Hello Internet people!
Welcome to PunchSalad, a place where small business website owners & webmasters like you, can find straightforward & entertaining tutorials, insights and inspiration about running and growing your online business and online presence.
My name is Robert, and you can contact me here on PunchSalad or on my TipsWithPunch Youtube channel.
On this website and on my youtube channel you will learn how to run and maintain your web business including the website setup, tracking users, getting people to your website, monetizing your traffic and retaining people on your website.
This channel is for you if you are running a website and need help with website tools but you are tired of those frustrating tutorials that waste your time with unnecessary talk and long loading pages. I Hate loaders!
Why I started this?
Some time ago I was like you, just working hard and long hours on my website, you know to the point when you get a bit of pain in your lower back and stiffness in your shoulders, just from sitting too long.
I was trying to set up and run my own website, and you know how it all goes well until you hit a problem or you don’t know how to achieve something on your website.
You go to youtube and try to learn how to solve your problem, and you end up watching 5 videos, where 4 of them don’t even have a voice over and on top of that it doesn’t even work.
You know those that have notepad as an explanation of the steps. Oh the frustration, I can still fill it building up. So much wasted time for nothing. I just wanted to do this:
That’s when I decided to create this channel, where I want to collect how-to videos to help you solve your web related problems, with a straightforward – no BS videos with a bit of fun mixed in.
So if you want to get regular updates, subscribe to my YouTube channel. See you there!
“Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy. I make helpful tutorials, so tip me maybe?“
Hi Dear,
I have followed all your instructions and video step by step. I have a domain from GoDaddy and Hosting Server from BigRock. Following all the steps correctly, I’m facing this problem every time. It will be a great help If you can get a li’l time for me.
I will give you my TeamViewer id If you require to check exact problem I have.
Thanks a lot!
Hi Ankur, I replied on YouTube video as well. Your link didn’t work. since your hosting is in bigrock it might be different. what is the issue?
hi
i have followed your instruction and tutorial very helpful and understandable .
if you don’t mind i have faced a problem.
how can i clean up any type of virus from wordpress and remove warning and red alerts?
Hi Sanzid, I guess this depends on what kind of virus you have. I haven’t dealt with these kinds of issues, perhaps there is something on Youtube you can check out?
Hello Robert,
Thanks for your excellent videos. Actually i followed your instruction for SSL certificate, it worked well but unfortunately my fonts got changed. Could you please suggest me what to do?
Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Regards,
Harpreet
Hi Harpreet, I’ve replied to you on YouTube.
Have a great day!
Robert
Respected sir,
Sir, I am a fan of your youtube videos, sir, I am living in India sir, I can not afford WordPress hosting so I set up my blog with “Blogger.com and Purchase Domain from Google domain…since sir, I am a non-coder and want to earn money. please help me, sir…
Your admirer
Nikhil
India
Please reply to me, dear sir, your suggestion will really help me to set up my career…Thank you, sir, for reading me.
Hi Nikhil, thanks for the kind words about my youtube channel.
I’ll be honest, I think making money with a website is pretty hard.
You need a lot of traffic to make money from ads. If you have a store with a product then it’s a bit more feasible, but again you will need to get people on the website.
Also try to think about your mindset, don’t think how to make money, but rather how can you add value to people. Once you are valuable money will come. But you have to be useful to other people. Here is a nice video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJwpmMo18vE
I hope this helps,
Robert
Hi Robert,
You were very helpful to me last week in guiding me through installing a wildcard SSL certificate. Can you help me again with another project?
I am trying to position a main div x% in and % down. This hovering div is a flexbox div that has 4 divs side-by-dide as I want the 4 divs to be responsive and to overlap 2 background images. The 4 divs will mainly have words in them. I have coded the divs using relative and absolute. So, when I make the page smaller the boxes get narrower and taller. However, as these divs are literally outside of everything, they also overlap the footer and any text I have below them. I have searched the web and Youtube for hours, but no one seems to cover how I can get the main div or the 4 divs to push everything below them, downwards. Hope you can help. I have used flexbox instead of grid as I want the boxes to grow longer. When the width gets to 576px I have put in a media query for the boxes to stack on top of each other.
