All transcripts start from the point in the show where we head off into the meat and potatoes. They are the complete verbatim of Marcus and John’s discussion of the weekly plugins we have reviewed.
WordPress Plugins A to Z Podcast and Transcript for See complete show notes for Episode #449 here.
It’s Episode 449 with plugins for Making Time Work for You, Knowing Your history, Banishing Spammers to hell, and some ClassicPress Options. It’s all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!
Episode #449
Okay, so first up I have some ClassicPress Options for you. All right, ClassicPress of course is slowly but surely starting to give WordPress a run for its money. It is of course a fork of WordPress as it stood at 4.9. For those of you that liked WordPress before Gutenberg was instituted, ClassicPress is where you’ll want to head.
So what have I got? I’ve really got some great news this week. I discovered this one while looking up some other stuff and it stems out of some stuff I did several episodes back when I talked about how Elementor had abandoned its support for WordPress 4X. They will not support WordPress 4.9 and below, or 10 or 13 or wherever it’s at. But it looks like James Nylen from the Core Lead Team at ClassicPress has started a fork of Elementor. This is an awesome piece of news that Elementor is being forked out to be used in ClassicPress.
I look forward to testing out the beta version that is up to see how it’s working. It’s going to be quite nice to see how it goes and to see if it will continue to work with my Elementor Pro. That’s going to be one of the big key components is I pay a licensing fee for the pro version and I know the pro version actually looks at the versioning of the Elementor itself to see if it’s going to work correctly. So this will be an interesting thing for me to test out and see how it works. Either way, I look forward to it being forked out and allowing me to actually continue moving down the ClassicPress line with other websites using Elementor as a builder, whatever it’s going to be called once they figure out the fork of it.
So thanks a lot, James. I really greatly appreciate that, a really great piece of information. If you want to find out a bit more about James and Michelle, there’s a link in the Show Notes that goes off to an interview I did last year with James Nylen and Michelle Coe from ClassicPress back in the beginning, a really great interview, so go check that out.
All right, in ClassicPress plugins, I do have a ClassicPress plugin this week. This one here comes from AzureCurve and this one is called To Twitter. This is a plugin for your ClassicPress that once you make a post, it will automatically publish it out to Twitter. Now, these plugins are very useful. I have used them many times on my WordPress sites, different ones at different points in time. It’s always great if you’re building in ClassicPress to use as many ClassicPress-specific plugins as you can. That way, you help ensure you’re going to be good when ClassicPress moves further down its development line.
This looks to be a very simple plugin. You just set it up, install it. Of course you’ve got to go to Twitter and set up the developer account, get your private and secret keys, insert it into it. One of the nice things it says it does here is that it provides an update checkbox in the post to let you know that this post has been tweeted out. So it looks to be a really great plugin, something you’ll want to check out if you want to keep your stuff going to Twitter every time you make a post. Go check this out. It’s called To Twitter and it’s from AzureCurve and I give it a 4-Dragon rating.
Okay, my ClassicPress listeners out there… please provide me with information that you find for ClassicPress. It helps me get the information. Sometimes it can be hard for me to dig for the ClassicPress information as the vast majority of my life right now is spent in the WordPress environment. It’ll be quite a while before I’ve migrated completely away from WordPress. I may never actually, but the thing is that the majority there I’m not in ClassicPress all that often yet. So please help provide me with information.
If you’re looking for more up-to-date information, go check out the ClassicPress Club. They’ve got additional information in there and it looks like they’ve got a new article up. I’ll have to check that one out for the next show.
Go check out the must-have plugins for ClassicPress. This is a list of plugins that people have found replacements for that work under ClassicPress, which ones haven’t been found yet, so go check this list out.
Also, go check out the list from CodePotent and this one here is a managed list that he is doing that is monitoring all of the known ClassicPress-specific plugins, and there is currently 50 on this list right now, so it has been growing. When I started monitoring it a year ago it had 37, so it’s up to 50, so that’s not a bad jump. Eventually, it’ll be like WordPress. When I first started this show there was less than 9,000. Now there’s what, hundreds of thousands? So it becomes exponential as more and more people start using it.
