Archive: June 2020

While working on the SEO for a site we discovered we got different results from Google and Bing; moreover, Bing didn’t index our Meta Description they used the copy on the page. The titles were the same. It is a WordPress site running Yoast SEO using a DIVI theme. Yoast showed the SEO as being excellent and no real errors. We had to conclude that Bing will index your site the way they see fit.

The site was in both Bing and Google’s webmaster tools, and neither one of them showed any errors. We measured the length of the site’s page description and they were all less than 155 characters. Yoast evaluated our the way the descriptions were written and gave it the green light. We had the site evaluate with RYTE.com and they found no issues and gave the site a score of 87.

We scoured Bing Webmastertools and the web and didn’t find much, so we decided to put this post to see if we get comments. We only found a small amount of others out there with the same question. We are looking for a way to contact Bing and see why. What helped our final conclusion that the meta description that Bing uses can be made up by Bing was the following article from Yoast. They admit that if Bing finds your description to be inadequate then they can make their own.

https://yoast.com/bing-webmaster-tools-reports-data/

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We have been working on adding some useful tech videos to our YouTube channel; however, we were unable to upload our custom thumbnail. We looked around for a bit and discovered our YouTube account wasn’t verified. We were able post the video without it. The thumbnail icon was just grayed out.

We are not exactly sure how we eventually got the prompt that we needed to verify, but when we did we got a code sent to our phone. Put that code in and we could now upload our own custom thumbnail.

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1. Open File Explorer.
2. Under “View” make sure “Show hidden files” is checked.
3. Go to This PC
   • Local Disk (C:)
   • Users • [YOUR USERNAME]
   • AppData
   • Local
   • Packages
   • Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_cw5n1h2txyewy
   • LocalState
   • Assets
   4.Sort by “Size”
4. Copy all the large sized files to a new directory.
5. Add the file extension “.jpg” to the file.
6. Open a browser and go to Google.com
7. Click on the “Images” button
8. Drag and drop the image to the search bar.

We had a user run into this issue, and had been printing all morning. Printed the .PDF attachment, but got the error trying to print the email itself.

Here is what we did to fix it.

1. Quit Outlook.
2. Navigate to C:\Users\<your user profile>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook\
3. Locate the outlprnt file. Rename the file to outlprnt.old.
4. Restart Outlook.

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We got a call for email issues and discovered the user’s Office 365 Exchange email was compromised. One of our technicians was able to get it resolved; however, the following day we got a call that the user wasn’t able to send and he wasn’t getting emails. When we tried to send an email to ourselves we got an error that the recipient couldn’t be found, but we have exchanged emails before.

I discovered a couple of “rules” that were sending the emails to the deleted folder. Rules are found in O365 web app by clicking on the Settings “gear icon” in the upper-right and go down to “Options“. We turned these rules off; however, we still couldn’t send emails. There was the following detail in the error message that lead us to the resolution.

‘550 5.1.8 Access denied, bad outbound sender AS(42003)‘

We discovered the resolution was on the Exchange server and the following article lead us to the answer.

https://www.codetwo.com/kb/access-denied-bad-outbound-sender/

Once in the Exchange Admin Center we went to “Protection” and then “Action Center“. We got redirected to the “Security and Compliance” area where our user was in “Restricted User” area. We made sure to follow all the suggestions; although, we didn’t set up 2-Factor Authentication. Microsoft says it can take up to an hour before the restriction is lifted.

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We often build sites with the 3 most popular CMSs with CPanel hosting, so when we had a customer move to SquareSpace we were surprised that Square doesn’t give the customer email. Their solution is to use a Google GSuite package. Google’s GSuite is a great product but the costs are around $72.00 a year for each email. Yes you get storage; however, you would get that with a free GMail account.

CPanel email is included with most hosting packages and allow for a large number of email addresses for no additional cost. We often set up the CPanel email to forward to a GMail account, so the customer benefits from GMails capabilities.

We mention all this for the reason of Using SquareSpace to run a simple site may not be cost effective for Non-Profits and small businesses. We always want the best options for our customers, so if you are comparing costs between hosting a site or using SquareSpace you may want to consider the email costs in.

We don’t know if this is typical set up time frame, but it took a few hours for the GSuite account to be set up with Google. Once we submitted the request on the SquareSpace we got the message the set up was in progress. After an hour we Chatted with Square and they said they see the request and Google still needed to finish their part. They also said it could take hours. CPanel email gets set up in minutes.

In the end we discovered SquareSpace was having an internal issue and it took from Thursday till Sunday before Square said things were better and to try again. When we tried again on Monday it only took about 30 minutes before the GSuite account was setup through SquareSpace. When it works it works well, but just another consideration regarding hosting your own site and using SquareSpace.

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