. So I'm going to start adding these plugins fresh, right? To this fresh installation of WordPress so that you can just see this all in real time and then I'm going to set them up a little bit of some of the settings and then get into the Gutenberg part. Now, I wouldn't do my due diligence if I didn't give a few different options. And that's why you see option one, option two, option three. But for the sake of time, I'm going to go with option one because this is my favorite stack. But you can use any combination of these that you want to. So on the left hand side, you have your categories, right? And then here across the road, you have the actual plugin, you know, pick and choose how you want to do it. But these is where I would consider are the fundamental plugin categories that you want to add to your WordPress installation. And we want to have a lean. I believe that it's very important that we realize that we need to have a lean WordPress installation, right? We don't want something that's bloated, something that's, you know, going to make us have to do more optimization than necessary, right? It's unnecessary to have to do all this extra optimization because our WordPress website isn't fast. And before we could get away with that. Now we can't, you know, with Google Core Web Vitals, with all these updates when it comes to Google and not just that because of TikTok. Oh my God. People's attention spans are just crazy these days, right? So, you know, we're in a microwave error. We want things instant, you know, instant coffee, instant rice. And if a fast for the website isn't instantly coming up, we get a little angry.  So that's why I believe it's important to not only understand the plugin categories, the functionalities, but understand the technology and how it was built, how it was created. That would give you the best of, you know, as many worlds as possible. That way you can build a really, really good website. It's robust. There goes that word. It's robust. It's fast. And it does all the things you needed to do automatically or auto magically, right? All right, so let's add Caden's blocks first. Oh, I already had it on there. Sorry. I know somebody probably saw that. Like, why are you adding that again? But we all make mistakes. OK, so Caden's blocks. This is the plugin that will give the functionality for building out the web pages with Gutenberg instead of actually having to have a page builder like Elementor or Divi or Beaver builder. Those are some popular ones, right? So now that Gutenberg is here, it's caught up. It's ready. It's usable. I'm building many websites, client websites and my own websites with Gutenberg, right, since it's just been ready. So I'm going to go back to plugins with the next one. We'll add fluent forms here. And this is a form builder plugin that I recommend. So. And I mean, listen, anybody can do a presentation and I'm not going to hate or, you know, feel any kind of way. If you're giving your preference and then you're giving why you like it, you know, I feel like it's OK for us to give our opinion to we just got to make sure we give other people other options, you know, and try to be as unbiased as possible. But sometimes it's like, bump that you got to be proud, you know, it's OK to be biased in a positive way. If it's something that you really rock with, you know, it's really good. You vouch for it, right? I mean, now you got to take that hit of things go wrong sometimes, but it's OK.  Just want to give that to it, right? I mean, take us to church, but I just want to let y'all know. All right. So fluent forms. I really like because the fact that it's very flexible. The team behind it. So both these plugins, the teams behind these plugins, I always look at teams, right? Teams are they matter. You're going to use a plugin. Do you trust the team of visionaries, of developers of the marketing, the people behind it that this thing you're choosing is not going to be.   Some of this might not apply to you. I'm going to just keep it real, right? But if you're somebody who is building websites or you're developing websites and you you want to be able to build a website on WordPress, that's sustainable, that's going to last the test of time, that you don't have to be maintaining all the time. And then when you do need help, does that support that comes with it? Are they going to actually help you? Then this may apply to your situation. OK, but for forums is something I really highly recommend as well, because they make a suite of plugins and they do a really good job when it comes to support and when it comes to their features. And that's the free. Remember, these are free plugins that I'm showing y'all. So it really depends on your security, the kind of security you have on your website. Security could be a whole other topic as well, too. Here's some example of some security plugins. I like iTunes. I use SiteGround Hosting for my hosting for some of my sites. I also use Cloudways before. I'm thinking about going to Kinsta, to be honest, next once my SiteGround is up, because I kind of just want to work with a hosting company where they are experts in WordPress. I'm willing to pay that premium for it as well, too. Because it's like kind of having an extra developer on your side without having to pay for a contract or having to hire an employee almost a way. But I think security is a really good free plugin. Their UI has improved over the past year. They've updated it, so it's really cool. Their features are pretty good. This is something that I do recommend, but you see that there are other security plugins. But I don't recommend, and I know this is WordPress, so they're probably going to be like, they're probably going to get on me when I try to apply for other Word camps and things like that. Like, why are you talking about our plugin like that? But I'm just keeping it real. I don't recommend Jetpack for nothing, y'all, for nada. I know this is automatic, I know automatic and WordPress. But I just don't, for people who don't, most developers don't like Jetpack. It blokes down your side, it adds extra stuff you don't need. You got to turn, it's just a lot. Now, it does have some really good use cases, because it's a one-size-fits-all. It does have some really good use cases, right? But most of the time, most people don't need that. Unless you're trying to use WordPress on the app, on your phone, then you got to connect it to Jetpack. And Jetpack typically works with WordPress.com. But that's the WordPress.com version into WordPress.org, which is, this is what we're talking about here, is WordPress.org for those of y'all who don't know. I would assume everybody here knows we're talking about WordPress.org, not .com. If you didn't, remember that. All right, so iThemes is on there. Let's go to the next one, Updraft Plus. Now, the reason why we would want something like Updraft Plus is for backups. You got to back up the backup to back up the backup. You got to back it up. You know, I know some of y'all might think it's corny, but I used to listen to a lot of hip hop when I was growing up in juvenile, had a song that, you know, backed that thing up and feel like you got to apply that to your WordPress website. But the reason why is because now, again, if you type in backup, the category, it's actually another one. But if you don't have a backup to your website, and it goes down on the hosting, you are, you're going to be hurting. It's going to be, it's going to be crickets for you. That's how you're going to feel. I'm telling y'all, and it just happened. So I built a, I just built a funnel for an author. We're actually premiering her. And this is where y'all get a lot of transparency from me a lot. I'm going to keep it all the way real, because I don't want to do too much, but I'm going to show y'all real quick. So I just built the funnel for an author. Just, she did her first novel, and she's a really good author too. And she, she does a lot of, I think her category, and I always get it wrong, but it's like spiritual development in some ways, but we just built her funnels for her, for her premiere, for her presale page. And I'm going to relate this why this goes back to the backup, but I just wanted to share this with y'all. Sometimes, you know, sometimes you've got to go off the yellow brick road. You got to go to like one of them side missions. We're playing a video game. You got that main mission, but then you got some side missions that you do to kind of collect the power up and then bam, you're back on the main mission. And next thing you know, you're getting through that main mission a lot easier because you don't power it up so much with the side missions. You're like, man, life ain't even that hard no more. I got all these new superpowers. I'm ready to go. That's kind of how this is right now, okay? But for the most part, what we've done is, so I could say, now don't judge, don't judge. I'm showing y'all because nobody really seen this, right? It's for this premiere. So what we did was I gave her the strategy of creating a free chapter and a personality quiz, right? That way she can get people into the funnel. All this was done with WordPress and Gutenberg and Cadence blocks that you see right now. So that's the free chapter page right there. And then the personality quiz right here. This is what we did with FluentForms. So I'm just giving you practical uses. What's cool about FluentForms is not only is it like a form builder like GravityForms or WPForms because there's really our contact form seven. Now I'm not saying these other form builders