Okay, so let’s pop into the WordPress universe. What have we got for you? Okay, under WordPress I have some plugins for you. The first one is called Timed Content. Now, I may or may not have covered this plugin in a show sometime in the distant past, but it was time I brought it back forward again as I’ve had to recently reuse it, and it looks like the developer has been keeping this plugin up-to-date, which is really a good thing. I’ve been using this plugin for quite a while on a specific website and it’s just as nice as it ever was.
If you’re sitting at the point where you have to have content that appears and disappears at specific times or specific dates or specific date blocks, like I do on the website I’ve built out, which is for the Flower Account of Victoria, this is a plugin for you. You can set up the content, have it appear at the beginning of your promotion, and have it automatically disappear at the end of your promotion so you don’t have to remember to get in there and turn it off or get in there and turn it on. It can be problematic; something could go wrong the day you need to do this, and you might not get it all turn off.
A fantastic plugin; it’s even got a button that’s added to the editor that allows you to choose it and build out the shortcode that you need for what you want to do with it. It allows you to set dates and times, set time zones in it, align it to the time zone of your website, the server. I’m not sure if it lets you go outside of that very much, but it works fantastic. I found it works really well and it’s a plugin you’ll want to check out if you’re looking to deal with timed content on your website. So go check this out; it is called Timed Content and I give it a 5-Dragon rating.
Okay, so next up we’ve got for you – this one is called Simple History. This is a tracking program plugin for your WordPress website. And what does it track for you? Well, it tracks all kinds of things. It tracks logins, logouts, updates, changes, posts and pages, attachments, widgets, plugins, deactivations, activations, info added to profiles, logins, and more. This one here, I had another plugin that I use regularly but I wanted to try something different and something simpler for a website that I just wanted to track a few things on and read it really quick. Well, this one does an excellent job of doing that for you.
It’s a great plugin to allow you to turn on, activate, and track what’s going on. This is particularly useful if you end up with a website that you have a client or a user that breaks things and won’t admit to it. This is a great way to know what it is. It’s also great if you break things yourself and you go, “What did I just do?” You know, because you click the button accidentally and it’s like you didn’t even realize you clicked it, and this helps you find that information by going to the log and checking it out.
Really simple, really easy to use, and of course being free – again – we hit with this one here, Simple History, check it out, it’s a 5-Dragon plugin.
All right and finally I have for you a plugin called Disable Comments and Delete Comments: WP Remove Comments and Disable Comments. In other words, ban those spammers to hell! Get rid of ‘em! All right, what this one is great for – if you’re taking over a website or you’ve set up a website and you forgot to properly deal with the configurations of the comment section. Maybe you meant to turn it off, maybe you didn’t mean it to have the default settings, etc.
Well, what happens if the spammers find it and they hit it before you get an antispam plugin in there? You’ll have hundreds if not thousands of comments in a very short period of time.
I remember my experiments with it one time. I wanted to see how long it takes – a brand new domain, a brand new WordPress website, set up, installed, activated with a sample test post that has no content. How long before the spammers show up and spam it? I think it took all of five minutes one time when I did it. They show up quick. The bots are there and they just start – they hammer it.
So if it gets by you and you come back and go, “Oh, man! Now what?” You can either go into the database and manually remove the comments – you know, delete them one by one. What do you do? Well, this plugin here is a really great tool. Install it, activate it, go to the settings, click a couple of boxes, remove all comments, remove all pending comments, click save – POOF – instantly evaporated from your database. Along with checking another box, turn off all comment settings. If you’re going to build a website that does not need comments, just turn the bloody thing off completely. This plugin turns it off completely, puts it into hide mode, and can never be used.
A great little plugin; very simple. I had to use it recently over about six or seven websites I was helping to clean up and there was just tons of comment issues. This plugin, very easy to get that system cleaned up and working and functioning the way it should. So of course, a beautiful thing – free, works – go check it out, Disable Comments and Delete Comments. I give this plugin a 5-Dragon rating.
