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Transcript of Episode 410 WP Plugins A to Z

It's Episode 410 and I've got plugins for Verified Reviews for WooCommerce, Emailing Users, Broken Link Checking, and Classic Press Options. It's all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-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 #410 here.


It’s Episode 410 and I’ve got plugins for Verified Reviews for WooCommerce, Emailing Users, Broken Link Checking, and Classic Press Info. It’s all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!


Episode #410

John:    It’s Episode 410 and I’ve got plugins for Verified Reviews for WooCommerce, Emailing Users, Broken Link Checking, and Classic Press Options, all coming up on WordPress Plugins from A-Z!

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 I’m pushing towards Episode 420, so we know there’s a big party coming in there, right? (All right, we’ll let you think on that one.)

All right, 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 the iTunes Store, subscribing to the show and leaving reviews. You can also catch the show every Thursday at noon, live here on the YouTube channel where you can also subscribe to the channel, check out the training videos, screencasts, and other extra shows that do appear here from time to time.

Follow the show on Twitter @wppluginsatoz. Join me on my Facebook page at wppluginsatoz.com/facebook. And if you’ve got a minute or two, please subscribe to the newsletter. Just simply go to wppluginsatoz.com right there on the front page. Name and email – subscribe to the newsletter – we have lots of great information in it.

All right, with all of that little bit out of the way, let’s dive right into the meat and potatoes of the show.

Okay, first up I have for you a plugin that I have yet to use. These are plugins that are sent to me by developers or concerned users that would like to have these plugins reviewed and checked out. Sometimes I actually have a use for them. Most of the time, they’re not something I can use but occasionally I’ll manage to squeeze out the time to get them into a testing site. But for the most part, they’re untested.

This one is untested, but it’s sent in to me by Michael Allen and it’s called Rebusify Verified Reviews from WooCommerce Extension. Now, this is available as a free plugin from WordPress, but they do have a premium version. It’s a third-party service and what they do for you is once you’ve integrated into your WooCommerce store, it allows your verified users to create reviews that are verified and then sent to their service and then encoded using – I wanted to say Bit Torrent for some reason – silly me – the blockchain; it uses blockchain from Etherium to encode the information in the blockchain, so the information stays fairly permanent from what I know about blockchain. It’s a really interesting kind of plugin for verifying and having good, quality reviews and keeping the information there.

Now, they do have a setup as their premium service. It’s a subscription service and from what I was able to see here, the free service would be really good for a lot of WooCommerce stores out there with, you know, 500 reviews per year. If you’ve got a really busy store and you start paying for the plan, it seems quite affordable. It looks like a very interesting plugin to use if you’ve got an active WooCommerce store that is sending out information and giving reviews of products.

So go check this one out. It’s called Rebusify Verified Reviews WooCommerce Extension and based on all the information and everything I can gather on it, I’d say this one’s worthy of a 4-Dragon rating, so go check it out.

And a little bit of WordPress news and information this week, what I’ve got for you here is first off, there is a malicious redirect code being found harboring in Joomla and WordPress sites. I know Joomla — they’re still around? Really? I’m surprised. But seriously, the WordPress site – what this is is it’s a really interesting article and you might want to check it out to make sure your site is not susceptible to it. But what the hackers have been doing is they’ve been targeting the HT access files of WordPress websites, and those HT access files live in multiple directories of your site. What they do is they’ve been using it to create redirects that redirect people to spam and other miscellaneous sites, so this is something you might want to read, check out, and see if you might be susceptible to it.

Next article I’ve got here, a little bit of information is this is an article from ServeBolt. It is about a presentation a fellow gave at a WordCamp and it’s talking about the plugins that slow your site down, and this is a pretty interesting article. I don’t fully agree with some of the recommendations in here, but most of them, yeah, they talk about a lot of interesting stuff, like the good and bad security plugins, alternatives to use, good and bad page builders, image management, broken links, etc., and backups. So it’s a really good article to go in and find out if you’re running anything on your WordPress site that might be susceptible to slowing it down. The link is in the show notes for it. It’s a really great article.