I hope you can help and many thanks.
Regards
George
Hi George, I think you need to “clear” your flexbox. So something like this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43054565/how-to-clear-flexbox-item
If that one doesn’t work just search more for “css clear flexbox”, stackoverflow is my favourite place, but there are also other sites that are very helpful.
I hope this helps!
Robert
Hi Robert,
you have great youtube tutorials. Maybe a little help with wordpress. How to show me the same page content but headline different city… Any plugins,… Thanks advance and kind regards.
Hi Nicola,
Thanks!
It’s not quite clear what are you trying to achieve? Do you basically want to swap the headline to have different text? How will it change randomly or based on users city? It looks like you need something like what they suggest in this article: https://geotargetingwp.com/blog/how-to-customize-wordpress-content-based-on-geolocation
I haven’t used it though so can’t say if it’s any good.
Hi Robert,
It would be great if you did a tutorial for local seo. I think it would benefit many as there is no clear explanation anywhere on youtube.
Kind,
Nele
Hi Nele,
Thanks for the tip. I think it’s good idea that I need to explore in more depth!
Have a great day!
Robert
Hi Robert,
Love your youtube videos.
Can you please help me one small feature?
Am trying to find our how I can add a search bar in my WordPress website, like in this website:
https://u-mee.com/registration
So in this website, they are showing if the services are available in particular area or not. I want to have something similar in which I want to have a table at the dashboard which I can edit anytime and the search bar shows the availability.
Can you please tell me which widget or plugin is it? Or how can I incorporate this in my WordPress website?
This will be very helpful.
Thank you in advance.
Best
Mark
Hi Mark, thanks for checking my videos.
Regarding that search bar, to my knowledge, it looks like a custom search bar. So this is not a standard plugin. The closest I could find is this one: https://wordpress.org/plugins/service-area-postcode-checker/ but I’m not sure how good it is.
Regards,
Robert
Hi again Robert,
I sent you a comment about finding google analytic ID before. Sorry, I put the wrong email address below on my previous email. Anyway, I can’t find that ID with UA- thing. I share my google analytic page with you (https://www.screencast.com/t/BztWVBvv). Can you help? Thanks hips.
Hi Jeane, it looks like you are using the new web + app Google Analytics, is that on purpose? This feature is still in beta testing and here is more info about it: https://www.simoahava.com/analytics/getting-started-with-google-analytics-app-web/
Alternatively, you could just create a new property that is the “normal” web-based universal analytics.
I hope this helps 🙂
Hi Robert, I just built a website using your instructions from your videos. However, I noticed this error message today when I tried visiting the website. Any suggestions.
PS: I did some troubleshooting on the plugins thinking it might be a plugin issue but it remained the same.
Warning: require(/home/chelisbkz/public_html/wp-includes/rest-api/endpoints/class-wp-rest-block-renderer-controller.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/chelisbkz/public_html/wp-settings.php on line 265
Fatal error: require(): Failed opening required ‘/home/chelisbkz/public_html/wp-includes/rest-api/endpoints/class-wp-rest-block-renderer-controller.php’ (include_path=’.:/opt/alt/php70/usr/share/pear’) in /home/chelisbkz/public_html/wp-settings.php on line 265
Hi Victor, this sounds like something went wrong in your WordPres core files (especially with the rest-api). Are you able to update or reinstall WordPress? (please back up what you have before you do anything, just incase)
Robert
I need help removing negative content under my name on google search can you help ?
would be so i debted if we can chat fir a few. trying to finish the first of a “suite of sites” in the acute care area. sooooooo stuck at one point and cant move on…..will gladly donate to the paypal.
best
btw your videos are awesome, great creativity
best
dave
Hi Dave, thanks.