Okay, well there we go! And this show, currently brought to you by…
Save time and money managing multiple WordPress websites. If you have several WordPress websites to manage, either for your clients or for yourself, then you know how much time it can take managing them all – time that is spent on mundane administrative tasks and then losing that time for your important business tasks. CMS
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By placing all your websites in one powerful dashboard, CMS Commander makes it possible to update, backup, and manage them all at the same time in one place. Features of CMS Commander include one-click updates of plugins, themes, and WordPress Core for all sites, automatic scheduled website backups, website cloning and restoration, uptime monitoring and analytics integration, bulk posting, and automatic content.
Sign up now for your 14-day trial at CMScommander.com and access all the features that will allow you to manage more websites and save time.
Absolutely. CMS Commander is really great and if you’re interested in it, please use the links in the Show Notes. They are affiliate links – no, they’re not actually paying for the ad. I’m just collecting affiliate payouts for it.
If you would like to have your ad replaced here, let me know. I’ll be happy to stick you in there. Just a small monthly fee; you can go check out my website for the advertising costs.
Okay, next up we’ve got for you – well, the contest still isn’t here. I still haven’t had time to make the phone calls and emails to get my licensing keys made up for it. Please make sure you check in later. We will be announcing when we have a contest.
Okay, if you’re a developer and you would like to support the show by donating a license for the contest, please email me. Let me know. I will get that license queued up and create a contest for you.
Okay, that pretty much wraps everything up I’ve got here today. One of the biggest things of course is, you know, just make sure you’re paying attention to the world today. You know, don’t worry about it. Stress is so much and if you need your amygdala shrunk, go check out the No Agenda Show.
I covered up in this episode Timed Content, which I gave a 5 to; Simple History, which I gave a 5 to; Disable Comments and Delete Comments, which I gave a 5 to; and To Twitter for ClassicPress, which I gave a 4 to.
A couple of quick reminders… if you missed the last meetup which was held earlier this week on the 25th, you can go check it out on the YouTube channel. The whole stream is there. Our next meetup will be March 26, 2020 and the topic is yet to be announced, but we will have that for you, and it will be broadcast live on the YouTube channel and available for watching at a later date.
If you want to be interviewed, I would be happy to interview you about your plugin or whatever else
WordPress/ClassicPress related. Just reach out to me via wppluginsatoz.com/interview.
If you want to find out a little bit more about me, go check me out at theroguestavern.com, where you can check out my adventures into the wild, hunting for gold, hiking, camping, out on the gun range, and more. And there’s actually some cooking videos coming up there, too. I’ve just got to do some things to get away from computers, man. I spend way too much time in front of them.
Okay, and that’s pretty much everything I’ve got for you, so thank you all for showing up. And if you’re on the livestream and you want to chat, stick around after the credits here and feel free to chat me up in the chat box while the outro is playing. So I’m gonna let my girl take us on out of here.
Reminders for the show: All the show notes can be found at wppluginsatoz.com, and while you’re there, subscribe to the newsletter for more useful information directly to your inbox. WP Plugins A-Z is a show that offers honest and unbiased reviews of plugins created by developers because you support the show. Help keep the show honest and unbiased by going to wppluginsatoz.com/donate and set the donation level that fits your budget.
Help us make the show better for you by subscribing and reviewing to the show at Stitcher Radio, Google Play, and in the iTunes Store. You can also leave us a review on our Facebook page using wppluginsatoz.com/facebook.
You can also watch the show live on YouTube, check out the screencasts and training videos, and remember to subscribe and hit the bell to get notifications of all new videos. Follow the show on Twitter @wppluginsatoz.
John can be reached at his website, JohnOverall.com, or email him directly at john@wppro.ca. Thanks for joining us and have a great day.
Thanks for listening to the show. This show is copyright by JohnOverall.com. So until next time, have yourselves a good morning, good afternoon, or a good evening, wherever you happen to be out there on the globe today.
