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Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you happen to be hiding out there on the globe today! Coming to you LIVE from . . .
We’ve got a couple of great in-depth plugins to cover for you, some recent news in both the WordPress World and the Tech World in general, and some awesome WordPress Tips!
Happy belated Mother’s Day out there to all the moms! My own Mother’s Day was fantastic – got the day off from cooking and dishes! Kids did everything and did NOT burn the house down!
April Showers BROUGHT the May Flowers – now we are moving into the sunshine time! Don’t forget that just ’cause you are not burning yet, that does not mean you shouldn’t be guzzling that water down to stay hydrated.
A few reminders before we start the show today….
Reminders:
- Every Monday at 12:30pm Pacific Time brings you a show from both John and I, or just John as he does interviews and solo shows in alteration with this one!
Join in a little earlier to catch the pre-stream on both shows! - Show notes are added to wppluginsatoz.com within 24 hours of the show airing; you can find them either on the home page, or in the Podcast Vaults!
- This is a value for value show dear listeners, help us get some loven’ by hitting some like buttons, sharing an episode or two, or just turn our show on really loudly. We will catch somebodies attention!
If you stick around until the end, you will have a chance to hear some good questions – sometimes meant for the greenies, sometimes meant for the very experienced – and sometimes the questions are just completely random. Stick around and have a listen, might help! Or at least entertain!
(Don’t feel shy about sending in a message just to say hi! Send along suggestions, questions, recommendations, news, art – we always love to hear from our listeners!)
Let’s start the show with this weeks Featured Artist:
Artist:
Who is our artist today?!?
Today is….
Firefly! https://firefly.adobe.com/?media=featured
We would love some new art from our Producers out there! If you are so inclined, you can send it into us at https://wppluginsatoz.com/artwork/. If you need some inspiration, you can always go to our site wppluginsatoz.com and check out our Art Vaults – you will find the link for it on the left hand side.
…We can NEVER have too much art!
Breaking News in the WordPress World at large!!
If you have anything you think should be added please send it into me at amber@wppro.ca!
News this week:
WordPress Vulnerability Report
(https://solidwp.com/blog/wordpress-vulnerability-report-may-7-2025/) – In this report there are 88 vulnerabilities. 82 are plugins this week, with 6 Themes.
Plugins: 40 Patched / 42 Unpatched
Themes: 6 Patched / Unpatched
WordPress Vulnerability Report from PatchStack
(https://patchstack.com/database/) – These guys always have the latest information on what is going on regarding the latest in vulnerabilities.
WordPress WooCommerce Bug Causing Sites to Crash
(https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wordpress-woocommerce-bug-causing-sites-to-crash/546106/) – The WooCommerce team has confirmed a fatal error issue and they are working on a permanent fix; this error is causing sites to crash. This appears to have been fixed with short answers although it appears they are still working to fix the issue for long term. You can find the work arounds offered partway down this article or in the GitHub repository.
WP_Query changes in WordPress 6.8
(https://make.wordpress.org/core/2025/04/17/wp_query-changes-in-wordpress-6-8) – WordPress 6.8 includes some caching optimizations that may affect themses and plugins using WP_Query: :get() method and the WP_Query: :$query_vars property. WordPress 6.7 and earlier these queries were standard arguments. As of WordPress 6.8 they are now sorts and type casts arguments as appropriate. The : :get() method and : :$query_vars property will differ from the arguments passd to $q1 and $q3.
This is important information to have, and there is more explanation in the article. Give it a read so that you are up to date on what is going on in the background.
Warning to developers: Stay away from these 10 VSCode extensions
(https://www.csoonline.com/article/3956464/warning-to-developers-stay-away-from-these-10-vscode-extensions.html?ref=dailydev) – This is a great list to go by on what to avoid if possible, and why.
Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Content Length Mismatch
(https://dev.to/programmerraja/sherlock-holmes-the-case-of-the-content-length-mismatch-4i2b) – Sherlock Holmes is my personal hero, like my version of Superman growing up – and this is just awesome! I love the way that the writer Boopathi brings this together. Fun Read alongside of being very informative!