You can send me an email to robert@35.230.111.162
Cheers,
Robert
Hi robert. I am one of your subscribers in youtube. I already have my old blogspot site i already built a decent traffic on it. I really want to remove the blogspot on my web address and make it my own. Do you have any tips? 😄
Sir, i need your website for SEO and would appreciate if you can help me out
Thanks
Sorry Ahmed, that’s not how it works 🙂
Hello, I Hope your doing good!
I Have a problem on this “Accept Credit Card Payments on a Website (With PayPal Express Checkout in Woocommerce”
i have do all his steps, but the Buttons under the paypal not showing on my website?
Please take a look at my website: Evolmissing.com
Tell me what do you think?
Thank you.
Hello!
I have heard about this issue, some other people had it too.
I don’t the exact fix, but here is what others told me in comments that helped them fix the issue:
1. In the payment setting (woocommerce) don’t enable the “Paypal”, just the “PayPal checkout”. Otherwise, you will not have the credit card payment access to the checkout.
2. I login to the woocommerce Forum to see what people are seeing i found many people have the same complaints. The only solution is to go back to the old version of the plugin (V1. 6. 21).
Any one interested he can download the old version from this link, but he have to sign up first
https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce-gateway-paypal-express-checkout/pull/740
Greetings,
Thank you for doing this work !
I followed your instrcutions, but when I arrive at step 14 : “Then click on the green button at the bottom that says “Download SSL Certificate”.”, when I click on “VERIFY DOMAIN”, it start loading but I never get the certificates code.
Do you know why and what should I do ?
Thank you so much !!
Warm regards,
Jean
Hi Jean,
Do you see the txt file when you click on the links (step 13)?
You should see these random characters and only then let’s encrypt can verify that it works.
Regards,
Robert
Hi Robert,
I can’t thank you enough for making all of this so simple and easy with your generator! I’ve been following you back when it was ZeroSSL and that was way more complicated. But now I’m having an issue with one of my domains that end in .com. I’ve done all the steps and I see the txt file when I click the link but it still says that let’s encrypt can’t verify it. It worked for my .ca domains perfectly so I’m unsure what the issue is.
Any chance you could help me out?
best,
-Mike
Hi Mike,
I think in this case it might be some bug in the tool. I’m still improving it so there are so strange stuff happening with it.
Please just try again with your .com domain. It should work in most cases.
I hope this helps!
Robert
Please reply me
Is there any other domain provider except freenom because it’s not working it says technical error at the checkout page.
Please I want to make a website.
Reply me Bro
Hi Muhammad,
No, unfortunately, Freenom is the only one I know of. For technical error try to register the domain with a fake address in the UK or US. That helped some users.
hi,
Thank you very much for the free SSL certificate tutorial and I run for 90days.
When I going to renew it and regenerate the file and upload it to the folder I already created.
but unable to verify the domain and getting an error ( Oh no, Let’s Encrypt wasn’t able to access the verification file(s)). I can view the files by click the links. Please help me.
Hi Mujahidh,
The tool still has some bugs. As long as you can see all links opening with the verification files, you haven’t done anything wrong.
You can just come a bit later and try again. It seems the tool is hitting some limits from Let’s Encrypt but I can’t figure out why is it doing it.
Hi,
Is there any other sitemap creator tool accept xml-sitemaps.
Hi,
It doesn’t matter which browser I use, but when I click on [Create free SSL Certificate] button it gives me the following popup error:
There was an error.
Check that these are valid:
and lists the domains I provided with my email.
Hello, thank you for this tool. I am having trouble with the last step to verify the file. When I click on the links in step 3 I can see the random characters and have no errors but when I click to verify the domain it says “Oh no, Let’s Encrypt wasn’t able to access the verification file(s)”. Any help is appreciated.
Hello Punchsalad Team,
I have a domain and wanted to add lets encrypt ssl certification, as you gave instructions to install the ssl on domain. Somehow its get stuck while http verification did the same as you said on the video, uploaded the file on my server but still its not working, so, please give me an support
The SSL tool is very easy to use, so thanks for making it available to us.