←SEE LATEST EPISODE
Episode 449 WP Plugins A to Z
All transcripts start from the point in the show where we head off into the meat and potatoes. They are the complete verbatim of Marcus and John’s discussion of the weekly plugins we have reviewed.
WordPress Plugins A to Z Podcast and Transcript for See complete show notes for Episode #449 here.
It’s Episode 449 with plugins for Making Time Work for You, Knowing Your history, Banishing Spammers to hell, and some ClassicPress Options. It’s all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!
Episode #449
Okay, so first up I have some ClassicPress Options for you. All right, ClassicPress of course is slowly but surely starting to give WordPress a run for its money. It is of course a fork of WordPress as it stood at 4.9. For those of you that liked WordPress before Gutenberg was instituted, ClassicPress is where you’ll want to head.
So what have I got? I’ve really got some great news this week. I discovered this one while looking up some other stuff and it stems out of some stuff I did several episodes back when I talked about how Elementor had abandoned its support for WordPress 4X. They will not support WordPress 4.9 and below, or 10 or 13 or wherever it’s at. But it looks like James Nylen from the Core Lead Team at ClassicPress has started a fork of Elementor. This is an awesome piece of news that Elementor is being forked out to be used in ClassicPress.
I look forward to testing out the beta version that is up to see how it’s working. It’s going to be quite nice to see how it goes and to see if it will continue to work with my Elementor Pro. That’s going to be one of the big key components is I pay a licensing fee for the pro version and I know the pro version actually looks at the versioning of the Elementor itself to see if it’s going to work correctly. So this will be an interesting thing for me to test out and see how it works. Either way, I look forward to it being forked out and allowing me to actually continue moving down the ClassicPress line with other websites using Elementor as a builder, whatever it’s going to be called once they figure out the fork of it.
So thanks a lot, James. I really greatly appreciate that, a really great piece of information. If you want to find out a bit more about James and Michelle, there’s a link in the Show Notes that goes off to an interview I did last year with James Nylen and Michelle Coe from ClassicPress back in the beginning, a really great interview, so go check that out.
All right, in ClassicPress plugins, I do have a ClassicPress plugin this week. This one here comes from AzureCurve and this one is called To Twitter. This is a plugin for your ClassicPress that once you make a post, it will automatically publish it out to Twitter. Now, these plugins are very useful. I have used them many times on my WordPress sites, different ones at different points in time. It’s always great if you’re building in ClassicPress to use as many ClassicPress-specific plugins as you can. That way, you help ensure you’re going to be good when ClassicPress moves further down its development line.
This looks to be a very simple plugin. You just set it up, install it. Of course you’ve got to go to Twitter and set up the developer account, get your private and secret keys, insert it into it. One of the nice things it says it does here is that it provides an update checkbox in the post to let you know that this post has been tweeted out. So it looks to be a really great plugin, something you’ll want to check out if you want to keep your stuff going to Twitter every time you make a post. Go check this out. It’s called To Twitter and it’s from AzureCurve and I give it a 4-Dragon rating.
Okay, my ClassicPress listeners out there… please provide me with information that you find for ClassicPress. It helps me get the information. Sometimes it can be hard for me to dig for the ClassicPress information as the vast majority of my life right now is spent in the WordPress environment. It’ll be quite a while before I’ve migrated completely away from WordPress. I may never actually, but the thing is that the majority there I’m not in ClassicPress all that often yet. So please help provide me with information.
If you’re looking for more up-to-date information, go check out the ClassicPress Club. They’ve got additional information in there and it looks like they’ve got a new article up. I’ll have to check that one out for the next show.
Go check out the must-have plugins for ClassicPress. This is a list of plugins that people have found replacements for that work under ClassicPress, which ones haven’t been found yet, so go check this list out.
Also, go check out the list from CodePotent and this one here is a managed list that he is doing that is monitoring all of the known ClassicPress-specific plugins, and there is currently 50 on this list right now, so it has been growing. When I started monitoring it a year ago it had 37, so it’s up to 50, so that’s not a bad jump. Eventually, it’ll be like WordPress. When I first started this show there was less than 9,000. Now there’s what, hundreds of thousands? So it becomes exponential as more and more people start using it.