And for those of you who do not know, maybe you’ve been living under a rock like I was during the last week (although I should’ve realized it) because WordPress turned 16 and the same day they turned 16, my oldest son turned 12. I keep forgetting that WordPress shares a birthday with my son. (No, it’s not the other way around. My son’s more important than WordPress.) So at any rate, it’s their 16th birthday, talking about some of the things that they’ve done, where they’ve come, some of their beginnings. It’s always kind of interesting to know that WordPress has been hanging around for 16 years and it’s something you’ll might want to check out just to, you know, see what’s up in the WordPress world, but happy birthday to WordPress turning 16. You’re now old enough to drive a car. Not old enough to drink yet, but you can drive a car.

All right, this show currently brought to you by…

Are you tired of the same old web hosting? Not having the resources you need to run your website properly? Having a lack of control? Then you need JohnOverall.com web hosting, providing you with all the resources you need to smoothly run your WordPress website or ClassicPress website. With strict limits on the number of clients allowed per server, JohnOverall.com provides high-quality, fast server performance. Visit JohnOverall.com for web hosting that won’t slow you down.

Absolutely – for all your WordPress needs, especially for emergency WordPress repairs. That’s still my specialty.

All right, and the contests. We do have contests and our contests are powered by the Simple Giveaways plugin who were kind enough to provide us with the premium version to run our contests off our website. A really fantastic plugin. It was reviewed way back – I can’t remember what episode I reviewed the Simple Giveaways plugin; it’s been a while.

The current contest is running until June 5, next week – next Wednesday is when the contest ends, so you’ve got one more week to get your entry in for the contest. Get in there and you can win yourself a single site license for the WooCommerce All Discounts plugin. It was reviewed back in Episode 405 and it’s really a great plugin to allow you to apply bulk discounts across your WordPress website. I found it to be a pretty fantastic little plugin, if I recall correctly, so you’ll want to check it out. This is a full-on premium license, you know. You can get it for free just for entering the contest. Get in there and check it out. All you’ve got to do is go to wppluginsatoz.com/contests for more information on how to enter it. In fact, all we really need is your name and email address. The rest of it, not a problem.

All right, next up I have for you a plugin called Email Users. This is a plugin that comes in really handy, and in particular after you’re working on a website – I’m working on a client site I’m about to launch this Friday. It’s a full-on membership site and we’ve done such massive changes to it and integrated a lot of new members. When you get to the end of doing something like that, you need to inform all your members about what’s going on.

This is a plugin that will allow you to do that. Go in there, create an email, notify all the users of the great new site upgrades, how they might have to go through logging in to the site now that you’ve changed things, and all in all, it makes the job of contacting everyone a whole lot easier. It’ll help you with those issues by allowing you to send out mass emails to groups of users based upon their user groups or their roles. You can send out the emails with all the information you need to let the users know about the new site.

There are some caveats to this plugin though. It does not do queueing or limiting the number of outgoing emails at once. So if you’ve got like 500 users and you send them all out, it’ll try to send out 500 emails very rapidly. That could be a problem on some hosting providers. You know, you could get tagged spam or other issues, so that is one thing its got an issue with. Another is that there have been some comments when I was researching for the plugin is that it’s a bit buggy. I haven’t had any problems with it, but for non-techies, it sounds like it could be a little bit of a challenge to use and can pose some problems, or there may be other solutions. I know I’ll be coming forth with more solutions. I’m testing this to see how it’s going to work. I haven’t quite settled on the solution I’m going to use when I do this launch on Friday, but I thought I’d bring this one out.

Currently, all I can give this plugin here is a 3-Dragon rating just based upon what I’ve done with it so far. So you can go check it out. It may still be a solution for you, and it’s called Email Users.

Listener feedback – I do love listener feedback, but I haven’t had any in a while. Please folks, give me some listener feedback. Let me know if you’re liking the show, if it’s sounding good, if I’m doing a crappy job, if you want to hear more of this or more of that. Hey, let me know and it’s something I can use. Please, all you’ve got to do is go to the Contact page, send me an email from there. You can hit the SpeakPipe button in the lower right-hand corner of the website or you can email me directly at john@wppro.ca.