aren't good, but which is I'm giving you a practical reason why we went with FluentForms from a strategic standpoint was because we were able to build a quiz for her. It was a quiz because she has two characters in her book, Natalie and Ashley. So I said, hey, why don't you use two characters as outcomes and say as a personality, one character? Are you related to this character, Ashley? Are you related to this character, Natalie? And so we built the quiz with FluentForms using the conversational form type of feature, which typically is done with type form and type form costs a lot of money. Type form is the mecca of that conversational form feature. If you've ever heard of type form, right? Type form ain't cheap. So imagine getting the type form functionality inside of WordPress and getting the form functionality and other things like that. So that was the reason why we chose FluentForms as an example. That's how I think when I choose plugins, how can I use it in multiple ways and not just the one way that it seems to be on the surface level with its main features per se. So we did that. And then this is her presale page right here. We're still trying to figure out how to get this, I'm gonna show you another video player one, but so we're just using a placeholder dummy FluentForms right there. So this was something that we built in a month. I challenged myself to say, okay, cause she needed, she had other people that were, they kind of bailed out on her. And so she came to me, it was a last minute thing. I said, okay, we have to really prioritize our time. And we did all of this in a month. And then once you click this button right here, and I'm gonna get back to it. But the moral of the story, as I say it right, the moral of the story, the story of the moral, I don't know why I just really forgot how to say that same. But the whole main point was that her site last week just went down. She has Bluehost and I get a message at like four o'clock in the morning, my site's down. I almost started panning cause I'm thinking like, okay, my developer just touched it last. Now I gotta ask him, and it had nothing to do with us. It was a Bluehost and literally it erased everything, all of these pages that we made, as well as her other website too on the hosting. And she did not have it backed up with a backup plugin. So that's what I'm saying. And I'm keeping it all, this really happened. This is not, I'm not making this up. This happened about a week ago. And it was her lesson. I didn't wanna beat the dead horse. I made sure to let her know, I warned you about this. But I had to let it go, I had to let it go. Cause I felt like she learned the lesson and it would never happen again. So for those of you all who do have good hosting, sometimes your hosting has backup, sometimes they don't, whether or not they do or don't, make sure that you back up your website. Let's go to a short card. So speaking of, right, this is my favorite plugin right here, if we go, okay, let me know y'all too. If we go a little bit over time, if you have to go, you can go, but we might just go a little bit over time this time, but feel free to, we'll have the replay. So you don't have to worry about it. I make sure to hit the recording button in the beginning cause I almost forgot that. Let's see, so we have short card on there. Now that's what this is right here, right here. So this checkout form is a custom checkout form we made through short card. Isn't this a beautiful form? I never thought I would use the word beautiful with the word form before, or checkout form. But I mean, it changed the whole game of us being able to get a fast checkout page without the bloat. So if I go to, no, I can't go to, cause PHP insights when you're using it on Chrome, it's freezes a lot. So you have to, I have to open up Safari, but everybody doesn't have Safari, because everybody doesn't have a Mac. But I'm like, is that just my, is anybody else having that issue too when they go to PHP insights? See, I mean, let's see, PHP insights, when they go to PHP insights, right? And then they put in a page, and I'm not gonna do it cause I don't want to freeze the situation. But when you analyze the website, now I'm gonna do, should I take the chance? I wonder if I should take the chance on this. I'm a risky person, y'all, I'm a risky person. I'm gonna let it do its thing. And then I'm just gonna click off of it.  I mean, anybody can counter argue that, but that's just my opinion. If you're looking to get the maximum conversions that you can get out of a situation, so that's good, that's on mobile and the desktop is 102. All right, so let me click off of it before it starts to freeze on my computer. So if you're looking to maximize your conversions, for whatever it is that you're doing, you want your checkout to page to be lightning fast, lightning fast. You don't have time, people don't have time and that's every second that it has to load is you losing conversions, whether it's money, whether it's applications, signups, whatever it is, right?   We used one called WP Rocket. But even without WP Rocket, it still would be fast. We just, you know, we'd like to do lightning fast as you saw over here. But for the most part, ShortCart, it allows you to add products to your website without the bloat that WooCommerce is gonna give you.  I'm talking about all the other add-ons and plugins that you have to look at and think about. But let me look in the chat and let me see if I have seen anything, anybody have any question? Who is the company behind ShortCart? The company behind ShortCart is the same company that makes Astra. Let's see if they show it. Astra and Spectre and CartFlows. So they are credible, highly, highly, highly credible. So ShortCart will give you the ability again to do a lot of your e-commerce functionality without the bloat of WooCommerce. Now, PrestoPlayer, this is my favorite video plugin. Now, why is this applicable? Like, what is the whole point of using a video player? Now, I'm curious, anybody in here, does everybody in here that uses WordPress, do you use a video player plugin? I'm curious from everybody's perspective. If you do put yes in chat, don't put no. I see we got a lot of no's. Interesting, interesting. See, that's why I gotta give y'all that fresh perspective. No, not yet. I'm new to using plugins. Okay, so we got a lot of no's. We got a lot of no's. So, okay, so that means we learning today, right? We learning something new. Because, and I'm saying this to say, this is the reason why I like to be practical, right? And because this is fresh, like I said, we really got it, we are premiering this on Sunday. Because this is fresh, I felt like this is a good opportunity to just share with y'all.  We gave her a really, really good deal for the amount of time we had to put into the situation. That's between us. And then she watches this, ha ha ha ha ha, you would. But either way, this whole video situation here is slowing down our website so much. Now, we do have a pop up and that's not really it. So, let's say I went back to the page B, let's do it again.  Don't be judging, let me get off of here, let me get off of the short car. I gotta keep these tabs closed, right? Cause I do not want it to freeze. Cause this page, we cannot get it that fast. And I know it's because this video is blogging down the side. YouTube is helped. When you want a better YouTube video, use YouTube. It's like the number one killer of your page being on your website. A lot of people don't understand that because you're trying to get the best of both. You're trying to get the YouTube video, which is great, right? From a conversion standpoint, because video converts really, really well, but you don't realize that that video, because you're not using an optimized way to put it on your website, it's bogging down your website a lot. So it's gonna slow down your website if you don't use a performance based video plugin. And that's where this plugin, Presto Player, comes in. So does that make sense for everybody? One of the reasons why I'm saying it's important to think about even the video plugin that you use and put it on your website. Now, it's not just that. It's also the functionalities that it gives when it comes to video marketing, but I'm gonna continue to add the rest of these real quick. Now, Rank Math is an SEO plugin that I recommend. And it's comparable or it's an alternative of Yoast. And then SEO presses is another one. Most people know Yoast as one of the top, the 800 pound gorilla, the top dogs in the SEO world. But I advocate for Rank Math because they give way more features in the free version than Yoast does one, even with the paid version of Yoast, even some of the paid ones. It gives a lot in the free version of Rank Math. So I, excuse me, I highly recommend Rank Math because of the fact that it's not only made by a really, really good company, but the things that you can do with it on the free and then the pro version gives you so many more features that they, again, they do really, really well. And I really don't think most people will be disappointed, you know, moving, migrating for them. And you can migrate from Yoast to Rank Math really, really easily as well too. And for those of y'all who don't know what the whole purpose of SEO or this plugin, I got to touch on that too, because I made the other situation more practical. We're not doing right now, we're not doing SEO on these. She will be doing, I think ads and just promoting it through her social media network. Essentially, she'll be doing SEO to her website. But say we