(Go visit https://wpshout.com/comics/ for a fantastic brain break – my favourite today is this one!)
Some Extras – check out our Facebook or Twitter!
Managing my motivation, as a solo dev
(https://mbuffett.com/posts/maintaining-motivation/)
Business won’t let me and other lies we tell to ourselves
(https://www.architecture-weekly.com/p/business-wont-let-me-and-other-lies?ref=dailydev)
AI 2027
(https://ai-2027.com/)
How to apologize for a professional mistake – remotely or in person
(https://www.atlassian.com/blog/teamwork/apologize-for-mistakes-professionally-remotely)
Vibe Coding
(https://www.niraj.life/blog/vibe-coding)
Google updates image SEO best practices: Use consistent URLs
(https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-updates-image-seo-best-practices-use-consistent-urls/546552/)
Is the SEO job market undergoing a major shift?
(https://www.searchenginejournal.com/is-the-seo-job-market-undergoing-a-major-shift/546433/)
WordPress Jubilee of forgiveness continues
(https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wordpress-jubilee/545785/)
Rogue’s Corner News and Extras
Be sure to go and check out the new and unique plugins now available from WPProAtoz.com!
WordPress Items:
Back to the Future
https://geocities.live/ turn your site into a GeoCities site
Some new features in the Hello Theme for Elementor rendering one of my addons as no longer needed if you use that theme. They now have a way to shut off the page titles and they have added easy access to the AI and more controls over the CSS and SEO and accessibility. A whole new menu item for Hello.
We made the top 3 in a new listings of top 20 WP podcasts https://podcast.feedspot.com/wordpress_podcasts/
Catch me on Episode 333 for WP Builds was a great show with Nathan, Dave and Wendi find it here https://wpbuilds.com/2025/05/06/this-week-in-wordpress-333/
Tip of the day
Talk about https://influencewp.com/ and the benefits of it for WP devs
Check out The Repo at https://therepo.org/ an alternative to the regular plugin repo.
Pet Peeve This Week
The lack of URL’s in posts people make. They talk a good game about something then force you to search online for what they are talking about. This is irritating on Twitter and all other places where they talk about something. If you’re going to talk something up, then share the link. If not, why mention it if you’re not going to share the link?
Dragon Rating Time with John!
John’s Plugin
PDF Invoices & Packing Slips for WooCommerce
https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce-pdf-invoices-packing-slips/
The Lowdown:
This WooCommerce extension automatically adds a PDF or UBL invoice to the order confirmation emails sent out to your customers. Includes a basic template (additional templates are available from WP Overnight) as well as the possibility to modify/create your own templates. In addition, you can choose to download or print invoices and packing slips from the WooCommerce order admin.
Main features
- Automatically attach invoice PDF or UBL to WooCommerce emails of your choice
- Download the PDF or UBL Invoice / PDF Packing Slip from the order admin page
- Generate PDF invoices / packing slips in bulk
- Fully customizable HTML/CSS invoice templates
- Download invoices from the My Account page
- Sequential invoice numbers – with custom formatting
- Available in: Czech, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese (see FAQ for adding custom fonts!), Norwegian, Portuguese, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish & Ukrainian
Rating 5 Dragons
PLUGIN #2!
New Release of Gravity Forms enhanced tools
https://wpproatoz.com/product/gravity-forms-enhanced-tools/
The Lowdown:
Enhancements Include the following
Version 2.6
- Customizable Common Words: Added a textarea in the Settings tab to define a custom list of common words (e.g., “the”, “and”) to ignore during spam detection. Supports adding, removing, or replacing the default list, stored in
gf_enhanced_tools_common_words. - Improved Logging: Enhanced debug logging for common words loading and spam detection.
Version 2.5
- Keyboard Spam Detection: Added detection for random, incoherent text (e.g., “dfasfasfs,gfyhsxyhzhzdfhyztded”) to catch spam padding character counts. Configurable via a threshold (0.0–1.0, default: 0.8).