I do have some feedback I want to share. I know I shared it in the last episode, but I’m going to share it again. WP Plugins A-Z was featured as a Top 20 WordPress Podcast You Need to Hear for 2019, and we came in at Number 6. Hey, that’s not bad, considering this is actually the first list I’ve ever been on. Somehow, I’ve always been missed on those lists. I never understood that – just not enough people listening. At any rate, kind of a good piece of information to let folks know. Share it out there if you like it.

This show is also a value-for-value model, meaning if you get any value out of it, please give some value back. In that vein, I like to acknowledge those who have supported the show with donations of $50 and over, and for all those who come in below $50, they remain anonymous and I thank you very much.

So this week a big thank you to all our donors who came in under $50 and to those who have set up small weekly subscriptions. All those really small subscriptions do help out. None of the money actually makes it into my pocket as of yet. It doesn’t even quite cover the costs that I put forth for putting this show together, which is my time, the transcripts, the server space, hosting, etc. – all of these things that go into running a website. If you run a website, you know all about that.

So I still would like to thank everyone out there who has supported the show with small to large donations. And if you would like to support the show, please just go to wppluginsatoz.com/donate, create a donation that suits your fancy, and donate it to the show direct to PayPal.

Another way you can support the show (and I swear it’s coming soon), I am still researching it. I’m trying to find the right solution. I am looking for artwork. I’ve been changing the artwork that goes out into the feed for iTunes and all of the podcast feeds out there, so I changed the artwork with every show, and it’s kind of cool. It gives it a different look each and every time. But I’m limited to what I can do. I don’t have time, I’m not an artist. I just put something together that looks cool. If there’s any of you out there that are artists or graphic designers that want to share it, I’ll happily use your artwork. You can email it to me in the interim, but pretty soon I will have a way to submit it off the website, and I’ll make sure you get credit for the artwork.

All of my supporters out there, you guys are becoming the producers. Little by little, you guys are helping become producers of this show, so thank you very much for all of your support.

And the next thing I have up for you here plugin-wise is called WP Broken Links Status Checker. Now, this is something I normally don’t recommend doing this. But if you are in need of checking out your site for broken links and don’t have access to tools such as Screaming Frog, this is a good option. Just be sure that if you do use this, activate it, and use it, you turn it off when you’re done. You don’t want it continuously running in the background.

The problem is broken link checkers have been around for years in WordPress, and back in the beginning they were a fantastic thing, but they did use, and they still use lots of server resources to do that. And if they’re continuously running, they’re continuously running calls to database, checking pages, etc., it can cause you grief on shared hosting, which is most people out there – the vast majority of people on shared hosting. And if you start sucking down resources, your hosting provider is going to shut you down; that’s all there is to is.

So this is a really good option. It’s a really decent plugin and it seems to work all right. The developers built it with the idea in mind for it sucking down resources and they did the best they can to improve performance on it. I myself don’t use this, but it is a good thing. I gave it a quick test on the lite site, and it looked all right. It seemed to function okay.

What it helps you do is discover any 404 errors, 400 errors, 302 directs – basically broken links on your website, which can impact your SEO in multiple ways, so this is something you’ll want to do regularly. I personally recommend using Screaming Frog, but that’s a pretty expensive program. You can get the free version, but it does limit you on how many pages it will index and if your site has more than 500 pages or 500 links to follow, it stops pretty quick (which most sites do).

At any rate, go check this plugin out. It’s called WP Broken Links Status Checker, and I give it a 4-Dragon rating.

ClassicPress Options – yes, and this section is starting to grow little by little. I don’t have any ClassicPress plugins this week – not specific, as I still haven’t found any recent new ones coming out, but I know they’re coming. I hear that there’s developers out there. Of course, since the release of Gutenberg and its fallout, ClassicPress has garnered a lot of attention and it is gaining ground. I really believe this is going to be a massive competitor for WordPress. It may take them a couple of years to get there, but it is going to happen.

