May 18, 2012

Time based content, Ticket Sales, Malware, Press Rooms, Download Managers –WordPress Plugins from A to Z Episode 70

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It’s episode #70, and we’ve got plugins to help with Time based content, ticket sales, Malware, press rooms, download managers, and a plugin that allows multiple domain mapping to a single wordpress installation. All that and more coming up next on WordPress Plugins A-Z.

Intro Music Here

This Podcast Can now be found at WPPluginsAtoZ.com

List of interesting sites that run on WordPress:

Great resource for those running a small business is https://smallbizdaily.com/ which runs on WordPress and is developed by Rieva Lesonsky who was the Executive Editor of Entrepreneur Magazine for over 20 years. Well put together site developed in WordPress that provides a lot of great tips for maximizing your business both online and offline.

World of WordPress News and other interesting WordPress related posts:

Google Penguin Update Punishes WordPress Theme Creators?

Should You Upgrade WordPress?
Marcus is looking for a WordPress assistant to help set up client sites, tweak themes, etc. If you want to work as an unpaid intern and work directly with Marcus on WordPress projects together and gain valuable experience using wordpress, then contact Marcus at I am
marcuscouch@gmail.com with the subject line “WP Intern” with a brief description of your experience so far and what you are capable of (php, css, graphics, etc).

Plugins Reviewed by John

Instant PressRoom:
By Jane Tabachnick
https://www.InstantPressroom.com
Premium Plugin $49

The Lowdown:
If you have you been looking for an easy way to create a pressroom on your website. You know a spot where you can combine together articles, images, videos and downloadables in one section of your site.
This plugin would seem to be a solution to this issue and it does do a pretty nice job of it. You can provide your recent & past press releases in one easy to find area. Combined with any videos and images you might be distributing and you can create a complete press area in one location for your visitor or the press.
This plugin is worth the $49 is easily installed and configured up the only thing that will take time is working the css to match your site. You can use their built in theme for the plugin but that is pretty bland and you would be better off to properly incorporate it into your site.
Rating 4 Dragons

WP-MalWatch 2.1.2

Version: 2.1.2
Author: OrangeCast
Last Updated: 621 days ago
Requires WordPress Version: 2.9.0 or higher
Compatible up to: 3.0.0
Downloaded: 29,681 times
WordPress.org Plugin Page »
Plugin Homepage »

The Lowdown:
So I had a site that was ignored and was compromised bit thing about this one was that it did not nat any content it was just a WordPress install i had done about 7 months ago and was waiting for me to get around to completing the site. Well when I did I discovered that it had been hacked and the htaccess file replaced so that the site was promoting spam.
I needed to make some security check and instead of simply wiping and reinstalling I thought I would fix just for the experience.
This plugin provides several ways of double checking your site for anything malicious and makes the scanning a simple process.
Rating 3 Dragons

Diy Runes Widget 1.0

Version: 1.0
Author: DIYDiscovery
Last Updated: 306 days ago
Requires WordPress Version: 2.0.2 or higher
Compatible up to: 3.1.4
Downloaded: 263 times
WordPress.org Plugin Page »
Plugin Homepage »

The Lowdown:
While i thought this would be pretty cool to play with on some of my other sites since I have in interest in Druidic things. I found it to be a bit disappointing, first off since it is totaly flash based it is useless in many ways. Second since the files are all held off site on their server I am not that comfortable in letting them have that much control on what I am displaying I like to have the ability even if I never use it to goto into the plugin and make whatever changes I feel are necessary for my own site. All in all a pretty simple plugin but has many limitations on it so well I have to give it a

Rating 2 Dragons

Drain Hole 2.2.8

Version: 2.2.8
Author: John Godley
Last Updated: 618 days ago
Requires WordPress Version: 2.7 or higher
Compatible up to: 2.9.2
Downloaded: 16,673 times
WordPress.org Plugin Page »
Plugin Homepage »

The Lowdown:
This plugin has been in the cue for me to check out for sometime now. I am glad i have finally checked it out as I can now delete it from my list of plugins to use. while it is pretty easy to use as a download monitor it is dependant on having an htaccess file for the directory you create. It only monitors one massive directory and allows access to the files. While it does provide some tracking it is still basic and well as you can see this plugin is way out of date not that is always a bad thing but it usually is. So I say the this one drain right down the hole.
Rating 2 Dragons

Plugins Reviewed by Marcus

Tickee Widget Plugin
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tickee-widget/

tickee (https://tick.ee) is a free ticketing sales platform built to manage all your events and user data, in a way never done before. It has great features, powerful apps and is easy to set up. This plugin implements Tick.ee into your WordPress site.