were trying to get seen on Google through blogging, right? This is where Rank Math would come in. Say those videos, Rank Math has a really good video functionality where your videos will get seen in Google. Like if you're wondering how when you type something in and you see them in videos and you can get your videos on your website seen in Google for keywords by using the right and correct functionality from an SEO plugin, Rank Math has that. It's one of the features that it has. So other than being able to just give you kind of out the box SEO, it has some other functionalities that give you more real estate in Google that you normally wouldn't get for free out of most plugins. Okay, WP code. All right, so WP code. This is one that I recommend. If you're looking to add functionality to your website through custom code or through some snippets and say you're not a coder, right? Well, you don't have to be a coder. You can, they have a lot of templates and side of these plugins where you can use, say you wanted to do something and you didn't want to put an extra plugin on your website. So you're able to do that with these type of plugins, co-snative plugins and WP code is a really good one. And then Google Site Kit, I use that for Google Analytics. Google Site Kit has gotten better, a lot better over time. And you just connected with your Google Analytics, it will put the GA4 tag or you, I believe it'll connect if you have the GA4 tag. So if you're not used to Google Analytics or don't know anything about it, it's really to see the traffic coming to your website. What's happening, right? Google Analytics is a free analytics tool. It's the top maker. It is the 800 pound gorilla. When it comes to analytics, you connect to your website. They have a new version called Google Analytics 4. The old version was called Universal Analytics and they're getting rid of that this next coming year in July. So Google Analytics 4, it's not an upgrade. I am certified in Google Analytics. I just got certified a couple of months back. So, you know, at least taking the classes, it was interesting to see them really touch on letting people know this is not an upgrade. It's a whole new version. They, and they made it in a way to where it's more AI, it's more user friendly, it's AI driven, it's using a user's predictability so it can tell you what could happen next on your website from an AI perspective if you just ask it a question. Hey, Google, how is my campaign gonna be doing next week or in a month based on the numbers that came from and then it'll just give you some, and it's just the coolest thing. So for those of y'all who, you know, just are looking at Analytics for the first time, it's a really good start and then you can use other analytics tools as well. So let's go to the install plugin. Now there's a reason why I did not intentionally just installed everything because I wanted to show you all, for those of y'all who don't do it this way, you know, I'm a big fan of bulk actions. So if I can just bulk activate everything at one time, I'll do so. And we're gonna skip this one out. This is RankMath trying to set you up, just kind of trying to put you through there onboarding. So now all the plugins are installed, as you can see, right? Now for the most part, if you're going to set up SiteKit, since it wants to do it first, you would connect this with Google Analytics. I don't wanna sign in right now, but you would just sign in, it would find your analytics. So before you, I know this is, I'll say Google Analytics.   And now you have Google connected with your website. You'll be able to collect all that data, all that information. You know, make sure you're doing it responsibly, right? With a lot of these new privacy laws. But collect that information and that data and then you can be informed to make decisions. So everything you're doing on your website, all this work that you're putting in, you wanna know how things are being measured and how things are being tracked, right? And this is a great way to do so for free and easy, easily. So you're in luck. If you didn't know anything about Google Analytics before and yeah, universal analytics was a total situation. This new GA4, I'm telling you all, I think most people, you know, and I know that's saying a lot, most people would be able to use it, understand it to a fundamental degree and it would increase whatever it is that they're doing because now they're understanding how the analytics works from a user-friendly standpoint versus from like a developer standpoint or an analyst standpoint. Okay, okay. All right, so we talked about setting up Google Analytics I think security. Now, good thing about these plugins, right, is that they particularly, when you set them up, I mean, when you hook them up, they should set up themselves. They're like the default settings. So let me see, where is this skip set up? So I just skipped set up, right?  I think it's very healthy practice for privacy for to help avoid, you know, people hacking your website. I don't really use it, but you have that feature. Local brute force, network brute force. Now here's the thing that people sometimes forget and I touch on this every time I talk about security. Most of your security comes in from your hosting. So a plugin is just as doubling down. It's like the backup of the backup, just doubling down. Most of your security comes with your hosting. I promise you all. So if you're good hosting, that's most of security. There are so many different technologies and nuances happening. I don't even think the smartest person to understand what's happening could say every single thing that's happening. But when you look at even the hosting and all the layers of the technologies they're using just to host your website, it's crazy. So, and that's outside of WordPress. They ain't got nothing to do with WordPress. So just adding that part and this hosting part, the WordPress aspect of things, you gotta think of it that way. It's big. Like as far as hosting being real big on security. User groups, I'm not gonna get into that right now. I'm just gonna go to default. Okay, so say you have more people on your website that are more admin and editors. This is a really good setting that you can set up where they have certain permissions on how they can access. And this comes with ithame security. And it comes with a lot of other security plugins as well too, but I'm just gonna skip this.  Now this is something else too that I'm a big fan of working smarter, not harder. Because yeah, we can go over every single setting verbatim, setting for sending. But if I'm going to practice what I preach and teach you all that, do your own due diligence. Don't just take my word for it. But at the same time, when I'm just showing you how to hook up settings, go with the recommended settings for the most part at first. You know, go through them, but work with plugins and software that they already set you up for success. You ain't gotta go in there and do all this extra stuff. Now if you wanna tweak something, you have the opportunity to do so, but you shouldn't have to. I like to work with plugins that do that for me because I don't have time. Just don't have to be, there's just so much other things that we have to do. And I wanna make WordPress easy for people. So boom. You see how I just went through that little setup wizard, onboarding wizard, now it's securing site. You're good to go. So I'm gonna go to the next one. I'm gonna let it do that. A little bit of vibrato right there. All right, so now we have our theme. You know, our theme security, our security plugin is set up, a Presto player. Now, what's cool about Presto player, like I said, that it's a video marketing plugin. And they cornered the market with that. Because if you go to video into plugins, and I don't know if they're, you know, as far as marketing themselves in that way, but if you go to video, most video plugins are video galleries. So they really met a need that most people who didn't know they needed in the plugin video, plugin world for WordPress. Cause things like Wistia, that's a very popular Wistia, right? So Wistia is one of the most popular ones. Vimeo is another one. A lot of people don't understand the terminology of video marketing. And I think that WordPress and video marketing go hand in hand because you are hosting your video not on WordPress, through WordPress, right? So Wistia and Vimeo are the top two video marketing type, I mean, video type of plugins, I mean, not plugins but platforms. So when you have Presto player, they won, it does work with Vimeo and YouTube, but they created the opportunity for you to have video marketing features like collecting emails, using clickable links, being able to put different skins and you control the video player, they gave you the ability to do so. Within their, do some of the Presto players settings, within their video player. So I'll share that with you. So here in Google Analytics, they integrate with Google Analytics as well. So I just mentioned setting up your Google Analytics. You can easily integrate with this and this is a pro feature, but it does allow you to do so. You can do privacy with YouTube. So they have this really cool skin or preset where you can add it to your video and it will hide the YouTube skin. Why would you wanna hide the YouTube skin? Well, every time somebody pauses a YouTube video, it shows, so here I'm gonna show you real quick, have the cool terms, and then I'm gonna, boom. So there you go. You see when you pause it, these other videos pop up here. So that