This week though, I do have a little bit of information – just some news and tidbits. ClassicPress itself has added some new directors to their ClassicPress Limited board. They’ve got new directors on the board; it’s a really interesting article. You’ll want to go read that up if you’re interested in ClassicPress and find out what they’re doing. There is some information from the ClassicPress forums.

This is a really good article on the ClassicPress forums about must-have plugins. These are plugins that are listed up that are either built for ClassicPress or the developers are supporting ClassicPress. They’ve stated that they’re supporting and developing for ClassicPress. It’s a really good roundup of your main plugins you’ll want: security plugins, advanced editors, image sliders, backup, duplicators, migration plugins, etc., and they’re still looking for some other plugins along the way, so I’m sure this list is going to grow and improve as time goes on also. But go check it out; it could be of a really good value and interesting information for you.

Okay, next up what do we have for you here? Oh, we’ve got a little bit of information. This was a submission from a ClassicPress community member who sent this to me. He prefers to stay anonymous on this, but this is about the Asgaros forum. I never actually heard about this plugin for WordPress, but he was saying that in his email to me that it works fantastic on ClassicPress. So if you’re looking for a forum plugin for your ClassicPress install, go check out this plugin here, and it just might be – he says it’s a really good, solid forum plugin, so something you’ll want to check out.

And there’s other additional links in the show notes with general information and another developer, JediPress, who is developing four plugins for ClassicPress or WordPress. I liked that they put ClassicPress first. That’s kind of interesting. And then other links in the show notes for ClassicPress itself, and those links will continue in the show notes for the foreseeable future so more people will have information to everything.

All right, well that closes out this episode where I covered up the Rebusify Verified Reviews, which I gave a 4 to; the Email Users plugin, which I gave a 3 to; and the WP Broken Links Status Checker, which I gave a 4 to. And that wraps up everything from this episode.

And a couple of quick reminders – there’s been a few new interviews that have come out in the last week. I’ve got some more interviews lined up. I also appeared on the Be Busy podcast, a really great show. I’ll leave a link in the show notes that takes you to that podcast, so you can go check me out on another podcast just to hear what I say there.

The next WordPress Meetup is in Victoria on June 23rd and at the Boston Pizza here in Victoria, and it’s not going to be broadcast live. It’s just going to be a socializing event where we get together and talk about the WordPress community, the ClassicPress community, and maybe gather some ideas for next year’s monthly presentations from the WordPress Meetup group here in Victoria. So go to wppluginsatoz.com/meetup to go check that out.

Be sure to check out and subscribe to the YouTube channel here. Visit every Thursday at noon, catch the show live. I really enjoy it when people come in live and leave me comments here. It makes it a little more interactive and fun. You can also check out the training videos, screencasts, and other items that do get posted here on the channel.

And if you have suggestions about plugins you would like to have reviewed, please submit them on the website at wppluginsatoz.com/submit. And if you’re a developer, submit it there or if you’re someone who thinks it’s a plugin that people would be interested in, please submit it to me.

And for all developers who would like to support the show, you can donate a premium license to be used in a future contest. Please go to wppluginsatoz.com/plugin-contest to donate and fill all the information out for the plugin.

And finally, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter at wppluginsatoz.com. That’s all I’ve got for you now. Take care, bye-bye.

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.

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 and hit the bell to get notification of all new videos. Also, follow the show on Twitter @wppluginsatoz.

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.

 

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.

 

Episode #410

John:    It’s Episode 410 and I’ve got plugins for Verified Reviews for WooCommerce, Emailing Users, Broken Link Checking, and Classic Press Options, all coming up on WordPress Plugins from A-Z!

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 I’m pushing towards Episode 420, so we know there’s a big party coming in there, right? (All right, we’ll let you think on that one.)

All right, 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 the iTunes Store, subscribing to the show and leaving reviews. You can also catch the show every Thursday at noon, live here on the YouTube channel where you can also subscribe to the channel, check out the training videos, screencasts, and other extra shows that do appear here from time to time.