Marcus’ Take: Ideal for anyone selling event tickets, churches, fundraisers, bands, seminars, gatherings, courses etc. There are other paid options wiuth Tick.ee that include QR scanning and advanced functionality. Tick.ee includes mobile tickets, tickets by text, etc. So if you have a client that has this need, try tick.ee and see if it is a good solution for you.

This plugin, easy and simple does what it’s supposed to with ease.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Schedule Your Content

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/schedule-your-content/

This plugin lets you decide when to show what within your POST or PAGE or TEXT Widget content. Easy to use shortcode.

Schedule your content plugin can help you in showing content within your wordpress blog for a specific period. You can decide when to start showing content and when to stop showing content. This plugin uses shortcodes which can be written within the post content or page content or in text widget also. This plugin uses 4 parameters to schedule your content. shortcode: Here is your content Parameters: start_date, start_time, end_date, end_time. Date must be in YYYY-MM-DD format and time must be in 24-hour format.

Here is the simple example where you schedule your content for specific period:
This is scheduled Content.

Here is the example where you want to schedule your content daily within 9am to 10am.
This is scheduled Content.

Marcus’ Take: I’ve been looking for a plugin that has this functionality for months. This would enable you to turn a “live help” or “Call Now” sidebar callout, or even change the content within the page or post based on what you want people to see during a specific time of the day.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Domain Mapping System
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/domain-mapping-system/

Domain Mapping System allows to map domains to WP pages.

Imagine you’ve got a company website based on wordpress with the domain https://www.mycompany.com, all good so far. Furthermore, you’ve got two products with own domains, e.g. https://www.myregularproduct.com and https://www.myspecialproduct.com.

Let’s assume your product pages are micro-sites. One way to handle this, is by using WordPress Networks.

One important note from WordPress is: If you plan on creating sites that are strongly interconnected, that share data, or share users, then this multisite network might not be the best solution. With DMS you may point all multiple domains to the same Apache vhost where you’re wordpress instance is running on. You then create a WordPress Page (My Regular Product), perhaps with a custom template. In the DMS options you can now configure the domain https://www.myregularproduct.com to your WordPress page My Regular Product.
As easy as pie!

Marcus’ Take: While my testing of this was rather limited, I’m really impressed with how this works as a plugin. It did work as expected and ran 3 different domain mini-sites in the same wordpress installation.

Rating: 4 out of 5

MDR Webmaster Tools

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mdr-webmaster-tools/

Provides Webmaster site verification scripts for Google, Yahoo, & Bing. Plugin also provides Google Analytics Tracking Script and sitemap support.

MDR Webmaster Tools provides many small necessary functions to WordPress when for managing your site with Google, Yahoo, & Bing’s webmaster tools sites.

The plugin adds the following functions:

Dynamic Sitemap
Ability to modify your robots.txt file.
Site verification scripts for Google, Yahoo, & Bing.
Google Analytics Tracking Script for registered sites.

This plugin will create a sitemap for your WordPress site (https://example.com/sitemap.xml). No files are stored on your disk, the sitemap.xml file is generate as needed, like your feeds. No UI to speak of, just drop in place and your good to go.

Marcus’ Take: Setting up and uploading verification files with Google, Yahoo and Bing are an essential step that every one of us have to do when we start a new site. This plugin is the lazy way to get it all done with one click. Just one more thing you can get done easily and include the task in your list of provided services when billing your client or creating a design proposal.

Rating: 5 out of 5