Midjourney
In the December 2024 issue:
- Digital Weather: Year-End Reflection & Rest
- Year End Online Cleanup
- Gathering Your Year’s Harvest
- Keeping Your Digital Tools Sharp
- Digital Trends to Watch in 2025
- The Priority Matrix: A Time-Tested Tool
- This Month In History: Maria Sibylla Merian
Midjourney Ai prompt: “oil painting of winter is coming, paysage mixed forest, wide brush, by Vasnetsov”
FROM THE EDITOR
Season’s Greetings!
As December ushers in winter’s deepest nights, the month brings a natural pause. This year, the Cold Moon – traditionally named by Native American tribes for the long, cold nights of midwinter – arrives on December 26th, offering its bright reflection over snowy landscapes – a time when the online world, like a garden in winter, enters a period of quiet renewal. While holiday festivities light up our physical world, our digital spaces need their own kind of mindful attention.
This month’s digital forecast shows moderate traffic patterns until mid-month, followed by the traditional holiday lull – a perfect window for some gentle but necessary website maintenance. Think of it as tucking your digital garden in for a short winter’s rest.
Key Dates & Considerations:
- December 13: Last recommended day for major website updates
- December 15-22: Ideal window for year-end maintenance tasks
December 23-January 2: Reduced activity period (perfect for running intensive cleanup tasks) - December 31: Critical backup checkpoint
Quick Actions
- Schedule your year-end backup
- Review admin access levels
- Clean up your digital spaces
- Document emergency protocols
Wishing you a very happy holiday season and a peaceful, joyous New Year!
Regards,
Ernest, Brian, Kim
AMGmedia Works Inc.
PS: As with previous issues, this ALMANAC continues to be crafted through thoughtful conversations with Claude AI, with visuals created by Midjourney AI.
Midjourney Ai prompt: “winter is coming by Ivan Bilibin”: “winter is coming by Ivan Bilibin”
Just as you’d clear fallen leaves and protect tender plants before frost, December is perfect for running these essential year-end website checks:
Database Cleanup:
- Export a complete backup before starting the following
- Remove accumulated spam comments
- Clean out post revisions older than 90 days
- Optimize database tables for better performance
- Document your current database size
- Here is a WordPress plugin that can help https://en-ca.wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-database-cleane…
Access and Security Review:
- Audit all administrator accounts
- Remove or downgrade unnecessary admin access
- Review failed login attempt logs (we installed the “Stream” plugin to help you).
- Update emergency contact information
- Document current user permissions
- Stream is a great WordPress plugin that can help auditing your site https://en-ca.wordpress.org/plugins/stream/
Holiday Preparation:
- Test your site’s contact forms
- Update holiday hours notices
- Set up emergency contacts
- Configure automated monitoring alerts
- Schedule year-end backups
Remember: Like winterizing a garden, these maintenance tasks protect your digital space during the holiday season. If you spot anything unusual, we’re here to help investigate further.
Quick Tip: Schedule these tasks for mid-December, when you still have time to address any issues before the holiday break.
Midjourney Ai prompt: “painting of a beautiful garden in winter with sweeping hills in the background by gustav klimt, hints of gold foil in the style of impressionist painters”
Your Digital Year in Review:
- Download your Google Analytics yearly summary
- Note your top-performing content
- Identify your quietest periods
- Document successful campaigns
- List your most engaging posts
- Need access to your Google Analytics report? Ask us and we’ll help.
Simple Evaluation Framework:
Consider these three essential questions:
- What brought the most visitor engagement?
- Which content needed more nurturing?
- Where did organic growth surprise you?
Planning Your Spring Growth:
- Save successful content templates
- Note topics worth expanding
- List questions your audience asked
- Document processes that worked well
- Identify areas needing fresh approaches
A garden’s winter rest nurtures future abundance. Your current data contains next year’s growth potential. This quiet season presents the perfect opportunity to understand what flourished and what needs different nurturing next season.
Quick Tip: Create a simple spreadsheet tracking monthly traffic patterns – this becomes your content calendar for the year ahead.