Follow the show on Twitter @wppluginsatoz. Join me on my Facebook page at wppluginsatoz.com/facebook. And if you’ve got a minute or two, please subscribe to the newsletter. Just simply go to wppluginsatoz.com right there on the front page. Name and email – subscribe to the newsletter – we have lots of great information in it.

All right, with all of that little bit out of the way, let’s dive right into the meat and potatoes of the show.

Okay, first up I have for you a plugin that I have yet to use. These are plugins that are sent to me by developers or concerned users that would like to have these plugins reviewed and checked out. Sometimes I actually have a use for them. Most of the time, they’re not something I can use but occasionally I’ll manage to squeeze out the time to get them into a testing site. But for the most part, they’re untested.

This one is untested, but it’s sent in to me by Michael Allen and it’s called Rebusify Verified Reviews from WooCommerce Extension. Now, this is available as a free plugin from WordPress, but they do have a premium version. It’s a third-party service and what they do for you is once you’ve integrated into your WooCommerce store, it allows your verified users to create reviews that are verified and then sent to their service and then encoded using – I wanted to say Bit Torrent for some reason – silly me – the blockchain; it uses blockchain from Ethyrium to encode the information in the blockchain, so the information stays fairly permanent from what I know about blockchain. It’s a really interesting kind of plugin for verifying and having good, quality reviews and keeping the information there.

Now, they do have a setup as their premium service. It’s a subscription service and from what I was able to see here, the free service would be really good for a lot of WooCommerce stores out there with, you know, 500 reviews per year. If you’ve got a really busy store and you start paying for the plan, it seems quite affordable. It looks like a very interesting plugin to use if you’ve got an active WooCommerce store that is sending out information and giving reviews of products.

So go check this one out. It’s called Rebusify Verified Reviews WooCommerce Extension and based on all the information and everything I can gather on it, I’d say this one’s worthy of a 4-Dragon rating, so go check it out.

And a little bit of WordPress news and information this week, what I’ve got for you here is first off, there is a malicious redirect code being found harboring in Joomla and WordPress sites. I know Joomla — they’re still around? Really? I’m surprised. But seriously, the WordPress site – what this is is it’s a really interesting article and you might want to check it out to make sure your site is not susceptible to it. But what the hackers have been doing is they’ve been targeting the HT access files of WordPress websites, and those HT access files live in multiple directories of your site. What they do is they’ve been using it to create redirects that redirect people to spam and other miscellaneous sites, so this is something you might want to read, check out, and see if you might be susceptible to it.

Next article I’ve got here, a little bit of information is this is an article from ServeBolt. It is about a presentation a fellow gave at a WordCamp and it’s talking about the plugins that slow your site down, and this is a pretty interesting article. I don’t fully agree with some of the recommendations in here, but most of them, yeah, they talk about a lot of interesting stuff, like the good and bad security plugins, alternatives to use, good and bad page builders, image management, broken links, etc., and backups. So it’s a really good article to go in and find out if you’re running anything on your WordPress site that might be susceptible to slowing it down. The link is in the show notes for it. It’s a really great article.

And for those of you who do not know, maybe you’ve been living under a rock like I was during the last week (although I should’ve realized it) because WordPress turned 16 and the same day they turned 16, my oldest son turned 12. I keep forgetting that WordPress shares a birthday with my son. (No, it’s not the other way around. My son’s more important than WordPress.) So at any rate, it’s their 16th birthday, talking about some of the things that they’ve done, where they’ve come, some of their beginnings. It’s always kind of interesting to know that WordPress has been hanging around for 16 years and it’s something you’ll might want to check out just to, you know, see what’s up in the WordPress world, but happy birthday to WordPress turning 16. You’re now old enough to drive a car. Not old enough to drink yet, but you can drive a car.