Okay, so let’s pop into the WordPress universe. What have we got for you? Okay, under WordPress I have some plugins for you. The first one is called Timed Content. Now, I may or may not have covered this plugin in a show sometime in the distant past, but it was time I brought it back forward again as I’ve had to recently reuse it, and it looks like the developer has been keeping this plugin up-to-date, which is really a good thing. I’ve been using this plugin for quite a while on a specific website and it’s just as nice as it ever was.
If you’re sitting at the point where you have to have content that appears and disappears at specific times or specific dates or specific date blocks, like I do on the website I’ve built out, which is for the Flower Account of Victoria, this is a plugin for you. You can set up the content, have it appear at the beginning of your promotion, and have it automatically disappear at the end of your promotion so you don’t have to remember to get in there and turn it off or get in there and turn it on. It can be problematic; something could go wrong the day you need to do this, and you might not get it all turn off.
A fantastic plugin; it’s even got a button that’s added to the editor that allows you to choose it and build out the shortcode that you need for what you want to do with it. It allows you to set dates and times, set time zones in it, align it to the time zone of your website, the server. I’m not sure if it lets you go outside of that very much, but it works fantastic. I found it works really well and it’s a plugin you’ll want to check out if you’re looking to deal with timed content on your website. So go check this out; it is called Timed Content and I give it a 5-Dragon rating.
Okay, so next up we’ve got for you – this one is called Simple History. This is a tracking program plugin for your WordPress website. And what does it track for you? Well, it tracks all kinds of things. It tracks logins, logouts, updates, changes, posts and pages, attachments, widgets, plugins, deactivations, activations, info added to profiles, logins, and more. This one here, I had another plugin that I use regularly but I wanted to try something different and something simpler for a website that I just wanted to track a few things on and read it really quick. Well, this one does an excellent job of doing that for you.
It’s a great plugin to allow you to turn on, activate, and track what’s going on. This is particularly useful if you end up with a website that you have a client or a user that breaks things and won’t admit to it. This is a great way to know what it is. It’s also great if you break things yourself and you go, “What did I just do?” You know, because you click the button accidentally and it’s like you didn’t even realize you clicked it, and this helps you find that information by going to the log and checking it out.
Really simple, really easy to use, and of course being free – again – we hit with this one here, Simple History, check it out, it’s a 5-Dragon plugin.
All right and finally I have for you a plugin called Disable Comments and Delete Comments: WP Remove Comments and Disable Comments. In other words, ban those spammers to hell! Get rid of ‘em! All right, what this one is great for – if you’re taking over a website or you’ve set up a website and you forgot to properly deal with the configurations of the comment section. Maybe you meant to turn it off, maybe you didn’t mean it to have the default settings, etc.
Well, what happens if the spammers find it and they hit it before you get an antispam plugin in there? You’ll have hundreds if not thousands of comments in a very short period of time.
I remember my experiments with it one time. I wanted to see how long it takes – a brand new domain, a brand new WordPress website, set up, installed, activated with a sample test post that has no content. How long before the spammers show up and spam it? I think it took all of five minutes one time when I did it. They show up quick. The bots are there and they just start – they hammer it.
So if it gets by you and you come back and go, “Oh, man! Now what?” You can either go into the database and manually remove the comments – you know, delete them one by one. What do you do? Well, this plugin here is a really great tool. Install it, activate it, go to the settings, click a couple of boxes, remove all comments, remove all pending comments, click save – POOF – instantly evaporated from your database. Along with checking another box, turn off all comment settings. If you’re going to build a website that does not need comments, just turn the bloody thing off completely. This plugin turns it off completely, puts it into hide mode, and can never be used.
A great little plugin; very simple. I had to use it recently over about six or seven websites I was helping to clean up and there was just tons of comment issues. This plugin, very easy to get that system cleaned up and working and functioning the way it should. So of course, a beautiful thing – free, works – go check it out, Disable Comments and Delete Comments. I give this plugin a 5-Dragon rating.