is a way that you will take people off of your website and they will never come back to your website. That is the easy way to do that is using a YouTube video that is kind of like unprotected. You know, it's got a normal original YouTube skin over it. You don't wanna do that. So something like Presto Player helps you be able to take that away from it, which is kind of cool. You can also connect this with your email marketing suite or email marketing tool. They have web hooks in the pro version as well too, but you would connect this there and in that way on your video, you can collect email at the beginning of the video. You can collect email in the middle or at the end. You can decide if the person has to give you their email before they can watch the rest of the video or they can just skip the email part and keep watching the rest of the video. That's adding more functionality to a video that takes one video you've made into a marketing tool for your business and Presto Player gives you the ability to be able to do so, as well as you can add your branding to it too. So and the performance part right here, this is what I really like. This setting right here, now if you're using some type of LMS, Viver used, you know, been on a core site and the, what is this? Like the video progress when you, I believe it's when you press play on the video or don't press play and you're in the, and you've kind of been cookieed basically, it will allow when you go to the next video. I mean, when you finish the video, it'll automatically go over to the next video. Like that's what this plugin does is it gives you the ability to use the video on the LMS, like Tudor, LMS, Learn Dash, or a couple of ones, Lifter are some ones that this will kind of sync with those tools and sync the video with those tools and how person progresses through their course lessons, just by having this toggle on right here. And this right here gives, just make sure your video load faster. So that video was, that was walking on the website the regular way, turning this on, it just dynamically loads the JavaScript, which just means it's gonna load the Java, it's gonna load the video in a very smart way. That just gives you more speed and performance back. Again, these are things that I feel are very important when it comes to building your website. I don't know why it was set in there. All right, so presto player is something that you definitely wanna think about setting up. Rank math, I'm not gonna go through all these settings, but I will say that they do set up rank math out the box. So when you go through that wizard, there's gonna ask you a few questions. I will go through that wizard, answer the questions that they ask you, and then just let it go. Unless you want to, and I highly suggest you do so, but I want to get you through it without having, you having to get so bogged down on all these parts and pieces because they do set this up in a way to where it's set out the box. You just gotta have the plugin on your website and then get back to your day. You know, go through that onboarding wizard, get back to your day and let it work its magic. The pro version is worth it, I'm worth it, but the free version does more than enough for most people and it will get you seen on Google. And we all want to be seen on Google because that's how we get more people more free traffic to our website that we've worked so hard to build because we're not building these WordPress websites for no reason. I would hope so for the most part. Let's see. I'm just looking at the chat real quick. I don't know anything about culture, but I can call culture, but I can learn. I believe it tracks you or in the course. So you leave coming. Yep, yep, yep. So yeah, it does. And that's what it does. Press the player does the tracking with the course. So it's pretty cool. So let me go back to my plugin settings here. All right, all right, all right. So we talked about rank math, site kit. I already mentioned that as well. That was in the beginning. Uptrap plus, we talked about WP code and shortcut. So the settings and shortcut, I'm gonna do this one and then I'm gonna go into Gutenberg and then we're gonna call it a wrap. So I'll probably be about 15 minutes over if that's okay. Again, you can watch the replay of it, but it's all good. Cause this is the juicy part, y'all. I'm gonna keep it real. I need y'all to know that this is the real juicy part. Matter of fact, before I even, I don't wanna assume. Put a yes in the chat if you do any type of e-commerce transactions on your website. Put a no in the chat if you don't. Seems like we got a little bit of even yeses in a nose and some maybes. Okay. Okay, not currently, not currently. All right, all right. Yes, yes. Okay, okay. So I'm assuming for the nose that you may not need to or you don't have a e-commerce process. You don't really do any type of money collection through the website. Okay, all right. So yeah, so we got a few folks that do a few folks that don't and it's all good because this is just again, a learning experience, but just something that I just wanted to share with you all. So shortcut, you're able, which makes this so much different than I would say we'll commerce. And the main reason why I'm going over this with you all because they are having a special right now that ends tomorrow. I have no affiliation with them and this is just me sharing y'all some of the goods, some of the juice. This is me spilling the tea because this is running in the Facebook group, the private Facebook group. And like I said, it ends tomorrow, but it's been a highly anticipated deal for months and months. And I believe that this is going to change the game in the e-commerce world to where if you weren't doing e-commerce before in your website, you probably gonna come up with an excuse to do something based off of all the functionality that this can do in the free version, let alone in the pro version. But let me share with you all real quick this part. So when you are setting it up, the thing about ShortCart, and we talked about it, we have a, if you wanna go to WordPress.tv, there is a presentation I did of ShortCart versus WooCommerce. And so you're able to see more in depth of the difference between the two. I'm gonna just try to get this. So you see, I'm going through this setup wizard. This is a headless plugin, meaning that the difference between this and WooCommerce is that it does not host the data on your website like WooCommerce does. So that's the first thing. There are people who've used ThriveCart, Shopify, other e-commerce functionalities and they use it with Intenim, with WordPress. This is kind of in that lane, right? But it's built, there's a plugin that connects to the kind of the offline or it's still online, I shouldn't say online, but off WordPress aspect of it. But for the most part, the settings out the box are just crazy. This is the free version of ShortCart, I'm showing you right here. So the settings out the box are just crazy. And even the UI, the UI smooth, WooCommerce needs to update. It just needs to update. It's just so, it looks so clunky and so old. And I don't mind using something tried and true that works, but sometimes, again, fresh, this does not look fresh in comparison to WooCommerce. So I know I'm about fresh vegetables, I'm about fresh bread, a fresh thyme, man, a fresh haircut, I need one. I'm a little rough out here, y'all. But yeah, I need something fresh. So out the box, you're able to add your contact information logo and stuff like that to your branding. Then they have the ordering numbers and receipts and voice receipts, you're gonna put a memo in the footer. Now I can't click this right here, I could go to my website and show y'all, but for the most part, you have, this is abandoned checkout. So this is very important with e-commerce because if you ever go on to Amazon and you put, excuse me, something in your cart, you're able to recover that order automatically through a functionality like abandoned checkout.  That's abandoned checkout. They just recovered that order if you purchased that order. They would have never gotten if they hadn't had some type of functionality. This allows you to do that with the pro version. But what's cool though is that it has automatic notifications for subscriptions and refunds, order confirmation emails. So it would automatically send these emails when a subscription cancels. You can do subscriptions with this plugin for free. You would have to pay for that or at least the licensing and pay for pro version of that subscriptions with other plugins with e-commerce. And you'd have to add another plugin because e-commerce subscriptions is expensive. It's worth it to a degree, but it's expensive. This isn't the free version, y'all. So bam, you get these and then you can customize. You can customize your emails as well too. And then you can say something more specific towards your brand or with your brand message in the email that's automatically gonna get sent out on your behalf based on this. So here's the subscriptions tab right here. And this is what's really cool. Now, I'm big on practicality and looking at this from a store owner myself, I can't use this yet because of some limitations with another plugin that I'm using. But once they actually are able to speak together, I'm gonna be using shortcut for one of my stores, my template shop that will give me the ability to do my subscriptions instead of using e-commerce to do it. But I'll be able to use my subscriptions and do downgrades and upgrades and cancellations automatically