Transcript of Episode 400 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 #400 here.
It’s Episode 400 and I’ve got plugins for Instant Site Security, Project Management, WooCommerce Orders, Admin Emails, Top Page Builder, and Elementor for ClassicPress, all coming up on WordPress Plugins from A-Z!
Episode #400
John: It’s Episode 400 and I’ve got plugins for Instant Site Security, Project Management, WooCommerce Orders, Admin Emails, Top Page Builder, and Elementor for ClassicPress, all coming up on WordPress Plugins from A-Z!
[Intro]
WordPress, it’s the most popular content management and website solution on the internet. And with over 80,000 plugins to choose from, how do you separate the junk from the gems? Join us for a weekly unrehearsed conversation about the latest and greatest in WordPress plugins. This is WordPress Plugins from 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 this is Episode 400 of the WP Plugins A-Z show. It’s been a long time coming. Four hundred weeks, seven and a half years now of doing this show, and I’d like to thank each and every one of my listeners out there that have joined me, donated to the show, donated stuff to the show, the website – everything that is done to bring this show this far along. Getting to 400 episodes for a podcast is usually quite a feat for most people. Most shows usually die out somewhere in the first 50.
But at any rate, we’re gonna do a little couple of toss back things and just for some fun here.
Wow.
Yeah.
Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Woooow. Woooow.
Wheeeeeeee!
[eerie tone]
There we go, and I’d like to thank the No Agenda show for those sounds. This is a quick throwback before I dig right into the show itself. This is from Episode 45 and the old, old intro to the show and how bad the sound used to be…. Okay, and not it’s not gonna play. I tested it several times.
[child laughing]
[old WP Plugins intro plays] ♪♪ A dragon has come to our village today. We’ve asked him to leave but he won’t go away. Now it’s met with our king and they’ve worked out the deal. No homes will he burn, and no crops will he steal. ♪♪
Well good morning, good afternoon, or good evening wherever you happen to be out there on the globe this fine, fine, wonderful day…
And there you go. There’s my old intro going back several years – just for some fun. All right, with all that out of the way and little bits about hitting 400, reminders – don’t forget you can get all the show notes over at wppluginsatoz.com. If you’ve got a couple of minutes, I’d greatly appreciate your time over at Stitcher Radio, Google Play, and in the iTunes Store, subscribing to the show and leaving reviews there if at all possible. It really helps the show out.
You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel which the show is on every Thursday at noon and I also put up training videos and screencasts as I get the time to do them. Lately, I haven’t had much time for it. And I also do a live show on Saturday nights about 8:00. It’s hit-and-miss these days because it turns out I’ve found things to do on Saturday night besides sit around and do a podcast when I do another one during the week.
And you can also follow me on Twitter @wppluginsatoz. Join me on the Facebook page at wppluginsatoz.com/facebook and take a few moments and drop over to the website and sign up for the newsletter where there’s even more information. And we’d really appreciate any feedback on that newsletter for those of you that subscribe to it. Let us know what’s working and what’s not working. We’re really trying to get it refined down so it’s a very usable item for you, so please drop into the website and hit the Contact page and send us your information about that.
With all that out of the way, I think it’s time to dive right into the meat and potatoes of the show.
[Plugins lead-in rock music]
All right, and first up I have for you here a couple of plugins that I have yet to use but these are ones that were sent in to me via developers, and I think you might like to know about them. I don’t have time to test them. I don’t have a project I’m currently working on that I can use them in, but they do look to be usable plugins.
So the first one I’ve got for you here, it was sent in by Alan Wiat, and this is an antivirus/antimalware plugin and it’s called WebDefender. And it’s GDPR-ready. It’s got smart protection, website hide function to help prevent hackers from getting in there, antispam protection, diagnostic for vulnerabilities detection, it’s got blacklist monitoring, built-in malware removal tool if you go with the pro version, because this is a freemium plugin. It’s got GDPR tools – lots of stuff in here for this plugin.
It’s a pretty comprehensive antispam and web defender for your WordPress website. You might want to go check it out if you’re not already using something that you’re happy with or you’re looking to switch or your looking for something new. Go give this one a checkout. It looks like it’d be pretty good. If I wasn’t settled into my methods, I probably would give this one a good go, but all in all, not too bad. Check it out. It’s WebDefender security protection and GDPR and I give it a 3-Dragon rating.
The next one I’ve got for you here was sent in by Cylan James and this is a freemium plugin also. It is called Zephyr Project Manager, and this is a project manager plugin, and project managers – if you do several projects – like currently I have four projects on the go. I launched two projects last week and then two new ones came in to fill the spot. So what I have to do is I have to manage these projects carefully. I already have a project management system, so I’m not about to change. But if you haven’t developed one yet, you might give this plugin a checkout.
It’s a pretty comprehensive one. It works inside your WordPress website, so it’s another way to draw your clients back to your website on a continuous basis. They get your name embedded in them. This then here manages project tasks, it’s got an Android app for it, personal dashboards, discussions and attachments, email notification, file manager, category calendar progress, teams and members, customizations, and they do have a pro edition which has got even more stuff added to it where you could put Kanban boards in there, Asana, custom fields – a whole lot of stuff to it.
