Transcript of Episode 379 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 John’s discussion of the weekly plugins he has reviewed.
WordPress Plugins A to Z Podcast and Transcript for See complete show notes for Episode #379 here.
It’s Episode 379 and I’ve got plugins to Customize Facebook Feeds, Create QuadMenu’s, Remove Pointers and some Halloween Fun. It’s all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!
Episode #379
John: It’s Episode 379 and I’ve got plugins to Customize Facebook Feeds, Create Quad Menus, Remove Pointers and some Halloween Fun. All coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!
[Intro]
WordPress, it’s the most popular content management and website solution on the internet. And with over 60,000 plugins to choose from, how do you separate the junk from the gems? Join John Overall and Marcus Couch for this weekly unrehearsed conversation about the latest and greatest in WordPress plugins. This is WordPress Plugins A to Z.
John: Well good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you happen to be hiding out there on the globe today. Coming to you direct from the Brewery Overlook in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, I’m John Overall. And Marcus isn’t with me again this week but we still have a great show for you here today. Me, we, got my mouse, my computer monitors, and all the rest of the lovely stuff here.
At any rate, right off the top, you can get all the show notes over at wppluginsatoz.com. And if you have a few minutes, please take your time and drop on over to Stitcher Radio, Google Play, and in the iTunes Store, leaving us reviews and subscribing to the show. It really helps us out there. Reviews are really something great; we like to get them here and read out to the show.
And also, take a few minutes to check out our training videos, screencasts, and watch us live on YouTube every – well, maybe every Monday morning. There’s some changes that have been coming. My last couple of months, as many of you listeners have known, have been a little bit up in the air, so I’ve been in the process of revamping and changing a few things here. But at any rate, keep your ears tuned for that information coming.
And of course, you can follow us up on Twitter @wppluginsatoz and check us out on our YouTube channel and on Facebook or our social media platforms. With that, let’s dive right into the meat and potatoes of the show.
[Plugins lead-in music]
And of course because Marcus isn’t here with me, I’ve got a couple of plugins for you right off the top to get you started. First up I’ve got one here that was sent in to us by Hari Maliya and it’s a freemium plugin. It’s called Customize Facebook Feeds, and this one here I don’t think actually made the reviews of when I was reviewing Facebook feed plugins several months back. I can’t recall entirely, but this one here is from Weblizar. It’s a very interesting Facebook feed plugin.
The setup is pretty easy for the most part. Once installed and activated, you gotta go create your feed, enter the URL of your Facebook page, group, or profile, make some adjustments to the layout. It’s got lots of nice adjustments to the layout as you see fit.
The free version, which is what I was reviewing – I don’t know if it was the free version or just something I wasn’t doing correctly. I was having some difficulties with it getting it to connect with Facebook and they have an – offer up a way to quickly click a button to create the Auth0 token that Facebook uses or you can try to use your own tokens, and that takes a real pain in Facebook to go create.
But no, no – I had some difficulties going back and forth. All in all, the plugin seemed pretty good. But with these difficulties here, I wasn’t sure if it was me or if it was Facebook, or what it was in the process. So basically what I’ve decided to do instead of panning this plugin, which it probably doesn’t need to be panned, is that I decided that I would just set this plugin aside a little bit and give it some time. I’ll come back to it at another time, so at the moment it’s currently unrated but it does seem to be pretty good for the most part.
So anyway, go check it out. It’s called Weblizar’s Facebook feed plugin and it’s Customize Facebook Feed. So it’s a really good looking plugin, so it could be of benefit to you, and if you can set it up, hey, more power to you.
That brings me up to the next one I’ve got here for you. This one was sent in by Ray Gillespie and this is called Remove Pointer from Blank Menu Items. Now this one here is one that I thought was really kind of cool in that every once in a while (in fact, it happens almost every site I build), you need a top-level menu item and you need a top level-menu item with no link to anywhere, not linking off to another page or something. Just a top-level menu item in your menu. Sometimes second- and third-level menu items to the same, and of course we all know how to create those. You go in and you create a custom menu and you put the pound symbol in there – hashtag – whatever you want to call it, and it goes nowhere. It’s just a default one.
Well, what happens with a lot of themes and such is they put a little arrow next to it, especially if you’ve got drop-downs in there. Well, what this plugin does is it removes that blank pointer arrow from the menu items so it doesn’t show up any longer. So a really sweet plugin; very simple, straightforward. Install it, activate it. It gets rid of that little blank pointer item on there for you and just does what it’s supposed to do. So being one of those simple plugins that’s free, it gets a top 5-Dragon rating.
[Dragon roar]
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That’s it. Absolutely – visit me and we’ll help you out with all your WordPress needs from hosting to sorting out that hacked website. Feel free to give me a call at any time.
Okay, and also is brought to you by X2 Marketing, which is your full-service digital marketing and brand deployment agency. Whether you are a solopreneur, small business, or enterprise-level company, power up your marketing with X2 from WordPress to click funnels, landing pages to social campaigns, SEO, paid ads, Infusion management, and more. Visit x2marketing.com and get in touch with Marcus about your digital marketing needs.