and then I can choose how people, how they interact with it. Does it happen immediately or does it do it on the next billing period? These are important functionalities that you wanna have in your process that automatically happen without you having to go in and press a button or you gotta go in hit a toggle switch and stuff that you want to happen and it gives your user the experience that they're being listened to, they're being heard, they're being understood and they have options, you know? And they're working with a professional business that they are doing business with a professional business. You have to set that up with WooCommerce with many other different types of plugins. So these are things that, you know, I think a lot of people don't think about when they're creating their website with WooCommerce, I mean with WordPress from a strategic standpoint. Fail payments as well too. And then another thing which is really cool, the customer portal, their customer dashboard looks so sweet in comparison to WooCommerce that with WooCommerce, we have to custom develop our customer dashboards. Meaning like, I don't do any development so I had to have my developer use special code in order to customize our customer dashboard. Like when people log in, they look at their My Account page with this, you can use the WordPress editor, Gutenberg to make your own customer dashboard moving blocks around and things like that without having to do any code. So you're giving your customer the experience based on how you customize your website with Gutenberg without using any code. And this also gives them the functionality here that says what they can do in that backend in the customer dashboard.  And I would say yes for the most part, special cases where you may not want them, but I want people to, you know, I want to be sleeping and a person is able to still interact with my website in a way where it's like I have an assistant working for me, making decisions on our behalf. Another thing that's really huge, I mentioned in the WooCommerce versus ShortCard or ShortCard versus WooCommerce was the tax part. You would typically have to pay a lot of money to get automated taxes, this does it for free. You just put your address in there and it does it for free. You can hook up Stripe PayPal, they are getting other payment like Razer, Mali and a few other ones that are international based, but they automatically hook up with Stripe and PayPal for you. And then you can always get your data out and export your data as well too. Anytime, you can export all your data. And that's pretty much ShortCard for you. If you do add the plugin to your website, the free version, like I said, by Sunday, I'll just show you right here, boom.  The business plan and the pro plan, and it's a buy one, get one, and they're doing either full price or 10 month installments. So like I said, now, unless they change it, they do the whoopsy-woof-dee-doo, the okey-doke thing, the Kansas City shuffle where they say tomorrow's the last, I don't believe the owner's bluffing because they've only wanted limited lifetime accounts, because of the cost. But yeah, if you wanna do it, take that chance, put the pro plugin, let me put the free plugin on your website and then look at that and upgrade your plan and you can do this one or that one, you can do 10 month installment so you can pay it all at one time. Now, that's, that's my choice, Bill and the T right there for you. I'm telling you all the truth. Like I said, I ain't got no affiliation with it. I could technically get in trouble for it, but I'm telling you all anyway. All right, so let's go to the pages real quick.  Everybody still good? You know, I just wanna make sure everybody's still good. That's, all right, so we're gonna go to, let's go to preferences real quick. This is not a Gutenberg tutorial. I just said that I wanna talk about the settings that people don't think about in Gutenberg.  But I also like about this and a lot of people sometimes overlook or don't know it's there, you can actually decide what blocks you want to be shown on your website. So this is cadence blocks, the block pack that I added. And if I'm like, I don't want this Lottie, I don't use that block, I don't use that one, you can decide easily to get stuff out your way, what you don't want to use, right? And then this is the cool part about short cart is that again, you get blocks with it. So I'm in Gutenberg WordPress is native editor and I'm getting blocks that I can use so I can add a checkout form, a buy button or add the cart button. I can customize the checkout experience to my liking without any code based on using these blocks. And there are a lot of blocks as you can see. And this is the free version, y'all. Boom, that was all short cart right there. Now we have the text blocks, right? WordPress is default. And basically you just do all that, you get that, you get that, you get that. And then let's see, do they have the save? I thought there would be a save button. Okay, let's just hope it remembers. So basically that whole purpose of that was to be able to say what you do and don't want to see over here. That was what the preferences for that was.  And then you have your panel settings so you can have your featured image, discussion, page attributes, that's what you would see over here. And additional note, now this is new, I didn't know about the custom fields so I'm not gonna touch on this too much but I see that WordPress now has custom fields where once you click this, it has the custom fields at the bottom here. Not mistaken, yeah. So I gotta learn more about that myself, the custom fields aspect of things. But you see that that is there. WordPress 6.1 also has a new way of seeing your kind of your page, they call it the summary, but like, okay, is this public or is this a draft or is this private or protected? Then do I publish this now? This is another good automation feature. This is big, y'all. I don't think a lot of people look at this as automation. This is automation when you can schedule certain posts or certain pages for a certain time, period. And then you can just set it up and forget it and then let it just go on its own. You can set your permalink or your URL here. And then if you're using full site editing, you would put your template here. So this is what 6.1 gave because it did not look like that with 6.1. That was a big difference right there. So yeah, that is for the most part, the settings of WordPress. And then if you were using cadence theme or you're using like an Astra theme, they would have another settings where you can actually say, hey, I don't want to have the page title. I want to disable the page title for this page. I want to have my page full width or I want to have it normal or have a left sidebar. I don't want to have a header or footer. So this is how we got the functionality of this to make it look like a landing page. Well, what makes this a landing page? Well, one, now don't pay attention to the content because she still has to rewrite some of the content to make it make sense. But all these buttons lead to the checkout, right? This is a hello bar at the top. You notice that there is no navigation, right? There's a footer here, but typically there technically shouldn't be a footer. Still, it's kind of your preference on whether you have a footer or not. You see, there's no footer here on this free chapter page. Well, we were able to do that with the based on the theme setting, saying disable the header and footer to give it an indication it's a landing page. We don't want anybody going anywhere else. You either look, you either here or you leave totally. You know what I'm saying? But we don't want you bouncing off and getting distracted.  I don't know. Everybody wants to use sales funnel, but I still use sales marketing funnels. But that's how you create that in WordPress is using those type of features, hiding the footer and the header very easily. And that's pretty much what I wanted to share with you all. And then the last part is, I would say be smart about building your web pages. So a cadence blocks, this comes from the block pack and spectra has it. I believe see stackable has as well. So they have templates that you can use. So you don't have to start from scratch. You can use templates within your block pack and they should typically be optimized for performance and optimized for mobility and mobile responsiveness and tablet responsiveness. So you don't have to start from scratch if you don't want to, right? This is starting fresh, not necessarily always starting from scratch. So use templates when it comes to that. And these are actually our template packs. So listen, I'm a big fan of, if I'm giving, because this is where I'm gonna wrap it up, but I volunteer my time for this. And I wanna thank everybody for being here. I mean, we've had some people that had to leave, but we've had 14 people here strong. So much love for that. I would definitely say, you know, give yourself a round of applause for being here, making it to the end, dealing with my corny self. I know I could be a little corny sometime. I know I can be a little different. I just wanna, you know, be me and thank you all for being here. When it comes to templates, use them. You can get so much, you can get so much faster, get what you need so much faster than trying to like reinvent the wheel with certain things. We still, I gotta work on that. That's my bad. I did one that was, but we're still optimizing some of our newest collections. But for the most part though, yeah, we do have