It looks like a really good, comprehensive project manager that is built inside your WordPress website, so something you’ll want to go check out if you don’t already have a project management tool in action, and I know switching them is really hard, so that’s one reason why I had not bought and not tried it out, because I’m really happy with my project management tool and I’m not about to switch, because I already know where it’s all at. And once you get your systems down, changing them requires a ridiculous learning curve and slows down your process.
At any rate, go check this out: the Zephyr Project Manager, and I give it a 4-Dragon rating.
And this show currently is brought to you by…
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Absolutely. Come see me if you’re tired of WordPress hosting that slows you down. So for WordPress hosting that won’t slow you down, see JohnOverall.com.
And thinking of anniversaries and thanks, Giftedones – “Congratulations on Episode 400.” Yeah, I’m really happy and you started about 350. Well that’s 50 episodes. That’s almost a year you’ve been listening to me. Thank you very much for following the show. I really appreciate it.
And there’s another anniversary that’ll be coming up and I’ll be putting more stuff out about it. My business, JohnOverall.com, is actually turning 20 years old this year, so in October of this year, it’ll be 20 years since I started into the web hosting/web development business as a self-employed person. So another big one coming down the pike.
And contests – we do have a contest running right [random alert notification/sound effect] now until April 4th, and of course there’s always sounds that kick out at the strangest time. April 4th, we have a contest running. We are currently giving away a one-year expert license for Graph Comment, which is a free and powerful comment plugin for great discussions. It helps organize your discussions, get rid of the trolls, no more disorganized discussions piled on several pages. Graph Comment helps your audience easily follow the relevant discussions that are occurring.
And this plugin here, I reviewed it back in Episode 394, so go check out that review and that show if you haven’t already heard it. And all you got to do is go to wppluginsatoz.com/contests to enter the contest. All we’re looking for is your name and email address. Sign up and win a one-year for the expert license of this plugin. They do have a free version, but the expert license is really nice.
Okay, next up the plugin I’ve got for you here is a really nice one. Now, this is called Autocomplete WooCommerce Orders, and this is kind of an interesting thing. WooCommerce is a fantastic e-commerce plugin. I’ve been using it for years now and it’s had a lot of really nice features in it that I just took for granted and I didn’t pay attention to it. From time to time, I’d realize, “Oh, that feature is gone,” and it turns out they seem to like yanking out what should be core features and then turning them into a plugin. And one of them was what this plugin replaces.
If you have a website that’s selling digital items, you need it to autocomplete the purchase. Once that purchase has been made through PayPal or whatever processor you’re using, it gets feedback to the website that says, “Yep, they paid their bill. You can ship them,” so they get instant download to it. Well, what happens is default for WooCommerce is to leave it as processing, which means that people might not get instant access to their stuff, they’re waiting for you to get in there, approve it. Well, this plugin here puts back the feature that was taken out of WooCommerce in that once it gets the official notification that it was paid, it automatically completes the process, sends them all their emails, so then they can download those digital products.
It’s a really excellent plugin. I really want to give a quick shout-out to Liam, the developer of this, who gave this away, thereby you don’t have to pay the $49 over at WooCommerce for the plugin to do the exact same thing (which I thought was kind of ludicrous for it). At any rate, a fantastic plugin – Autocomplete WooCommerce Orders. I give it a 5-Dragon rating.
[Dragon roar]
Feedback, feedback, feedback – I would love some listener feedback. I don’t care how you get it to me. You can go over to the website, drop me a line via SpeakPipe in the lower right-hand corner, you can drop me an email. If you want to send it direct, you can go to john@wppro.ca or you can hit the Contact page on the website and send me a contact notification. There’s also Twitter, Facebook – multiple ways. Send some feedback about how the show is going, what you guys think about it, whether or not it’s still going in the right direction, if I’m losing my mind – whatever it might be. Please give me some feedback.
This show, also a value-for-value model, meaning if you get any value out of it, if it saves you five minutes, what’s that five minutes worth to you? Five bucks? Well please donate that five bucks back to the show. All you’ve got to do is go over to wppluginsatoz.com/donate where you can fill out your donation amount – anything you want – and donate the show. The money doesn’t make it in my pocket. It goes to pay for the fantastic transcripts I get for this show, it pays for the server space, the hosting, the bandwidth – all of those things, they cost money. So anything you can do to help.
And anyone who donates $50 or more, they get a note read out here on the show at this point. And for all of those who come in below $50, they remain anonymous and I thank you very much.
This week here I would like to thank Jeremy at Jezweb Pty. Ltd., who donated $50. And the note they’ve got on it: This donation is on behalf of Best Removalists Newcastle at https://www.bestremovalistsnewcastle.com.au/ the best moving company for moving home locally. It is a WordPress website created by Jezweb https://www.jezweb.com.au and it’s built with Elementor, which is a plugin I’m just now digging into and really enjoying it. I wish I’d got to it a lot sooner, and it uses the J Theme Jello, so thank you very much, Jez. I really appreciate you supporting the show and donating on a semi-regular basis. You’re a fantastic supporter of the show. Greatly appreciated.
