Last month I received more affiliate income and hit $20 in revenue. I was supposed to write an update two weeks ago, but with only a few new posts published, I decided to switch these diary posts to a monthly schedule.
Unfortunately, the biggest update this month wasn’t new content or traffic growth. It was that the blog went down for at least three days while I was on vacation in LA. I couldn’t even access the WordPress admin panel, so I had to wait until I got home to log in to Bluehost and check the logs. It turned out an auto-update from the Google Site Kit plugin crashed WordPress during load:
PHP Fatal error: Uncaught TypeError: array_merge(): Argument #2 must be of type array, false given in .../public_html/wp-content/plugins/google-site-kit/includes/loader.php:20
Thanks to ChatGPT, I was able to restore the site by manually renaming and removing the google-site-kit plugin folder.
On the search impression side, not much has changed. Top posts were still Angler SF (198), SF Bay Area gardens (54) and Dig This (44).
Setup
- Signed up for Site Quality Monitoring so I can get notified automatically when the site goes down instead of finding out through a friend’s text.
Content
- Wrote about New Mexico and Catalina Island and shared to FB.
- Created IG post for Tent Rocks, Santa Fe, Catalina Island and shared to FB.
Stats
Overall
| Cost | $67 (Hosting $60 + Domain $7) |
| Posts Published | 122 (+3) |
| Views | 2040 (+40) |
| Revenue | $20 (+0) |
| Profit | -$47 |
Search
| Metric | Bing | |
|---|---|---|
| Impressions | 2420 (+370) | 1000 (+265) |
| Clicks | 49 (+8) | 16 (+5) |
| Average Position | 36.4 (+1.9) | 8.8 (-0.8) |
| Average CTR | 2% (+0) | 1.6% (+0.1) |
IG / Facebook
| Metric | IG | |
|---|---|---|
| Posts Published | 60 (+3) | 68 (+5) |
| Followers | 66 (+2) | 25 (+0) |
| Views (Last Month) | 260 (-100) | 50 (-70) |
High / Lowlights
- ✅ A friend noticed the site was down and let me know.
- ❌ Website was down for multiple days.
Final Thoughts
I still find it surprising that a single WordPress plugin update was able to bring down the entire site. Apparently plugins run as part of WordPress itself, so a fatal error in one can prevent the whole site from loading. Hopefully WordPress can improve its safeguards so faulty plugins can’t take down an entire site. In the meantime, I’ll have to be more careful about which plugins I keep installed.
The New Mexico post hasn’t received any search impressions yet (not surprising given the Top 5 format), but I’m curious to see whether the Catalina Island post performs better given its July 4th angle. Check back next month to find out!
Leave a Reply