Midjourney Ai prompt: “A grand dark red hotel in the style of Wes Anderson. In front is an array snowy green firs and snowy mountains in the background. The building has white details and windows. It’s set against a light blue sky. The overall aesthetic combines whimsy with elegance.”
TOOL SHED
Analytics Snapshot Tools
Before the year closes, capture your digital footprint:
- Google Analytics: Export annual reports
- Search Console: Save performance data
- WordPress Stats: Download yearly summary
- Social Media: Capture engagement metrics
Data Management Helpers
Keep your digital space tidy with these plugins and tools:
- WP-Optimize: Database cleanup utility
- Media Library: Built-in file organization
- User Role Editor: Permission management
- Backup scheduler: Automated protection
Quick Tip: Create a “2024 Archive” folder now. Store your exports, reports, and documentation for easy reference when planning next year’s growth.
Remember: The most valuable tools stay sharp through regular use. Schedule monthly check-ins for 2025 using your calendar app of choice.
Midjourney Ai prompt: “A small Christmas village in the snow, houses made of gingerbread and trees decorated with lights. The night sky is clear and blue, with moonlight shining on the white landscape. In front, there’s an illuminated Christmas tree surrounded by other Christmas decorations. A large, lighted mountainscape forms the background. High resolution, high detail, photorealistic, hyperrealistic, cinematic.
AI Integration Made Simple
2025 brings practical AI tools within reach:
- Content suggestion tools for blogs (Content Shake, Jasper Ai)
- Image generation for social media (Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, Canva)
- Smart customer service assistants (HelpShift, Zendesk Ai, Intercom (FIN))
Performance Optimization
Speed becomes even more crucial:
- Core Web Vitals priorities
- Mobile-first indexing emphasis
- Enhanced loading techniques
- User experience metrics
Quick Tip: Start small. Choose one area from above and experiment during January’s quiet period. Monitor results before expanding further.
A Glimpse Ahead: Watch for significant changes in how search engines handle AI-generated content. Begin developing your response strategy now.
Midjourney Ai prompt: “in very delicate winter oil painting of a bakery at the street corner of a old a urban European city with few people walking with umbrellas, Paint by numbers, ,”
DIGITAL FOLKLORE
President Eisenhower’s simple decision-making matrix helps digital caretakers choose what needs attention now, what can wait, and what to let go.
Do First: Urgent & Important
- Security breaches
- Server downtime
- Broken checkout systems
- Customer data issues
Schedule: Important, Not Urgent
- Regular backups
- Content updates
- Security patches
- Analytics review
Delegate: Urgent, Not Important
- Minor visual glitches
- Non-critical notifications
- Routine emails
- Social media alerts
Set Aside: Neither Urgent Nor Important
- Perfectionist tweaks
- Minor design adjustments
- Wish-list features
- “Someday” projects
Remember: Success comes from spending more time in “Schedule” than in “Do First.” Prevention beats firefighting every time.
Quick Tip: Use December’s quiet moments to review which tasks belong in each quadrant for your digital space
THIS MONTH’S FEATURED NATURALIST FROM HISTORY:
Maria Sibylla Merian
“Nature everywhere speaks to man in a voice familiar to his soul.”
— In 1699, Maria Sibylla Merian made the extraordinary decision to sail to South America with her daughter, risking everything to study and document the metamorphosis of insects in their natural habitat – an unheard of scientific endeavor for a woman of her time. As both a naturalist and an artist, she revolutionized the field of entomology through her exquisitely detailed paintings that, for the first time, showed insects in their complete life cycles alongside their host plants, creating artwork that was both scientifically groundbreaking and hauntingly beautiful. Her self-published books, which she supported by selling her paintings and specimens, challenged the prevailing notion that insects spontaneously generated from mud, making her not just a pioneer in science, but also a successful businesswoman who transformed careful observation and artistic skill into a thriving enterprise that supported her family and changed our understanding of the natural world.
Painting: by Jacob Marrel .
A free monthly newsletter with ideas and inspiration to keep your digital presence sparkling online.
AMGmedia Works Inc
Nanaimo, Canada
www.amgmedia.com
Copyright (C) 2024 AMGmedia Works Inc. All rights reserved.
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