Thank You for hosting the SSL Generator! When sslforfree moved to zerossl I lost a lot of my flexibility in creating certificates. And same for our students (I teach IT at a Community College here in the US). I’ve generated 2 certificates today using your site. I’ve tested the first one and it works great. Thank You and I’m Happy to Buy You Coffee! Please Keep Up the Good Work – and Again, Thank You.
Hi Randall,
I’m glad the tool is helping you and potentially your students!
I appreciate the coffee thanks for your generosity!
Regards,
Robert
Hello
I tried to generate free ssl
but
punchsalad.com says
DNS record not found
please Help me.
Thank you
Hi Mary, were you able to verify that the record is correctly in DNS? With the tool, I show in the video/article?
Hey Robert,
I appreciate your You Tube tips. They’re funny and helpful. Thanks for your “SSL for free” clone page, it works great!
glad it helped you Eric!
Hello Robert,
I really want to thank you from my heart. I am about to lunch my first business website, and that because you made it very easy. I am just stack with one last thing that i need your help with. If you don’t mind, can you pleaaase, contact me on my email.
Thank you man
Is there a different way to buy you a coffee? The Paypal.me link is confused — asking me for a captcha but not actually displaying one.
Thank you for producing this for GoDaddy Shared Hosting!
Hi Robert,
When I try to set up PayPal Checkout with Woocommerce it says on my website that:
Sorry, it seems that there are no available payment methods for your state. Please contact us if you require assistance or wish to make alternate arrangements.
It says I’m connected and if I check ” Enable PayPal Checkout on the cart page” I can actually see the PayPal checkout. But I can’t see the PayPal Checkout on my actual checkout page. Any idea on what to do? Thanks so much!
sounds like PayPal has some special laws for your state, is that possible?
Are you able to contact PayPal to ask them?
Hey, Robert
How many times I can generate certificate from same IP address?
As I want to generate it for my Second Website but It is not getting generated
I followed the same steps as I did for my other websites.
the limit is somewhere in the hundreds. Is your 2nd website a subdomain or something?
Hi Robert,
many thanks for your website. I find your SSL Generator great.
David
you are welcome Dave!
Hey Robert,
I am interested to implement an SSL protocol on my web site, but unfortunately I found that your ‘SSL Generator’ is not working for Windows hosting, because of the following two reasons:
– it’s not possible to create folder/directory ‘.well-known’ with the ‘.’ at the beginning
– it’s not possible to access to both files with the URL without extension or with .txt extension, and you have to use .html extension instead
If it’s possible to be solved both issues, please let me know so I can try a 90 days SSL certificate. If everything is working fine I will prefer to buy one year SSL certificate.
Thank you in advance!
Regards,
Ljupco
Hi Ljupco, you can try to use the instructions here: https://mcilis.medium.com/how-to-create-free-ssl-certificates-for-windows-server-using-lets-encrypt-86c929a816ef
You can choose to use the SSL from my tool or the one recommended in the tutorial. They have the same steps to generate the SSL.
Hi Robert, your video really helped me with my university work and I wanted to credit you by embedding your HTML Embed tutorial on my website which will only be viewed by my lecturers but I wanted to make sure that okay with you first?
Many thanks for the helpful vids and let me know if im okay to do this.
Hi Cameron, glad you like it. Sure! That’s okay with me!
Hi Robert, great job. However the cert is in RSA 4096 bits which not compatible to our reverse proxy server.
Is that possible to get at 2048 bits cert?
Thanks.
Hi Notmen, with my tool it’s not possible, but maybe this forum can help you? https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/how-can-i-generate-a-certificate-with-a-2048-bit-private-key/55486/11
Hi I have an error from Godaddy.
Error: Unable to set the private key: Probably, the private key format is invalid.
Hello Robert,
Just wanted to say thank you very much for your website! All the best man!
Arthur
You are welcome Arthur, glad to help!