our templates with cadence. You can get them for free. So once you actually add the free cadence blocks to it, you can then get the free version of our templates and then use those, use cadence templates, use stackable. I would only recommend you use two, sorry, I would recommend you only use two blocks, combination of like spectra and cadence or spectra and stackable. I would not recommend you use three or more just because it starts to get a little bit cumbersome. And that's something that a lot of people don't talk about too. They just get kind of plugin happy, block plugin happy. You'll have three or four different plugin blocks. No, I think that's a bad practice to have for the most part because you wanna use block packs that are full to have what you need and don't try to do too many bells and whistles if you don't need to do so. And that's pretty much it. So let me stop sharing my screen. Well, I'll say let's show the last one here only because it's got my LinkedIn. So yeah, if you want to connect with me, connect with me on LinkedIn, I appreciate everybody's time here. This was starting fresh on WordPress part two where I went a little bit deeper. I did the recap, then went a little bit deeper on the plugin settings. And yeah, I just wanted to share with everybody that this is how I would build a lean, robust site. Whether it's using those specific plugins or focusing on those plugin categories, think of it that way.


Hi everyone, my name is Steph, this is Little Bookish Teacher, and I read the 16 Books in the Bad Guys series by Aaron Blaby. So as I've talked about on my channel, I am a primary school teacher based in Melbourne, Australia, and I love everything to do with kids books. And in 2022, I was a foundation teacher. Foundation is the first year of formal schooling, so it could be called Kinder, it could be called Prep depending on where you are in the world. And my class last year were humongous readers. They loved books, they loved to read, and their favorite series overall across the board was the Bad Guys series by Aaron Blaby. At the start of the year, I did not own a single one of these books, but they wore me down throughout the year, and we had to get them because they would just sit there and read them. And even if they couldn't read them, they were reading the pictures and they were telling me, I can't read it, I'm just looking at the pictures, but I know what's going on in the story. And that's great because these are five and six year olds who want to pick up a book like this that has chapters and more writing than they're used to seeing in books that they're reading. They want to sit there and they want to read it and they wanted to read them with their friends. And so of course, of course, I had to get the books. My intention had been at the time to read them before I gave them to the kids, which is what I would normally do before I put anything on the bookshelf for the kids. However, I do trust Aaron Blaby's work, I've been reading his work for many, many years. I know the way that he writes. And as soon as they saw that I had the books, I had to go on the shelf. And then I never saw the books again. So until the end of the year. Because every time that I might grab one of the books, they're like, oh, can I have that one back? Yeah, these books were very rarely actually on the bookshelf. They were always in the hands of kids. And so I thought that it would be a great time over the school holidays to actually sit down and read the series from start to finish.  For anyone who is not familiar with the series, the bad guys is about the traditional bad guys from kid stories like the Big Bad Wolf and sharks and snakes and piranhas and tarantulas and whatnot. Mr.  And so he proposes that they become the good guys. In order to do that, they're going to do things that help society like rescue kittens out of trees. And in the case of the first book, you know, breaking a whole lot of dogs out of a pound and all of that sort of thing. But of course, nothing is ever as simple as that. And they end up running a fowl of a villain called Dr. Marmalade, who appears to be a very cute and fluffy hamster. And as you read the series, you will find out that maybe outward appearances are a bit deceiving. At the end of this video, I'm going to actually have clips of me reading each book in the series. So it does feature spoilers. So this is the spoilery, spoilery free section and my thoughts on the series. And then I'll pop all those clips in at the end so that you can get my immediate reactions. Because when I tell you that I have not laughed so hard in a long time while reading a kids book series, I'm not kidding. These books are very funny, very clever. There's a whole lot of puns in there. There's a whole lot of references to contemporary celebrities and issues and just things that as an adult, you sit there and go, that's clever. Do I think that those references will always match the level of the kids who are reading it? No, I don't think so. I think this has been written with a high interest level for kids, while also a high interest level for the parents who will have to read these books to the kids. And I think that is perfect. So some more thoughts before I jump into the spoilery section. I love this idea of trying to reform bad characters into being good guys and this idea of perception. How do we perceive other people's actions? And also the idea of characters who are struggling with the concept of going against their nature. A case in point will be Mr Snake who really struggles with this idea of doing things that are not natural to him. I adored the puns the whole way through the book. I just about fell off the chair laughing so many times while reading these and like full on out loud laughed at like not just a chuckle like full on laughter while reading these books. They're just so very clever. Now the one thing I will say about the series, there are currently 16 books out. Book 17 is coming out later in the year. The first 10 books in the series are basically like season one and they have a very different tone to everything from book 11 onwards. Book 11 onwards gets quite dark. Something that I really liked about the second season is the characters start to break the fourth wall which means that they're talking to us as the audience. So when they're referencing something that happened in the first 10 books one of the characters might you know just go you know that thing that happened in episode four maybe around page 155 and it's that call back to what's happened previously for people who may be coming into these books later and who may not have read it or who may have forgotten because there's 16 books in a series. I loved all the subtle nods to popular fiction. You know there are nods in here to Star Wars. There's a reference to Beyonce. There are lots and lots of film and TV and quote references to various things and as an adult reader that made it very very enjoyable. These books all do end on a cliffhanger. They're very serialized in that way so you start reading one and you have to keep reading because the story leads you into the next one which is a very clever way to do kids books. Lots of kids books series do this because that you know gets the kids to ask their parents to buy the next book but it is also a really good way to get kids to keep reading because they're invested. I also know that there is a movie which I have not seen yet which I would probably like to at some point. I had a really great time reading these books so I'm going to cut to all of my little vlog reactions for each of the books and then we'll come back at the end. Hi everyone so something that I forgot to mention that I'm going to put at the start of these vlog clips in regards to the bad guys is the format of the book. So they are a reasonable sized book. There's about 140 pages in each of the first season and then it jumps up to about 180 pages in from book 11 onwards but these are kind of across between an early reader and a graphic novel so you have very little text on each page. You have very panel like sections in the book. It's fine. So it does start to read more like a graphic novel because you don't have the same narrative direction in between all of the stories so there's quite a lot of dialogue and then if you need extra information then you might get that but you don't have the in between. So I consider this more a graphic novel for younger readers. I'm going to start my very first bad guys book. I'm starting obviously with episode one. I have 16 episodes to get through and I'm hoping to get through one a day so I figured I would just share my thoughts as I read each episode. I'm excited to read this series that my class were absolutely obsessed with last year so this is obviously an introduction to the series and the characters. You have Mr. Wolf, Mr. Shark, Mr. Snake and Mr. Piranha and the wolf is narrating the story. It is very much told in a comic art style for younger readers and you have Mr. Wolf who has decided that he wants to become a good guy and is working to convince us the reader and also his friends that they can do good. So this book involves rescuing cat up a tree and also rescuing some dogs from the pound and it's actually quite funny the humor in it is pretty good so I'm looking forward to reading the next book. Another day, another bad guys book. This is episode two, Mission Unpluckable. We are introduced to a new character, Legs, who is a tarantula who totally scares the pants of Mr. Shark which is hilarious and the gang are trying to free chickens from cages on a chicken farm. So it's quite funny and I think it introduces an antagonist for the series as well at the very end which is kind of clever and yeah I will let you know what I think of the third book when I get to it. Okay so I just finished episode three of The Bad Guys. The furball strikes back.  