‘good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you happen to be hiding out there on the globe today! Coming to you LIVE from…’

Welcome to Episode 662 – Jingle All the Plugins: Holiday Magic to Deck Your WordPress Site!

Today we will not be doing our usual show as it is the holidays and we have always put family first this time of year. We have instead pre-recorded this for you, and we will be talking about our plugin reviews over this past year, bringing forward some of our favourites, and talking about a few things connected like SEO.

Only a couple of reminders before we begin today….

Reminders:

• If you got the frozen white stuff, throw on the layers before going to play!
• Go outside and freeze so you got a good reason to come in and consume massive amounts of hot chocolate!
• When imbibing Grandma’s Eggnog be sure to have a Designated Driver!
• 40% or more booze kills germs, therefore you should have at least one shot a day to keep your health up! Jaegermeister works also as it is nothing more than boozy Buckleys. Tastes horrible, works great!

Remember that you can send anything pertinent my way at amber@wppro.ca!

Who’s Our Featured Artist This Week?

Artist: 

Grok! He is always our artist these days, and I think it is awesome!

WordPress Tips

You lika da egg-nog? Drinka da egg-nog!
You lika da wine? drinka da wine!
You lika da gingerale? Drinka da gingerale!

Don’t forbid yourself treats just ’cause you think you need to be healthy all the time, or whatever other reason people torture themselves with. Have fun! You only live once, so enjoy it! Just be responsible too.

Remember – all work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy!

Donations and Support

If you are interested in donating you can do so through time, talent, or treasure – or all 3!! – through our website wppluginsatoz.com. Click on the ‘Treasure Donations’ link on the left-hand menu, or on the ‘Time, or Talent‘ pages to find out more!

How to reach us:

We have a real brick and mortar address where you can send in art and/or notes – you can find the address in our show notes!

WP Plugins A to Z
C/O John Overall 
20-754 E Fairview Rd. 
Victoria, BC  V9A 5T9  
Canada

We also have virtual addresses too!

John:

• My website:http://www.johnoverall.com/
• WordPress Emergency Support:http://wppro.ca/wpemergency
• email:john@wppro.ca

Amber:

• email: amber@wppro.ca

Enter the past year and the chaos within!!!!

John talking points:

1. WordPress is changing
2. The community has changed this past year in great new ways less whining or maybe I just found the community with backbone

John’s top 5 plugins from the last year:

1. media cloud
2. anti spam bee
3. click tock
4. gravity form
5. rank math pro

And the fantastic list of must have plugin list for a brand new site brought to you by John!:

1. Important Plugins:
2. Archive Content with Archived Post Status httparchiveddpostsstatuslugins/disable-xml-rpc-api/
3. Disable XML-RPC-API https://wordpress.org/plugins/disable-xml-rpc-api/
4. Change Admin Email  https://wordpress.org/plugins/change-admin-email-setting-without-outbound-email/
5. https://wordpress.org/plugins/email-log/
6. Limit Login Attempts Reloaded
7. Stop WP Emails Going to Spam https://wordpress.org/plugins/stop-wp-emails-going-to-spam/
8. Activity Log Pro – Event Logger Activity Log Pro – Event Logger, Activity Monitor & Audit Log for WordPress   htactivitydlogopro/llworks-active-users-monitor
9. Fullworks Active User Monitor https://wordpress.org/plugins/fullworks-active-users-monitor
10. Cimo – Free Instant Image Optimizer & WebP Converter
11. Easy Updates Manager
12. dev
13. Inactive Logout
14. Ivory Search
15. Elementor plugin list:
16. Elementor and Pro
17. Essential Addons for Elementor
18. Premium Addons for Elementor
19. Premium Addons PRO
20. Essential Addons for Elementor
21. Key security plugins
22. Blackhole for Bad Bots
23. Disable XML-RPC-API
24. Limit Login Attempts Reloaded
25. Glow

Amber talking points to present:

Something I have absolutely LOVED about the design trends online over the past year – we are going retro!! Back to the good ol’ 90’s – except moderny! I LOVE it! I am having SO MUCH fun adding in colour, and sharp corners, buttons, shadows, all the awesome things!
I am also super grateful that the flashy lights have not regained popularity though. lol

Over the past year, my dad and I have really only been bringing winners to the show. Very few have been less than 4 stars this year. Part of that is because we keep finding these super useful plugins, and the people sending in the plugins are sending in these super cool plugins – we just haven’t had any time to find plugins that are bummers really!

I have also seen a lot of change in the WordPress world over the last year. Not the least of which is the AI that has come into being everywhere – although I will go more into that in our next show for New Year’s.
Overall I think that the change has been good. It appears to have breathed new life into the WordPress Community, and it is good to see!

Adversity breeds creation!

Amber’s top 5 plugins from the last year:

1. IP and Email Control

This is a plugin that was created by John this year and we use it all the time! It allows you to block EVERY SINGLE IP except the ones you put into the ‘allow’ section from seeing your site until you are ready for the world to see it. That means that there are no bots, and no people that can get into it because it just simply does not exist to anyone except those with the particular IP addresses. https://github.com/Ahkonsu/wpproatoz-turn-off-wpmail

2. Login Timeout Sessions

This plugin allows you to set up an automatic logout for your site. This makes your site do what Government sites do – where there is a question that pops up whether you are still there, and if no answer is received, you will be automatically logged out. This is fantastic for the forgetful ones at work!

3. Sync Post With Other Site

This is a fantastic plugin that has replaced the sadly closed down by Delicious Brains – sync post?. We used that all the time and we had to search REALLY hard to find a replacement – and these guys do just that!

4. Seasonal Effects & Notice Bar (formerly Halloween Animations)

Found this when looking for Halloween stuff, and I truly love this! It gives the user the option on whether or not they want the sound effects, is totally free, does not slow your site down, plays well with others, and just looks awesome – and best of all? There are multiple seasonal decorations, and you can MIX THEM! You can have Halloween and Christmas both at once! I really love this one and think that everyone should have it – it also has a fantastic message bar that you get to set up too!

5. Keep New Admin Items In The Bottom

Bit of a silly one, but also dearly beloved. This plugin helps to keep everything down at the bottom of your menu option – every time you install something new that is going to go into your menu area, it throws it down to the bottom for ya so you can easily find it! I love this one!

And the fantastic list of must have plugin list for a brand new site brought to you by Amber!:

1. CubeColor – New Plugin
2. Blackhole for Bad Bots
3. Classic Editor
4. Duplicate Page
5. Easy Updates Manager
6. Elementor & Elementor Pro – this is a personal choice, and if your brain does not work with Elementor all the power to whatever choice you have!
7. Rank Math
8. New Plugins
9. Post Types Order
10. Rank Math
11. Sync Post With Other Site
12. Post Types Order
13. Keep New Admin Items In The Bottom
14. IP and Email Email Control
15. Login Timeout Sessions
16. Blubrry PowerPress
17. Gravity Forms
18. Post Type Switcher
19. Seasonal Effects & Notice Bar (formerly Halloween Animations)
20. Toggle Hide/Show Admin Bar