Hello Robert,
I have used your SSL Generator guide for Godaddy to install SSL on my website chief-mag and it just worked wonderfully. Thanks for providing the tips so nicely explained. I have given you a link on my website, so that my website visitors can also read the helpful post.
Thanks again.
Chief
My pleasure Chief, I’m glad it helped you!
Hi,
Thanks for the guidance and generator. I set up the SSL via your generator for godaddy, but when I check its status in my cPanel, it only shows for the 2 main domain alternatives, and other subdomains in the list of godaddy still showing as unsecure. May I know, what I am missing out on?
Hi Santosh, that’s normal and for most people it’s enough. If you want all subdomains to be secured, then you need to generate a wildcard SSL. This tool can do it too. Here is a video showing how to di it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw5GNSX_c2k
hi Robert,
I have used your SSL Generator guide for Godaddy to install SSL on my website several times and it works perfectly … thanks a lot.
Unfortunately, today I tried to use the SSL Generator and it’s giving an error:
ERROR for site owner: Invalid domain for site key
… seems to be some sort of CATCPHA error
Can you kindly help.
Thanks a lot for your great service and help.
Mario
Hmm, not sure, just give it a try on another day. Sometimes the issue is somewhere between the tool and let’s encrypt.
Hi Robert – another satisfied user of your great SSL Generator tool here. I tried to generate a cert today and I got the same error as the above post… ‘Invalid domain for site key’ (bottom-right corner of the browser). When I enter my domains & email addy then click ‘Generate’, I get a message saying ‘Sorry, Google thinks you’re a robot’ and it’s a dead stop. Will check back in a day or two, but looks like this has been ongoing for a couple of weeks now, based on the date above.
Thanks!
Brian
HI Brian,
Thanks for reporting this issue. I’m testing with google cloud as my web host, and that IP was an issue I didn’t notice.
I’ve fixed it now! 🙂
Hi Robert
I’m just working through your great tutorial on creating an SSL certificate, unfortunately when I try to use your SSL generator I get an error “Sorry, Google thinks you are a Robot :)”
I’ve tried connecting different ways, but always receive the same message. Is there something I’m doing wrong?
Thanks
Toby
Hi Toby, It was an issue on my side, should be fixed now.
Hi Robert!
I was trying to use your SSL Generator, but it kept telling me that Google thinks that I am a Robot. Is there any way around this?
Sorry about this David, it was an issue on my side. Should be fixed now.
Hi there 🙂
Read few responses above about users complaining about an issue about “Sorry, Google thinks you are a Robot :)” Just let you know that the issue still exists and is not fixed. I am seeing the error for an hour now.
Hi Kuldeep,
I checked and for most people the tool still works (I can see how many certificates are generated)
I think you just need to try to use another browser. I hope that helps.
Hello Robert!
When I request a new SSL certificate (wildcard) with SSL Generator, I can only download the ca-bundle and private-key files in .txt format. There is no option to download the certificate.crt file too. Why can not download the certificate? Can you fix it? Thanks!
Hi Adam,
Actually, it’s by design in .txt, most people need it like that. and they just copy it to their Cpanel.
I think you can just save the file as .crt and it will work like that…
Hi Robert, I used the DNS option to generate a wildcard SSL and everything seems ok except that I can’t receive emails on the same domain. They keep bouncing – and even when I try to configure on a mail client, I get the error “Can not connect to server”
Sorry to hear that Herbert.
Unfortunately, I don’t know how to help you.
You can try to reach out to your web host or to let’s encrypt community: https://community.letsencrypt.org/
Regards,
Robert
Using Punchsalad.com utility DNS records say okay, but can’t get it to verify domain… just spins out in space and then stops. Tried multiple times.No reply from Let’s Encrypt. (Site is on go-daddy as forwarded, masked sub-domain of another site we own.) Please advise.
Hi Tom,
Just try it another day (sometimes let’s encrypt runs into some limits)
but usually next day it should work again (you don’t even need to upload new files, as long as they are still on your server).
Robert
Thank You Robert, everythings work well. I use wildcard SSL. For everybody that failed: “you should see the tutorial carefully, so you won’t fail”. God Bless You Bro….