He ends up kidnapping the bad guys and honestly I was just laughing so hard when three of the bad guys are just arguing with one another over who was the person who got them in this mess and who's responsible for it. It was just very funny and I like that we also meet Agent Fox in this one who is part of the International League of Heroes. So yes, can't wait to see where the story goes next because now we have zombie kittens. Hi everyone, I know this is the next clip in this video but it's been a while for me. I am going to be reading books four, five and six in The Bad Guys series today and sharing my thoughts on them. So it's been about a week and a half since I read the third book so now we're going to continue. Book four is Attack of the Zittans and Dr Rupert Marmalade has unleashed his zombie kittens on the world and everyone is frantically trying to figure out how to survive the Zitten apocalypse and it's just very funny and the zombie kittens were kind of adorable. Book five is intergalactic gas and I can see why the kids really love this one because there are plenty of fart jokes in here but it was very funny and took a turn at the very end that I was totally not expecting. Anyway, Mr Wolf and the Gang have to go into space to stop Dr Marmalade's zombie-making laser thing and hijinks and chew. Okay, we're going to read one more today. Book six is Alien vs. Bad Guys so one of the reveals is that our villain is not actually from Earth, Marmalade is an alien and very hell-bent on destroying Earth and bringing along all of its friends as well and quite liked the ending on this one because now I know that there are going to be dinosaurs in the next book. So stay tuned, I will continue reading the series very soon. New day, some more Bad Guys books so I just read episode seven and this one is Do You Think You Saw Us and our Bad Guys or Good Guys are trapped in the past where they have to deal with being chased by plenty of dinosaurs and then find a way to get back to the present today to save Agent Fox from the aliens invading Earth. Very fun, great installment and at the back there was a little sort of like a mini episode with Dr Marmalade telling all about how he's conquered Earth and you know all of his nefarious plans so it was very cute and fun. So episode eight is Super Bad and in this one our Bad Guys end up finally meeting the International League of Heroes and all of its members, not just Agent Fox and they go through their training montage because they have now acquired superpowers and they need training and this of course provides a whole lot of hilarity as they try and figure out how to use their newfound powers. That cliffhanger though is something so I've got to keep reading to find out what happens next. So episode nine is The Big Bad Wolf and Mr Wolf has unfortunately had a bit of a mishap and is a giant rampaging wolf through the city and this is not good because people are not confused if he's is he a good guy or a bad guy and it's up to his team to save him and it comes down to Mr Snake who has had a bit of an antagonistic relationship with the rest of the bad guys throughout the series and to try and talk Mr Wolf back into his usual self. Again another ginormous cliffhanger that is going to have to wait till tomorrow so the twists and turns just keep coming. So there are currently some reading sprints on Ashley's channel she's bookish from I'll leave her link down below and I decided I'm going to try and finish off the Bad Guy series so I just finished book 10 which is the baddest day ever and this is where everyone thinks everything is lost and the international league of heroes and the bad guys or the good guys have to get together and try and save the world. While morning friend this has the end of or supposed end of the arc for Dr Marmalade which is quite funny in the end I laughed out loud quite a bit in this book. This is clearly written for kids but the humor in it is so accessible for adults it is just so much fun. So I'm going to go straight into book 11 now and then I'll update you on that one. Book 11 is Dawn of the Underlord and at the end of book 10 Mr Snake was left with all of the super powers that the other characters have been given in a couple of the other books and may have just found out that that's not such a great thing for him and so this one has a very Jedi Sith feel to it because he hears a voice calling him to become a very very very bad guy and it even mentions the multiverse so we're getting a lot of sort of contemporary references in a kid's book and it is just very very fun. Book at 12 or episode 12 we find out that Agent Fox is the one. What does that mean? She has the power to stop the new Dark Overlord who anytime his name is said heavy metal music plays which is so funny. I love contemporary references to other things that are going on so this one was right up my alley. So not only do we meet Dreadlord Splaghorn who is now controlling Snake, we had Mr Fox breaking the fourth wall and reminding everyone every anytime sort of a character or something that happened in a previous book came up which episode it was and what page it was on and we also have the introduction of the B team because the newly dubbed Shadow Squad G split into two groups by circumstances and some people are not happy about it and this was my favourite page when the B team is just basically saying wait my heart bills my asthma puffer my hand cream and I just about died laughing. At the end of this book they've gone their separate ways one team is going into space one has gone through a doorway to potentially a different dimension and I don't know what's going to happen next so we need to keep reading. Okay so I also finished book 13 cut to the chase and in this one the two teams have their separate missions and Agent Fox's team gets caught in a new realm trying to get to the next one and we learn that there are limits to her chosen one abilities and the B team end up travelling through space and having to switch spaceships to something that will make kids laugh hilariously which is a spaceship shaped like a butt and then they also meet the new character that's been introduced into this book Buck Thunder's and it's just hilarious. I'll update you when I get to the next book. So episode 14 is there behind you because there are B villains in this one and so of course one of the villains or one of the underlords who's chasing around our heroes is Queen B on say. I may have laughed just a little too hard at that part. There's also Underlord Try Hard which was also hilarious. There was also a scene in here about stereotypes and one of the non-heroes who's accidentally been tagging along on this adventure defending the fact that she has decided someone is the leader because of stereotypes and stereotypes make her feel comfortable. I mean if that is not reflective of society I don't know what is. I don't necessarily agree with it but I can understand where it comes from. Episode 15 is open wide and say are in which there is a truly horrifying dentist in here who would scare the pants off most people who have a fear of dentists. I'm just saying like why, why are we here? But the heroes have all been trying to find the others who will help the one, Agent Fox, in defeating the villain of this part of the series and we now have collected all of the others but they're all in different places and they now need to reunite. So hopefully that happens in episode 16. So I just read episode 16 which is the last book currently out. The next book, book 17, comes out in July this year and I just noticed how beat up this copy of the book is because this was the most anticipated book in my class all of last year and it got some love so it is the most destroyed book in the entire collection. So in the previous book we had found out who all of the other characters were and we find out that one person was not one of the others, was actually trying to portray our heroes and gets beat up by Tiffany the TV anchor for his efforts. It's hilarious.   Those are my spoilery thoughts on the books as I read them, my little reactions. So now we will come back to me wrapping up this video. Okay so those are my spoilery thoughts. I just had an absolute ball waiting this series. I'm so glad that I took the time out in these holidays to read them, to feel my reactions to them, and to be able to share them with you guys. In the description down below I'll leave all of the books listed as well as a link to Aaron Blavy's website where you can find out more about the author. As I said I've been reading his books for years, he also writes children's picture books. Basically I've had his picture book collection since before I started teaching and I just adore everything that he does. So it's made me very happy to be able to read something other than his picture book works. In the comments I would love for you to let me know if you have read the bad guy series or if you're planning on picking it up. Or if you want to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment feel free to leave an emoji that represents your favorite bad guy character. Otherwise I hope that wherever you are you are staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video. Thanks so much for watching. Bye everyone.