Okay, well there we go! And this show, currently brought to you by…
Save time and money managing multiple WordPress websites. If you have several WordPress websites to manage, either for your clients or for yourself, then you know how much time it can take managing them all – time that is spent on mundane administrative tasks and then losing that time for your important business tasks. CMS
Commander is an online service that solves this problem and makes managing multiple WordPress websites fast and easy, as simple as controlling a single site.
By placing all your websites in one powerful dashboard, CMS Commander makes it possible to update, backup, and manage them all at the same time in one place. Features of CMS Commander include one-click updates of plugins, themes, and WordPress Core for all sites, automatic scheduled website backups, website cloning and restoration, uptime monitoring and analytics integration, bulk posting, and automatic content.
Sign up now for your 14-day trial at CMScommander.com and access all the features that will allow you to manage more websites and save time.
Absolutely. CMS Commander is really great and if you’re interested in it, please use the links in the Show Notes. They are affiliate links – no, they’re not actually paying for the ad. I’m just collecting affiliate payouts for it.
If you would like to have your ad replaced here, let me know. I’ll be happy to stick you in there. Just a small monthly fee; you can go check out my website for the advertising costs.
Okay, next up we’ve got for you – well, the contest still isn’t here. I still haven’t had time to make the phone calls and emails to get my licensing keys made up for it. Please make sure you check in later. We will be announcing when we have a contest.
Okay, if you’re a developer and you would like to support the show by donating a license for the contest, please email me. Let me know. I will get that license queued up and create a contest for you.
Okay, that pretty much wraps everything up I’ve got here today. One of the biggest things of course is, you know, just make sure you’re paying attention to the world today. You know, don’t worry about it. Stress is so much and if you need your amygdala shrunk, go check out the No Agenda Show.
I covered up in this episode Timed Content, which I gave a 5 to; Simple History, which I gave a 5 to; Disable Comments and Delete Comments, which I gave a 5 to; and To Twitter for ClassicPress, which I gave a 4 to.
A couple of quick reminders… if you missed the last meetup which was held earlier this week on the 25th, you can go check it out on the YouTube channel. The whole stream is there. Our next meetup will be March 26, 2020 and the topic is yet to be announced, but we will have that for you, and it will be broadcast live on the YouTube channel and available for watching at a later date.
If you want to be interviewed, I would be happy to interview you about your plugin or whatever else
WordPress/ClassicPress related. Just reach out to me via wppluginsatoz.com/interview.
If you want to find out a little bit more about me, go check me out at theroguestavern.com, where you can check out my adventures into the wild, hunting for gold, hiking, camping, out on the gun range, and more. And there’s actually some cooking videos coming up there, too. I’ve just got to do some things to get away from computers, man. I spend way too much time in front of them.
Okay, and that’s pretty much everything I’ve got for you, so thank you all for showing up. And if you’re on the livestream and you want to chat, stick around after the credits here and feel free to chat me up in the chat box while the outro is playing. So I’m gonna let my girl take us on out of here.
Reminders for the show: All the show notes can be found at wppluginsatoz.com, and while you’re there, subscribe to the newsletter for more useful information directly to your inbox. WP Plugins A-Z is a show that offers honest and unbiased reviews of plugins created by developers because you support the show. Help keep the show honest and unbiased by going to wppluginsatoz.com/donate and set the donation level that fits your budget.
Help us make the show better for you by subscribing and reviewing to the show at Stitcher Radio, Google Play, and in the iTunes Store. You can also leave us a review on our Facebook page using wppluginsatoz.com/facebook.
You can also watch the show live on YouTube, check out the screencasts and training videos, and remember to subscribe and hit the bell to get notifications of all new videos. Follow the show on Twitter @wppluginsatoz.
John can be reached at his website, JohnOverall.com, or email him directly at john@wppro.ca. Thanks for joining us and have a great day.
Thanks for listening to the show. This show is copyright by JohnOverall.com. So until next time, have yourselves a good morning, good afternoon, or a good evening, wherever you happen to be out there on the globe today.