- Settings UI: Added “Enable Keyboard Spam Detection” and “Keyboard Spam Threshold” options under Spam Filter and Predictor.
- Enhanced Spam Filter: Integrated keyboard spam detection with existing checks.
Rating: 5 Dragons
WordPress Tips
We would love to hear some tid bit tips from some of our producers out there – what did you figure out by breaking something? Or what did you need to learn in order to help someone? You can send these tid bits into me at amber@wppro.ca
My tip to you today…
I think the hardest thing I have had to learn to do when raising the kidlets is to stand back and keep myself from helping them as I watch them trying to complete a task – take pancakes for example. They flip them too early, make a mess, turn the heat up too high, then down too low – the kitchen is a mess and the pans are in dire need of some TLC afterwards since we always cook in cast iron.
But by keeping my hands to myself and making small suggestions rather then telling them how – they were able to figure it out. Not only did they gain pride, but they were able to move forward off of the knowledge they had gained. So the next time they made pancakes the pans were a little less in need of some TLC and the kitchen was a little less smokey and messy when they were done.
It’s the same way no matter where you go when you are taking on teaching someone. Whether you are in an office or a construction site, you wind up having to use the same self restraint, keeping yourself from doing it for them.
My tip to you today is to remember that the same self restraint was used by your own mentor, and now if you have a charge you are teaching, remember to use this self restraint to make sure they actually learn rather then just watch.
After all, eventually the pans were just as happy after the kids were done making the pancakes as they were before they started – your charge will get there too.
Dragon Rating Time with John!
Amber’s Plugin
Dashboard Navigator
https://wordpress.org/plugins/dashnav/
The Lowdown:
This plugin was sent into us by Oliver Jones with Plum Island Media. The plugin is designed to make it a heck of a ton easier to find anything you need in absolutely anybody’s dashboard without having to strain your eyes or your brain! I know I have, in my very few years in the this world, come across some… very uniquely coloured dashboards that I wanted to put sunglasses on in order to look at, and my own dashboard has had everything re-arranged to suit my brain but makes it near impossible for others to navigate!
So this plugin is the perfect answer!
Once installed and activated, you will see a white search box with the nautical sign up at the top of your left-hand menu with the placeholder text ‘Navigator’.
Now you can either double tap ‘Shift’ and just start writing for a full drop down list of options with that word to show up, or you can do the work of moving your mouse pointer up to the little box and clicking before you start typing. I am not even being facetious when I say the work of moving your mouse – I am sure anyone who has spent 12-18 hours on a computer is aware of the feeling where they would just like to leave the mouse alone now, just use the keyboard since the keyboard feels so restful compared to the mouse. I really love the fact that this offers a keyboard shortcut!
This search bar that has been created works by sending its small JavaScript file to your browser for every dashboard page, allowing a dropdown list to be created for you. No matter what you type in, so long as the word is in your backend somewhere, you will be able to receive a dropdown list of options when you search for it.
There is some fantastic FAQ’s on the Dashboard Navigator’s WordPress page, some of the answers are worth mentioning here:
This plugin will not slow down your site for your users because it does nothing on your site’s front-end pages, and all it is doing for your dashboard is adding one small JavaScript file.
This plugin DOES work for languages right-to-left AND left-to-right.
Each user on your site can enable or disable this as they choose on their own profile.
This plugin will find information on your own self-made plugins as well as it includes the top-level menus and submenus created by your plugin and other plugins.
I get the sense that if you have any questions that these guys won’t mind answering you at all!
This plugin is very lightweight indeed, plays well with others and is entirely free! Can’t get much better then a fantastic plugin that is free!
Rating: 5 Dragon
Miscellaneous Announcements from all:
Have an announcement like a meetup, or to announce you’ll be on stage at a WordCamp? Let us know and we will add it here and help get your news out to the world!
WordCamp Lisboa, Portugal – May 16-17
WordCamp Johor Bahru – May 17
WordCamp Leipzig, Germany – May 17
WordCamp Logroño – May 23-24
WordCamp Toulouse 2025 – May 23
To see the entire list you can follow the link here in the show notes, then click on ‘More WordCamps’ right below the list of the next 5. https://central.wordcamp.org/
If you are interested in finding a WordPress Meetup somewhere around the world you can go check out the places here: https://www.meetup.com/pro/wordpress/
Keep checking back every week to find out what else is going on!