Glad this was helpful!
Hi, when trying to create a wildcard DNS ssl it is fine if I just use an asterisk, but fails if I try and include the naked domain – is it a problem with godaddy or your tool?
eg filling in:
*.mywebsite.com works
but
*.mywebsite.com,mywebsite.com fails
also just filling in :
mywebsite.com also fails
this is done using the DNS option
after this failing I tried installing *.mywwebsite.com on its own as a DNS option which works with all subdomains and then installing the naked domain mywebsite.com via HTTP – basically it will let me have one or the other…
In regards to my previous comment – I uninstalled all previous certificates (someone had self certified the website a few years ago and those certificates where still there but way out of date) waited a day and then it all worked… Thank you for your online tool. If let’s encrypt’s mission is to make getting an SSL available to all they should give you some money to have your tool on their own website.
There is a third certificate in ca-bundle when I generated it. is that normal? I find the correct ones by trial and error
It’s not normal, but seems to happen to some people, I’m not sure why though 🙁
Hi Robert!
how are you? I hope you’re fine.
Today happened something very strange. I use your SSL Generator and never a problem.
This morning (Sept.30th), some certificates expires even though they weren’t expired.
Reading in internet it seems something regarding a Let’s encrypt Root (R3?) that was removed/expired/dead/I’ve no idea what/.
So, I re-generated certificates.
Do you think will they work 90 days? What was the exact problem?
Thank for your job and assistance.
Kind regards
Anna
Hi Binil, it’s not normal. But I heard it happens to some people. I’m not sure why though 🙁
I can’t reproduce the issue. How did you solve it?
Thank you for the great Autoplay Youtube Embed code for mobile! How do we add a specific start time for the youtube video in your mobile html code? Please help!
Hi Robert, I used the certificate already twice, worked always fine. However today I wanted to renew again and when I enter the certificate it shows error: the certificate is not valid. Any ideas what I did wrong or why this happens? Thanks in advance
never mind- I got it working- for some reason it created 3 certificates instead of two and I copied now the correct ones. However you might look into it why it created 3 certificates?
Great videos, interesting and easy tutorials, thank you.
Glad I could help!
Can you help me how can I add the protected recaptcha in my website? I can see that you have that protected by recaptcha here in your site. I hope you can help me about this. Thanks sir.
If you use WordPress you can install a plugin on your forms.
Hi! I have been using your Letsencrypt SSL Certificat egenreator for a while and it works great. As you know, the certificates are generated in .txt files. Is there a way to convert these to PEM files?
Hello robert, your ssl certificate is not working with chrome browser…
On mozilla firefox its work good but at chrome browser it show the certificate is not valid…
any suggestion how to fix this issue??
Hello robert, your ssl certificate is not working with chrome browser…
On mozilla firefox its work good but at chrome browser it show the certificate is not valid…
any suggestion how to fix this issue??
must be just the browser cache in chrome… if the certificate works on one browser it should work on all of them.
Hi Robert!
Thankyou for some fantastic help with your videos! I too am kind of doing how you started out, working long hours creating a website, running in to problems, searching for answers.
I wondered if you had any tips and how to get a free, functioning contact form running on my website. This is just one of my issues at the moment but one that’s bothered me a fair bit recently.
Thankyou for your continued help!
Robert
How many certificates are you allowed to generate?
No limitations Jeff! 🙂
Hi. the system doesn’t work when y put DNS option and write: *.mydomain.com, mydomain.com . when i do click, jump to a blank web site.
Hmm that’s strange Ricardo… I just tried and it seems to work.
Sometimes there are too many requests at the same time so my tool hits a limit.
Just give it another try a bit later.
ok. but when i put only the *.mydomain.com its work faster..
Same I cannot generate *.mydomain.co.uk, mydomain.co.uk looks like it is going to work then to the black website.
But a single *.mydomain.co.uk does work.
Unfortunately both.
Hopefully you can help
Thanks