And currently we do have a contest running right now for October, and because we had some difficulties getting it fully started and running, it’s running through to the middle of November. It’s for a copy of the Interactive U.S. Map which we reviewed in Episode 368. Check it out. The contest runs until the middle of November. It’s the WP Maps plugin at wpmapsplugins.com. They offer a wide variety of professional, interactive map plugins including Interactive U.S. Map, which gives you an easy way to install professional looking U.S. map, clickable states, counties, a well-organized dashboard to customize the map covers, hover information, etc. and more. It’s a really great plugin, so go check it out. We gave it a top ranking in our review.
Next plugin I’ve got here for you is another one that was sent into us. It was sent in by Juan Mastromarino – that’s it, get the name right. The freemium plugin is called Quad Menu and this one here creates WordPress mega quad menus that allow you to easily integrate the menu into your theme’s project. The plugin allows you to create mega menus, tabs, and carousel menus in a simple and native way, converting your existing menus into a powerful tool.
It’s fully customizable with filters to change the style and behavior of the menu, and this could be a great way to build out some custom, unique menus you may need for whatever project you’re currently working on. It does produce some very unique menus, so you might want to go check this one out if you’re just starting out and you need some unique menus. It’s called Quad Menu and I give it a 4-Dragon rating.
Listener feedback…we love listener feedback on the show here. And if you’d like to contact us, you can reach out to us via SpeakPipe in the lower right-hand corner of our website at wppluginsatoz.com. Hit us up on our Contact page. You can send us emails directly or you can reach out to us through our social media platforms via Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. And we do like when we get the feedback, so first up this week here, we do have a SpeakPipe feedback and this is from Mark, so we’ll let Mark take it away.
“Hey Marcus, I was listing to the – I think it was the September 24th podcast – and you were pretty much badmouthing Gutenberg, and boy do I disagree with you on that. I think your comments were something about Elementor and the other page builders being so much better. Basically Marcus, they’ve done a real good job with Gutenberg and that is going to be a phenomenal addition to WordPress, especially when it goes into the other phases – you know, Phase 2 and Phase 3. So I’d like you to stick with plugins and not be so opinionated against Gutenberg. It upsets me and I’m not listening to your podcast to be upset. I like to enjoy the podcast, so, you know, badmouthing Gutenberg – we’ve been using it live for many months now and we love it. So anyway, thank you. Bye-bye.”
Thanks, Mark much appreciate that. And unfortunately, Marcus isn’t here this show to defend himself, so we’ll bring it back when he is back on the show. But at any rate, the big thing for me is I’ve not been overly happy with Gutenberg either, but sometimes I badmouth it; sometimes I don’t. I do know that page builders such as Elementor and others are slowly starting to embrace Gutenberg and as I’ve said, it may be something I’m not ready for but it’s being crammed down our throats. And it will eventually be there but everyone else will catch up to it sooner or later. So that being said, we’ll still have our opinions occasionally – we have to. That’s what part of the show is. Our opinions are about everything in the show. So hopefully you continue to listen to the show. Maybe you’ll even support the show by donating, so thank you very much, Mark. We greatly appreciate it.
That being done, we’ve got another one here – an iTunes review that came in in September and this one here is titled “Best Plug-ins Podcast EVER!!!!” from Kahuna in the U.S. store and this is what Kahuna had to say:
This is a “MUST listen to Podcast” providing fantastic advice about WordPress Plug-ins. I have discovered so much by listening to it and have saved so much time and effort. I also recommend John Overall for consultation work, he is a fantastic problem solver and his help is worth the time and expense because he will save you time and provide solutions to all your WordPress and hosting needs.
Thank you very much, Kahuna. I do remember who you were and that you called me up and I did some work for you. So Valhalla – I think that’s how it goes – something Hawaii. So thank you very much. Much appreciate that.
And of course, this show is a value-for-value model, meaning if you get any value out of it, please give some value back. And in that vein, we’d like to acknowledge those that have supported the show in the past. All donations $50 or over are read out and their note is published here in the show. There’s also a new form for donations at wppluginsatoz.com/donate – make it as easy as possible to support the show. For those of you who come in below $50, they remain anonymous and we thank you very much.
We’d just like to give a big shout-out and thank you for all of those of you who have small donation amounts supporting the show and the regular recurring amounts that come in through Patreon, so thank you very much for supporting the show. It really helps us out. The money doesn’t make it into our pockets. It basically covers the costs of the transcripts, the server bandwidth – all of the little incidentals that are required just to keep a website up and running. And of course, drop on over to wppluginsatoz.com to support the show.
Okay, and the final plugin I’ve got for you here today is just a little bit of Halloween fun to go along with your WooCommerce store. It’s called Halloween WooCommerce and what it does for you is it displays selected Halloween-related icons in random places on your website. In other words, it’s kind of like a hide-and-seek game or a hunt-and-pick. You know, they gotta search out these icons and gather them up. Once a user goes through your site, gathers up all the desired number of icons that you set out for them, they receive a selected WooCommerce coupon.