This study examined the hydrologic similarity of 280 catchments in the eastern United States using a six-dimensional signature space. The results showed that these catchments could be grouped into nine homogenous clusters based on their hydrologic responses. These clusters were then linked to climate and landscape attributes such as temperature, elevation, slope and vegetative cover. This study provides evidence that hydrologic similarity can be used to identify regions with similar hydrologic processes and thus enables the transferability of information among different catchments. This article was authored by K. Soutz, T. Wagoner, M. Savapalan and others.


Everybody forced here ripping 20 22 slight draft picks football hobby first off the line first off line in a hobby six box mixer Number eight random teams you can always find the results late in sports cards calm. Thanks for joining everybody. Good luck Three hobby boxes first guys. I'm not gonna recap this break We are still behind trying to make up some time here as much as I can base auto Jerome Ford Browns concourse red taste some Hill Saints 19 of 149 try color rookie Romeo Dobbs field level Packers 157 of 199 Bailey zappy base auto Patriots Hyper concourse Matthew Stafford for the Rams concourse orange taste some Hill Saints 1249 Tom Brady silver sparks Levi Lewis base auto Levi Lewis Seahawks Levi Lewis concourse red Ricky cave on Thibodeau Giants Number 61 of 149 hyper Jake plumber color wheel. We got Saints Chris Olava on the color wheel Heck yeah, awesome card Saints redemption Brian Robinson jr. Washington on the rookie signatures concourse red Kyle Pitts Falcons 16 of 149 hyper tiki barber Matt liner. That's a pretty cool hit right there Matt liner at auto and The uniform you want him in USC uniform Not an NFL uniform Would he be Cardinals? Yep Cardinals Matt liner There you go Zona Try color rendez-barber going to the buccaneers 182 of 199 hyper Josh Allen Gold sparks James and Williams Lions Six out of ten nice Jameson Williams youth explosion silver out of buccaneers Kate Otten an orange field level Micah Parsons for the Cowboys 35 out of 49 Redfield level Jake plumber is he Cardinals or Broncos? Plummer he is Cardinals Cardinals Jake plumber 130 of 149 concourse silver Aaron Rodgers. I didn't know he had a One-to-one touch on interception ratio in his career 161 to 161 definition of a trash Yeah, pretty much wait for forever though Dustin crumb auto for the chiefs Hyper Najee Harris white field level Julio Jones. There you go buccaneers three of 35 Ketiae Bryce young random that at the end Mattau Durant Steelers on the silver auto Concourse red Trey McBride Cardinals Number 66 at 149 hyper field level rookie commanders Johan Dotson Dustin Crumb another chiefs hit here silver X-Factor signatures hyper Rothesburger concourse orange Jonathan Taylor Colts 40 of 49 London silver field level for Falcons first off the line boxes now Another color wheel, it's Aaron Rodgers Packers Those are so sick love those redemption coming up hyper Khalil Mac red field level Keenan Allen for the Chargers 41 of 149 Josh Jacobs CJ Stroud X-Factor signatures orange pulsar to 30 That is a pretty big random at the end. Good luck on that one everybody Perfect timing. I think you I think you summoned that out that auto sauce garden orange pulsar Nice one jets 17 and 26 another Matt and liner at auto here Yo Cardinals to Matt liners For net try color concourse Taysum Hill for the Saints 36 and 199 Altos Ken Rosenthal, I would if I had to guess I would say like five six If I had to guess there's not a lot of height to Ken Rosenthal four-foot Why is he like is he like to out tube a chest? Justin Ross rookie orange pulsar for the chiefs Field level 2626 quay Walker on the Packers big Silverado here Got purple Ritter Falcons field level 6475 concourse rookie James Williams orange 41 to 49 Lions is five five We're pretty much right. That's that's short dude wiki says five five That's like that's like Tom Cruise's height orange pulsar Matt Stafford Ramsfield level nice 726 Say the redemption for the end Try color pits concourse for the Falcons 152199 Zachary Carter rookie signatures Zachary Carter Bengal Zachary Carter World Series Phillies and six Phillies and six my prediction Tiger Stripe Rob Gronkowski Patriots concourse That's pretty sick Josh Job 19 to 25 tie-dye auto Josh Job Their illusions Michael Eagles Josh Job Nicoby Dean Eagles field level red 139 out of 149 AJ Brown Matt Corral orange pulsar auto for the Panthers Nice Corral Number nine out of 30 try color field level Mike Williams Chargers 60 of 199 Malik Willis hyper rookie concourse Titans Dots in there Justin Ross and one more box 400 points Rams all at the end try color Crosby to 199 Raiders Davis Jake Ferguson Concourse orange pulsar rookie Rams Kyron Williams Number 2226 a David Bell Browns base auto Sir Silverado, sorry Browns concourse red George Pickens nice one Steelers 30 of 149 Hyper Carson strong JJ Wad nice one Cardinals on the orange pulsar JJ Watts 25 out of 26 Buccaneers Kade Otten on the base auto Try color cave on Thibodeau 117 out of 199 Walker All right, some randoms now Let's do one here, but this time the top spots getting the auto redemption So we're gonna combine Do all NIL that includes this I mean cuz the other ones only were like a silver That's not a big card, but this is a big redemption CJ Stroud orange pulsar X factor signatures current Ohio State quarterback Possible first quarterback taken next year big card It'll be number to 30 as well. That'll be the top spot in this random. The second spot is gonna get the 400 points That's how we'll do it We're randomized six times. Good luck everybody big card at stake six times again top spot gets the gets the Redemption plus the other NIL cards, and then the second spot is gonna get the 400 points one two three four Five and six Eric R gets the Stroud and Edmund L gets the points There you go. That'll do it. Thanks everybody. We've got more football coming up