Affiliates on the Milky Way!
Welcome to our Affiliates Section – we are picky so you know these guys are worth at least checking out!
Termageddon
(https://app.termageddon.com/?fp_ref=wppro) – Use Termageddon to help comply with privacy laws such as the CPRA, GDPR, UK DPA, CalOPPA, PIPEDA, and more. They will also help you comply with consumer protection laws, provide eCommerce disclosures, and limit your liability.
Click on our link here!
Rank Math
(https://rankmath.com/?ref=wpproatoz) – Rank Math is a fantastic company to work with on your sites SEO. The Free version will give you everything you need to get started and get your SEO up to a place where you will get noticed! The Premium version is like getting VIP Treatment when it comes to the tools available.
The documentation they have available is in easy to read, every day language so that it does not require a degree to understand how to use the tools!
Customer Service has been great in my experience whether you are using the free version, or you are using the pro version.
These guys are great to work with no matter your experience levels, I highly recommend going and checking them out – click on our link here!
Bunny.net
(https://bunny.net?ref=dwzw65mv1r)
Quick easy CDN that is affordable. Great prices, easy to use!
Click on our link here!
Donations from across the galaxy!
Producership Credits are a thing that do actually exist – we offer them up to those who donate through Time, Talent or Treasure. You can use these credits to boost up your resume, add to your LinkedIn file, so on and so forth!
Even if you are not interested in receiving a Producership Credit, check out how you can use us as your own stepping ladder in the world of the internets – get yourself an interview, get us to make your announcement for you, let the world know you have something to say or a company worth checking out!
Have a look through our site wppluginsatoz.com. Check out the Time, Talent and Treasure pages.
Today’s Plugins we covered were:
John’s Plugin:
PDF Invoices & Packing Slips for WooCommerce By WP Overnight
- Auto-attach invoice PDF or UBL to WooCommerce emails of your choice
- Fully Customizable HTML/CSS invoice templates
- Available in 19 listed languages and has custom fonts
Rating: 5 Dragons
AND
New Release of Gravity Forms Enhanced Tools by WP Pro A to Z
- Customizable Common Words: Added a Text area in the settings tab
- Improved Logging: Enhanced debug logging
- Keyword Spam Detection: Detection for random, incoherent text (e.g. “dfasfasfs,gfyhsxyhzhzdfhyztded”)
Rating: 5 Dragons
Amber’s Plugin:
Dashboard Navigator By OllieJones
- Places search box at top of left-hand menu making it easier to find things
- Lightweight and plays well with others
- Keyboard shortcut (double tap ‘shift’ and start typing)
Rating: 5 Dragon
How to reach us:
Feel like sending us something through the snail mail system? You can do that thanks to our brick and mortar address that we provide for you!
You can also reach us the more common way of the internets – have both of our internets available down below for ya!
WP Plugins A to Z
C/O John Overall
20-754 E Fairview Rd.
Victoria, BC V9A 5T9
Canada
John:
- My website:http://www.johnoverall.com/
- WordPress Emergency Support:http://wppro.ca/wpemergency
- email:john@wppro.ca
Amber:
- email: amber@wppro.ca
Q & A Time with Amber – Catch this info on our YouTube Channel
If you have questions you would like to have asked on the show, send them in to me atAmber@WPPro.ca – we may never stump my dad, but we can get some good conversation out of him at least!
- When someone comes to you with a slow running site, what is the first culprit you go looking for?
- We talked a lot about ‘Advanced Database Cleaner’, so here is the link to the plugin for you! https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-database-cleaner/
- What is the the most outlandish, or uncommon reason you have see for a slow moving site?
Questions asked after closing credits:
- Have you ever had a site that runs slow, and you just can’t figure out why?
- What do you do when a site runs slow because of the way the entire thing was built? Is there a way to help it run faster other than rebuilding it?