It’s an interesting way to have a Halloween promotion. You can put something up and say, “Hey, we’ve got 10 Halloween icons that look like this…” You know, you just show them the icons scattered throughout our website. You know, this also gets them to click through your website too, searching for these icons, and offer them up a 20%, 25 – something worth their time but also helps benefit you.
A really cool little plugin; something you might want to check out. I know it’s a bit late for Halloween now with five days ‘til Halloween shows up, but it’d be something you put in your arsenal for next year – or who knows? May it’s changeable and you can set it up and use it for Thanksgiving and Christmas. (Now there’s an idea, too.)
So anyway, go check this plugin out. It seems like a fun plugin and it seems to work okay, so I give it a top 5-Dragon rating.
[Dragon roar]
All right, well that wraps up this show here for the plugins and I covered up in this episode the Customize Facebook Feeds, which I unrated at the moment; the Quad Menu, which I gave a 4 to; the Remove Pointer, which I gave a 5 to; and the Halloween WooCommerce, which I gave a 5 to.
And just a couple of quick reminders: please drop into our YouTube channel, check out our screencasts and other videos that get loaded up there, and more are coming again, I promise. They do get there; it just takes me time to get around to building them. I had a lot happening. And for those developers who would like to support the show, if you would like to offer up a premium license to give away, please go to wppluginsatoz.com/plugin-contest to enter the details and submit your plugin for our contest.
Also, if you’d like to appear in an interview show and the interview shows, I’ve had a lot of interviews in the last couple of weeks with developers. I think I’ve recorded three or four of them and they’ll be coming out a little bit at a time over the next couple of weeks they’ll be presented, so you’ll hear those interviews coming — and more interviews are scheduled. But if you would like to be interviewed, just go to https://wppluginsatoz.com/book-an-interview-on-wp-plugins-a-to-z-podcast/ and schedule yourself for an interview. It’s really interesting that I’m getting to talk to all these plugin developers. I really like it.
And with all that being said, I’m just gonna take another moment here and let folks know what’s happening with the show right now. It’s been a little bit up in the air over the last couple of months. I mean, through September it was pretty steady, but that was because I had a whole bunch of prerecorded shows. As most of you know by now, if you haven’t heard, my father passed away in September and me being the executor to the estate, it put a major dent in my life. I had to take care of a whole lot of stuff. September actually was minimized in my business and work, taking care of all of that stuff there, and I’ve been slowly redoing and re-getting back to organization.
The show itself is gonna continue; it’s not going to stop. It’s been a bit jump-and-start for days in the last – for October. But it’s going to come back in November and possibly on a new day. Instead of the Monday live shows, we might be looking at a Thursday live show – Thursday being a better day for me after a reorganization of my schedules throughout the last time here. And it may or may not have a weekly live show, but it’s going to definitely come in probably on a Thursday and be done about midday. Just to put things back in perspective, it’s simply due to the way my life has fallen in the last month and a half. But life happens. You pick things up, you clean it up, you dust it off, you move forward, and you keep going. So the show will do it and the show’s only going to get better.
And like I said, there are lots more interviews coming, more and more developers are reaching out to – well, we’ve been reaching out to developers to get them to schedule their thing. Pretty much if you have a plugin and we reviewed it any time in the last three years and it got a four or five in our rankings, we’re reaching out to you to ask if you want to be interviewed for the show and to ask you to go and schedule the interview. I have time slots available and because we’re not all in the same time zone, the system I use for it picks a spot in your time zone that will fit your schedule, so that’s the way I do the interviews.
So we do have some great ones coming up. I’ve talked to some really great developers from across the globe, from California to India, England, Australia, Africa – all over the globe. I think I’ve even talked to one in Russia recently. So we’ve got lots of great developers and lots coming up with the show. There is more stuff coming. I know it’s been kind of hit-and-miss in the last couple of weeks, but it’s going to be fixed out and smoothed as life gets better.
So thank you very much and to all of those who support the show, I thank you very much for all of the support you give and for all of those of you who donate to the show, again, thank you very much. It helps offsets the costs I’ve put out for doing the show. All of you know nothing is free. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. So this is my way of helping give back to the community. It’s a great community that helps me by helping cover the costs of the transcripts that I have done, the server space, etc., etc.
All right, well thank you again and with that being said, we’ll let my lady take us out. Take care now, bye-bye.
[Female speaker]
Reminders for the show: All the show notes can be found at wppluginsatoz.com, and while you’re there, subscribe to the Thursday newsletter for more useful information directly to your email inbox. Wppluginsatoz.com is a show that offers honest and unbiased reviews of plugins by developers because you support the show. Help keep the show honest and unbiased by going to wppluginsatoz.com/donate and choose one of the weekly donation levels or make one 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 watch the show live on YouTube, check out the screencasts and training videos, and remember to subscribe to us on YouTube, or follow the show on Twitter @wppluginsatoz.
John can be reached through his website at www.JohnOverall.com, or send him an email to john@wppro.ca. Marcus can also be reached through his website at marcuscouch.com or Twitter @marcuscouch. Thanks for watching and have a great day.
[Outro]
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.
[Child giggling]
[End of Audio]