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WordPress Plugins from A to Z Episode 153
It’s episode 153 and we’ve got plugins for In-Post Analytics, Store Locators, Advanced WordPress Search functionality, User Cleanup, plugin organization and more. All coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!
Don’t forget you can get the show notes at:
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As WordPress advances it soon becomes clear that many people need WordPress support sometimes is is just a simple question or two such as a simple layout issue, other times something has broken and you may see the white screen of death. This may be time for some Emergency WordPress Support for any question contact John at WPPro.ca/Emergency or give me a quick call at 818-850-7729. If you just need some quick tips to do it yourself check out WPPro.ca/Emergency
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John’s & Marcus Rant: What to rant about?
Wishing you a happy New Year and that you upcoming year will be great.
WordPress News and other interesting WordPress related posts:
WordPress 3.8 … Well here is my view of its functions good and bad.. I like the new admin area for the most part dislike that I cannot easily customize the colours unless I am just missing something somewhere on that. I do like the new 3 column layout for the dashboards I can see more stuff above the fold now.
It seems to have integrated the auto log-out feature that is a pain especially if you are like me and have several windows open for several sites and come back to check only to find yourself logged out.
It does seem to be pretty stable I have even helped a couple folks come from 3.5 up to 3.8 and had little to no difficulty. I did run into a couple plugin incompatibilities but it would seem those plugin authors have fixed that. I did see one site that had to do some semi major upgrades to get everything compatible including the theme to be able to use 3.8
I do not like the new layout for telling you which plugins are on or off and the new widget area is a bit difficult to use. Mostly lack of contrast there but also the new 4 column display if you have lots of widgets and widget areas it requires more scrolling.
**WordPress Plugins Reviewed by John**
WooCommerce Poor Guys Swiss Knife 1.5.0
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Version: 1.5.0
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Author: Uli Hake
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Last Updated: 2 weeks ago
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Requires WordPress Version: 3.1 or higher
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Compatible up to: 3.8
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Downloaded: 886 times
The lowdown:
Do you need to do some tweaks to your Woocommerce site? Well this plugin will help out there. Easily change things like the cart button label, enable fast cart checkout. You can set min cart items tweak cart settings and more. You can play with your Checkout settings, easily add new fields for the billing and shipping sections and hide current fields. And many more little tweak you might not have thought you wanted or needed.
Rating 4 Dragons
Plugin Organizer 4.0.2
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Version: 4.0.2
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Author: Jeff Sterup
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Last Updated: 2 months ago
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Requires WordPress Version: 3.1 or higher
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Compatible up to: 3.8
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Downloaded: 45,449 times
The Lowdown:
Well every once in a while it is good to revisit a plugin especially if you need it after a hiatius. This plugin allows you to change the load order of plugin on your site and can help improve performance. I was working on my e-commerce website over the holidays and found I had an issue with something essential loading because of the load order of the plugins. After a quick check and discovering that this had been updated recently I installed and changed the plugin load order and was back in business. This plugin does an excellent job of helping you have your plugin load in the best order you need for your setup.
Rating 5 Dragons
Clean Up Zombie Users (spammers) 0.4f
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Version: 0.4f
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Author: Imperative Ideas
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Last Updated: 2 days ago
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Requires WordPress Version: 3.0.1 or higher
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Compatible up to: 3.8
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Downloaded: 80 times
The Lowdown:
As my son would say Why do Zombies eat brains.. Well I may not have a complete answer there but it makes no differnce to a 6 year old since the moment you answer one question you get 5 more. At any rate this is a simple enough plougin so far install it to clean out the spam registrations from your site in one smooth blow. It is a great simple way to get your site cleaned up and isn’t that what we all want in the new year a fresh start. While this is a new plugin the author has a nice list of things to come in the future including exclusion of newer users, the ability to exclude uses for major e-commerce plugins and more so if you not ready to delete just install keep it up to date and check from time to time to see if it is ready for you.
Rating 4 Dragons
**WordPress Plugins Reviewed by Marcus**
WP Store Locator
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-store-locator/
WP Store Locator is a powerful and easy to use location management system. You can customize the appearance of the map and provide custom labels for entry fields. Users can filter the results by radius and see driving directions to the nearby stores in the language that is set in the admin panel.
Features include:
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Manage an unlimited numbers of stores
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Set an unique thumbnail for each store
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Provide extra details for stores like the phone, fax, email, url, description and opening hours
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You can drag the marker to the exact spot on the ‘Add Store’ page
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Show the driving distances in either km or miles
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Choose from nine retina ready marker icons
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Show Google Maps in different languages, this also influences the language for the driving directions
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Show the driving directions to the stores
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Users can filter the returned results by radius or max results
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Customize the max results and search radius values that users can select
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Customize map settings like the terrain type, location of the map controls and the default zoom level
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Auto-locate the location of the user and show nearby stores
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Labels can be translated in any language through the settings panel
This was my first attempt at looking into this functionality vs a theme. I must say, I really like the plugin route but it needs a bit more style to be something I would consider to go live.
Rating: 4 out of 5
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Post-Analytics
https://wordpress.org/plugins/post-analytics/
This great plugin will give you data for each page/post you are editing, for every page will wordpress will fetch you last 30 days data from your Google Analytics account.
Features include in the every post:
Site Globals Analytics:
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Unique pageviews.
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Total Entrances.
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Avg timeonpage.
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Exit rate.
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Avg exitRate.
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Avg TimeOnSite.
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pageviewsPerVisit.
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pageValue.
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site avg Bounce Rate.
Rating: 4 out of 5
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Compound Searcher
https://wordpress.org/plugins/compound-searcher/
This is a plugin going in the right direction. The plugin gives search boxes on the blog additional functionalities for operators among search words, such as Google’s. The other supported operators than the standard ‘and’ search are OR, -(exclude), *(any string) and parenthesis.
Rating: 3 out of 5
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**Rambling Last Words and Plugin Wrapup
John: Clean: Up Zombie Users (spammers) – 4, Plugin Organizer – 5, WooCommerce Poor Guys Swiss Knife – 4
Marcus: WP Store Locator – 4, Post Analytics – 4, Compound Searcher – 3
Commercial:
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Just some reminders:
Get Your Daily dose of WordPress News from the WPPlugins Daily over at WPNews.wpmedic.ca
Rate us at iTunes, blubrry.com, ViaWay.com, Stitcher Radio and any place else you find us.
How to Contact Us:
John can be contacted at:
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on my website @ https://www.johnoverall.com/
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WordPress Emergency Support https://wppro.ca/wpemergency
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email: john@wppro.ca
Marcus can be contacted at:
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Marcus Couch can be contacted at his website at marcuscouch.com
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Twitter @marcuscouch
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The Daily Plugin at WPTavern.com or just look under “other WordPress news” in your WordPress Dashboard.
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WordPress Radio at WPR.FM