Episode 450 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 #450 here.

Episode #450

All right, first off, we have ClassicPress Options. I really should put my glasses on to read this. ClassicPress is a fast-growing fork of WordPress and of course it is slowly gaining ground as more and more developers hop on board, more plugins are developed, and more news gets out there about them. They are going to be a player and they are going to be competing for WordPress’s market share, probably within the next year or two.

So first off, we’ve got a little bit right now of news for ClassicPress. ClassicPress SEO – this is a fork of – I’m not sure what SEO plugin was forked for this, but it is a SEO plugin designed specifically for ClassicPress is now in Beta 2. So if you’re using ClassicPress and you’re looking at testing out a beta plugin for your site, go check this out. The link is in the Show Notes. The information is up on the ClassicPress forum, and this could be something that will be useful for you. It looks to be interesting; I have already moved myself off to Rank Math and using that as my SEO plugin, but this could be the alternate to Rank Math for ClassicPress.

ClassicPress plugins – I do have a ClassicPress plugin this week. I have ZP Disable Users. Somehow, I think I already covered this one before but we’re going to go with it again. This is a ClassicPress plugin that allows administrators to get it and disable accounts, preventing users from logging in and logging out. So if you’re running a membership site or a place where people register and you need to get in there and control their access or turn it on and off, you can determine their capabilities, all kinds of little things, and this plugin is built specifically for ClassicPress management.

It does work in WordPress currently, but it’s not designed for WordPress and as ClassicPress evolves, it probably won’t work there, just as we’re going to have the problem of WordPress plugins not working in ClassicPress occasionally. So that’s what we’ve got there, and it looks to be a really great plugin. It is made by ZigPress and a great little plugin to check out for you, and I give this plugin a 4-Dragon rating.

And of course, other bits of ClassicPress. I’ve got links in the Show Notes to all of this: the ClassicPress Club website, the must-have plugin list over at the forums, the list of ClassicPress-specific plugins (which is sitting at 50 right now and slowly growing). You’ll want to check that list out if you’re looking for a plugin built for ClassicPress. And if you build a ClassicPress plugin, make sure you submit it to CodePotent, who manages this list. Eventually, they’re going to have their own repository where plugins will be going, so keep that in mind.

Okay, WordPress plugins. What do we have for WordPress plugins this week? Well, the first one I’ve got for you is Image SEO Optimizer. This one was sent in to me by Aurelio Volle and this is a plugin to optimize your images for SEO. It goes through your site – through your images – and it changes the ALT text, the image title, the name, the open graph tag – all of this. They do do this as a third-party SAS service and while this looks to be a really fantastic plugin and will work well, you get 10 free per month of images to work with initially. After that, you’ve got to pay a premium fee for an account, and the account prices vary throughout it. It starts at $4.99 Euros, so whatever the Euro converts to currently in your currency, that one there was kind of hmm… wow, they price in Euros. Well, not my favourite but it works.

If you have lots of images and you’d like to optimize all of them, you’ll have to take a look at this plugin and look at one of their bigger packages for images and see how it works out for you. It does look to be a great plugin and looks like it could save you a lot of time and optimize your images for SEO without you having to manually go in and write your ALT tag, change the image title, change the description tag, etc. They do a whole lot of that automatically for you. I’m not sure how it works entirely, but it does seem to work, so go check it out, the Image SEO Optimizer – Auto Images ALT Text, Name, and Open Graph Tag. And it says it’s WooCommerce-friendly. So anyway, I give it a 4-Dragon rating.

Okay, next up I have a plugin that was sent in to me by Angel Lemus, and this is called Disable Gutenberg – or, as a better title, Banish Gutenberg to the Pits of Hell. This plugin gets out there and disables Gutenberg – and I didn’t even realize – I know there’s a fair number of other “turn off Gutenberg” plugins out there. I use the ClassicPress plugin is what I use for it – or the Classic Editor plugin is what I use. This one here has over 500 installs of this plugin. The Classic Editor has like 5 million installs, so we’re looking at multiple of these plugins that have got, you know, tens or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of plugins. It tells you a lot when there’s that many plugins – websites – that have turned off Gutenberg. They’re only judging how often Gutenberg is turned off by the Classic Editor plugin, not by all these alternate ones, so it looks like somebody’s alternate ones are pretty popular.

