This episode brings to you some great plugins for podcasting and site motoring. We also review a great plugin for creating your own accordion menu system.

John’s & Marcus Rant: What to rant about?

Just some random chatting about Vegas and the marathon there and cheep beer while playing penny slots..

My thoughts on WordPress 3.3, ever notice when the creators of software are thinking they are making it better they actually bloat it right up. It seems WordPress is doing some of that, the  flyout menu annoyed me fast and I installed the plugin Expanded Admin Menus the only problem is that it does not persist across computers or browsers since it is java driven and does actually disable the menu. This gives the best of both worlds and is how WordPress should have done it. A new menu bar at the top in the admin area and the one on the front I liked better before was faster I thought that this new drop down. What does Automatic have someone there who has a hard-on for unnecessary flyouts and dropdown menus, including the new feature tour and WTF how come I can’t turn off the admin tool bar up top..

Shout Outs:

Jason at paidmembershipspro.com another membership plugin he brought to my attention reviewed below..

Manny with some great suggestions for upcoming plugins.

WordCamp Victoria 2012 happening on January 14 2012..

Check out @runnerskye 2012 YYJ Run for Cancer Calendar at https://www.yyjrunforcancer.com

Travis Smith

List of interesting sites that run on WordPress:

World of WordPress News and other interesting WordPress related posts:

In case you live under a rock WordPress 3.3 has dropped on Dec 12

List of Plugins:

—–Johns Plugins——-

Paid Memberships Pro

• Version: 1.3.7
• Author: Stranger Studios
• Last Updated: 10 days ago
• Requires WordPress Version: 3.0 or higher
• Compatible up to: 3.2.1
• Downloaded: 4,722 times
• WordPress.org Plugin Page »
• Plugin Homepage »

What they say:

Paid Memberships Pro is a WordPress Plugin and support community for membership site curators. PMPro’s rich feature set allows you to add a new revenue source to your new or current blog or website and is flexible enough to fit the needs of almost all online and offline businesses.

What we say:

Pretty easy to get setup one flaw I saw was in payment gateway they offer paypal express and pro but not standard seemed strange to me since many folks starting out do not pay for the extra paypal express or pro. This is a premium plugin where all the functionality of the plugin seems to be there but you cannot access the documentation without payment. A good model but I feel it should be disclosed in the description when you download it from the repository. I felt a little deceived on that front. I do like the way it functions it does have a simple check box when creating a post/page to define if the post is member only. All in all this is a pretty goo plugin except for the issues above.

Rating 4 Dragons

Blubrry PowerPress Podcasting plugin 2.0.4

• Version: 2.0.4
• Author: Blubrry
• Last Updated: 112 days ago
• Requires WordPress Version: 2.8 or higher
• Compatible up to: 3.2.1
• Downloaded: 191,445 times
• WordPress.org Plugin Page »
• Plugin Homepage »

What They Say:

Blubrry PowerPress brings the essential features for podcasting to WordPress. Developed by podcasters for podcasters, PowerPress offers full iTunes support, the Update iTunes Listing feature, web audio/video media players and more. PowerPress is designed as an upgrade to PodPress.

PowerPress is developed and maintained by Blubrry, a podcasting company and community providing tools and resources for podcasters to measure, monetize, publish and host podcasts. Although we’d like you to become a member of Blubrry, no membership is required to use this free open source podcasting plugin.

What We Say:

I have actually been using this plugin for over a year now and felt it was time I reviewed it again since there have been many changes to it and I was recently asked about podcasting plugins.

I still found this pretty easy to setup although it still take time to get it right. Make sure you know if you are going to do more than one type of podcast on the same site there are setting for that. also think though your setting for iTunes before setting them up changing them later can sometimes cause issue there. It also does video in case your planning that.. Make sure to get a Blubrry account so you can use their stats program.

Rating 4 Dragons ease of use but time to get setup.

podPress 8.8.10.12

• Version: 8.8.10.12
• Author: Dan Kuykendall (Seek3r)
• Last Updated: 104 days ago
• Requires WordPress Version: 2.2 or higher
• Compatible up to: 3.2.1
• Downloaded: 701,041 times
• WordPress.org Plugin Page »
• Plugin Homepage »

What they Say:

podPress adds a lot of features designed to make WordPress the ideal platform for hosting a podcast.

podPress 8.8.10.12 includes a bug fix. You can read more about this version in the Changelog and pay attention to the Upgrade section.

Features:

• Full featured and automatic feed generation (RSS2, iTunes and ATOM and XSPF playlist)
• Podcast Download stats, with graphs.
• View MP3 files ID3 tags when your Posting

…. more

What we say:

There where several other podcasting plugins but they seem to have been abandoned so I did this one again sine it was my original choice when I first started podcasting and what I taught in my classes.

I still found this one to be a bit more difficult on the setting up the one good thing i liked was control over how you player looks and where it appears. The one thing I did not like was the lack of control on a per post basis for iTunes and that there is no verification of the media when uploaded it simply pulls it from the directory you assigned in the settings. All in all not too bad just seems more work after install instead of less.

Rating 3 Dragons for extra work.

——Marcus Plugins———-

—ONE–

WordPress Sentinel
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-sentinel/

WordPress Sentinel tracks all files in a WordPress installation (core, themes, plugins) and then periodically rechecks and notifies the administrator of any files that have changed in any way.
Most attacks against WordPress sites will install rogue code wherever they can – in new and existing files in the themes, plugins and even in the WordPress core files. This plugin is designed to tell the administrator exactly what files have been touched and when in order to make hack detection and recovery much easier.

Rating – 3 out of 5