I’d like to give a big thank you to all those on Patreon, the small donations, those little bits help, and for all the other minor donations that come in via PayPal, so thank you very much for those. So remember, if you want to give some value back, drop on over to wppluginsatoz.com/donate to leave something for the show.
The final plugin I’ve got for you today – well not the final. This is the final before I hit the ClassicPress. The next plugin here is called Multiple Admin Email Addresses. Now, from time to time when you’re working on a website (which I ran into on a project that I just recently launched), is there’s multiple administrators to the site and each of them need to get notifications for when the website sends out administrative notifications. Now, default for WordPress is you can only put one administrator notification inside the general settings, and you need to set up either some coding or use a plugin like this one here.
This plugin goes in, it creates a new field in your general settings tab, to allow you to create a comma delimited list of email addresses that will send out all the notifications from the website to all those administrators, and this can be very important depending on the project or what you’re doing. At any rate, a very fantastic plugin, simple to use, solves a major headache problem, just works, and of course being free, all plugins like that, what do they get? A 5-Dragon rating for this one here.
[Dragon roar]
That’s Multiple Admin Email Addresses.
And ClassicPress – and of course this one here, ClassicPress is growing in community size, I believe, and getting better and better. At any rate, I’m still checking out plugins that are mostly WordPress-based but seeing how they work with ClassicPress in my test and development site I’m working on, this one here is for Elementor, which I just briefly mentioned, thanks to Jezweb. They have a free version of the plugin and I also have the pro version, so this is a little discussion about both the free and the pro version and how it works with ClassicPress.
It seems to work fantastically with ClassicPress with one minor caveat I noticed. After I installed the pro version into the ClassicPress, I found that it needed an update, but it would not do the auto update in ClassicPress. It might be a glitch in there. Maybe they’ll fix it, maybe they won’t. I hope they do, because that would make it really nice to allow it to continually update.
All in all, ClassicPress is allowing me to create some really new and uniquely designed websites, stuff that I’ve been doing with other types of themes and doing it through additional work in those themes. But it’s just making the task of development a whole lot easier and I’m also finding that I’m not running into headaches with Gutenberg using Elementor, which is also kind of a nice toy.
At any rate Elementor works really well with ClassicPress. You might want to go check it out if you’re moving into the ClassicPress area. And of course, Elementor being so good as it is, I give it a 4 rating for the free version, which always is a point for free. But for the pro version it gets a 5-Dragon rating.
[Dragon roar]
Hey, it’s a roaring kind of day.
Okay, well that closes it out I covered up in this episode here WebDefender, which I gave a 3 to; the Zephyr Project Manager, which I gave a 4 to; the Autocomplete WooCommerce Orders, which I gave a 5 to; the Multiple Admin Email Addresses, which I gave a 5 to; and then the Elementor Page Builder, which got a 4 and a 5 for free and pro.
And I’d also like to give another shout-out to Steve Schmidt of nowowl.com and his generous donation of the WP Plugins A-Z logo we currently use. A really great logo and lots of people like it, and I really appreciate his talents and his time for creating that for me. You see, there’s lots of ways to donate to the show, folks. If you really like it, there’s other things that I need besides money. Sometimes, I just need somebody to do edits on the website. I don’t always have time for it. I have a person that does it, but she’s only here four hours a week, so not always enough time.
Also, the next WordPress Meetup is in Victoria on April 3rd, so that’s just over a week from now – I believe it’s just over a week. No, let me look at my calendar real quick. Bring up the calendar. Oh, sorry. A week and a half. So it’s a week and a half from now. It’s a Wednesday. So anyway, it will be broadcast live here on YouTube and I’m pretty sure I’ll get it right this time. Every time I’ve done it, I’ve gotten better and better, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be right, so you’ll want to check this one out. I’m doing a presentation on SEO 101 for WordPress. This is basic SEO stuff, so if you’re not already dealing with SEO in your WordPress website or you’re just learning it, this is for you. This is not for someone who’s experienced in WordPress SEO. So make sure you check it out.
And if you happen to be in the Victoria area, come on down. Say hi. Tell me you listen to the show. I’d really like to hear it. I really appreciate when people tell me about it and I really appreciate you, the listeners.
Also, be sure to check out and subscribe to the YouTube channel for WP Plugins A-Z, where you find training videos, screencasts, and of course, the live show every week.
And a final note out there to developers, if you want to support the show and you would like to donate a premium license, all you gotta do is head over to wppluginsatoz.com/plugin-contest, enter all the information, the license information, and we will create a contest giveaway where you get show after show, free advertising, promoting, and pushing out your plugin. It’s the best form of free advertising I could think. All it costs you is the cost of your license, which is pretty minimal for digital products, you know. It could be some time helping the person that wins it if they need support, but that’s all it really is.
That’s pretty much it, so thank you very much everyone for showing up and for those of you listening to this Episode 400 and may there be another 400 shows. Who knows? At any rate, I’m gonna let my girl take us on out of here, so thank you very much.
[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 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.
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John can be reached at his website at JohnOverall.com or send him an email, john@wppro.ca. Thanks for joining us 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]