Anyway, this one here is very nice. It disables the Gutenberg editor and it replaces it with the Classic Editor. You can disable it completely or selectively disable it. The all-in-one complete solution for handling the Gutenberg, it hides all traces of Gutenberg, and replaces it with the Classic Editor. Basically, it restores the classic editing functionality to your website and it’s really decent, like supporting the meta boxes, quick tags, custom fields, and everything else that Classic Editor can do. And so far, like I said, with over 500 installs, it looks like a great way to get rid of Gutenberg and banish it to the pits. Hopefully, it’ll be maintained long after they have stopped maintaining the Classic Editor, which WordPress has made mention of from time to time that they’re going to stop supporting the Classic Editor plugin. Maybe this one will still be there for you when you need it.

So go check this one out – pretty great plugin. I have given it a 5-Dragon rating.

Okay, next one up. This was another plugin that was sent off to me. This is called Matomo Analytics – Ethical Stats. Powerful Insights. And this one here is pretty impressive to me as far as a stats plugin goes. One thing it does first off is it keeps all your stats to yourself on your website and as many people have listened to me for years know, I am a big one for keeping all my data on my website as much as I possibly can without having it to go off wandering into the depths or the pits of Google and Facebook and everyone else. Keep your data to yourself.

A really great plugin. I’ve loaded this up, tested it on my own site. It actually gives you some really great stats just out of the box and gives you some great insights – as much insights as Google Analytics, except I’m willing to bet it’s going to be more accurate than Google Analytics because it’s grabbing the stuff right from your website itself instead of depending on the Google Analytics script to grab that stuff.

They do offer some premium features such as heat maps and session recordings, form analytics, and media analytics. They have funnels, SEO features, custom reporting – all the additional other plugins you can add into this.

But just their basic freebie – and I don’t do this often for freebie plugins. Usually once they have premium stuff, they automatically get a point off. But this one just gave me so much impressive stuff in their free version that I just have to give it a 5-Dragon rating.

Go check it out, Matomo Analytics, and it does seem lightweight and so far, I haven’t seen an impact on my site. We’ll find out over the next few weeks. Sometimes when you put an analytics plugin on your site, it does start to impact your speed and load times. But so far, this one looks good.

All right, so before I jump into what this show is brought to you by, I’ve got a couple of comments here in the chat.

From Joey, I’m not sure where he said “Yay,” because sometimes I don’t catch the comments because I’m reading my notes and I get so focused. So thanks, Joey. Thanks for the comments on the Wuhan Flu. So we call it the WooCommerce Flu? There’s an idea!

All right and Hemdien, giving me the exchange. A $1.50 for a Euro? Ouch, that hurts man! Even buying a US Dollar isn’t that bad. And yeah, US – okay, thanks Hemdien. I appreciate that.

So thanks everyone for getting in there and jumping in, and of course 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 great. Like I said, many times I’ve been using it for years and if you would like to check it out, please use the links in the Show Notes. It is an affiliate link. They don’t pay for the ad; I just get affiliate commissions for running it.

Okay, and we still don’t have any other listener feedback as far as SpeakPipes or notes or just basic contact. So anyone out there, hey, feel free! I would love to have some listener feedback. How’s the show going? What do you think of it? Good, bad, indifferent? Let me know if you’d like to hear more of something. Any of that stuff, I will get it into the show and bring it forward for everyone to hear.

You can do that just by going to wppluginsatoz.com/contact or hit the little SpeakPipe button in the lower right-hand corner and leave me a SpeakPipe audio so I can play it on the air.

Okay, and contests – I still haven’t gotten a new contest up. It seems like my life has just been very busy for the last three weeks. I had an entire week stripped away from me fixing hacked websites and I’ve been playing catch-up ever since and a whole bunch of new work has come in. Not that I’m complaining, it’s just that what that does is it impacts what I can accomplish for the show, because I have to fun things like sleep, go away camping – basically, get away from my computer screens. The next contest will come soon.

Okay, and that’s pretty much all I’ve got. A couple of quick reminders of course – let me close out the episode. The plugins I covered were Image SEO Optimizer, which I gave a 4 to; the Disable Gutenberg, which I gave a 5 to; the Matomo Analytics – Ethical Stats, I have a 5 to; and the ZP Disable Users, which I gave a 4 to.

And a couple of quick reminders… The next WordPress Meetup is March 26th and I don’t have a subject on that yet, but it will be coming soon. And if you would like to be interviewed, if you’re a developer and you want to talk about your plugin, go schedule an interview with me at wppluginsatoz.com/interview. If you want to know more about the stuff I do, go check out my journey at theroguestavern.com – and I’m behind in updating the videos there also. See, I don’t even get to get my fun stuff up. I’m just tired.

So at any rate, that’s it. That’s all I’ve got, so I’m gonna let my girl take us out of here. And if you want to hang around after the credits and chat in the chat box, feel free to just dump some stuff in there. But let’s 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.