All right, this show currently brought to you by…

Are you tired of the same old web hosting? Not having the resources you need to run your website properly? Having a lack of control? Then you need JohnOverall.com web hosting, providing you with all the resources you need to smoothly run your WordPress website or ClassicPress website. With strict limits on the number of clients allowed per server, JohnOverall.com provides high-quality, fast server performance. Visit JohnOverall.com for web hosting that won’t slow you down.

Absolutely – for all your WordPress needs, especially for emergency WordPress repairs. That’s still my specialty.

All right, and the contests. We do have contests and our contests are powered by the Simple Giveaways plugin who were kind enough to provide us with the premium version to run our contests off our website. A really fantastic plugin. It was reviewed way back – I can’t remember what episode I reviewed the Simple Giveaways plugin; it’s been a while.

The current contest is running until June 5, next week – next Wednesday is when the contest ends, so you’ve got one more week to get your entry in for the contest. Get in there and you can win yourself a single site license for the WooCommerce All Discounts plugin. It was reviewed back in Episode 405 and it’s really a great plugin to allow you to apply bulk discounts across your WordPress website. I found it to be a pretty fantastic little plugin, if I recall correctly, so you’ll want to check it out. This is a full-on premium license, you know. You can get it for free just for entering the contest. Get in there and check it out. All you’ve got to do is go to wppluginsatoz.com/contests for more information on how to enter it. In fact, all we really need is your name and email address. The rest of it, not a problem.

All right, next up I have for you a plugin called Email Users. This is a plugin that comes in really handy, and in particular after you’re working on a website – I’m working on a client site I’m about to launch this Friday. It’s a full-on membership site and we’ve done such massive changes to it and integrated a lot of new members. When you get to the end of doing something like that, you need to inform all your members about what’s going on.

This is a plugin that will allow you to do that. Go in there, create an email, notify all the users of the great new site upgrades, how they might have to go through logging in to the site now that you’ve changed things, and all in all, it makes the job of contacting everyone a whole lot easier. It’ll help you with those issues by allowing you to send out mass emails to groups of users based upon their user groups or their roles. You can send out the emails with all the information you need to let the users know about the new site.

There are some caveats to this plugin though. It does not do queueing or limiting the number of outgoing emails at once. So if you’ve got like 500 users and you send them all out, it’ll try to send out 500 emails very rapidly. That could be a problem on some hosting providers. You know, you could get tagged spam or other issues, so that is one thing its got an issue with. Another is that there have been some comments when I was researching for the plugin is that it’s a bit buggy. I haven’t had any problems with it, but for non-techies, it sounds like it could be a little bit of a challenge to use and can pose some problems, or there may be other solutions. I know I’ll be coming forth with more solutions. I’m testing this to see how it’s going to work. I haven’t quite settled on the solution I’m going to use when I do this launch on Friday, but I thought I’d bring this one out.

Currently, all I can give this plugin here is a 3-Dragon rating just based upon what I’ve done with it so far. So you can go check it out. It may still be a solution for you, and it’s called Email Users.

Listener feedback – I do love listener feedback, but I haven’t had any in a while. Please folks, give me some listener feedback. Let me know if you’re liking the show, if it’s sounding good, if I’m doing a crappy job, if you want to hear more of this or more of that. Hey, let me know and it’s something I can use. Please, all you’ve got to do is go to the Contact page, send me an email from there. You can hit the SpeakPipe button in the lower right-hand corner of the website or you can email me directly at john@wppro.ca.

I do have some feedback I want to share. I know I shared it in the last episode, but I’m going to share it again. WP Plugins A-Z was featured as a Top 20 WordPress Podcast You Need to Hear for 2019, and we came in at Number 6. Hey, that’s not bad, considering this is actually the first list I’ve ever been on. Somehow, I’ve always been missed on those lists. I never understood that – just not enough people listening. At any rate, kind of a good piece of information to let folks know. Share it out there if you like it.

This show is also a value-for-value model, meaning if you get any value out of it, please give some value back. In that vein, I like to acknowledge those who have supported the show with donations of $50 and over, and for all those who come in below $50, they remain anonymous and I thank you very much.

So this week a big thank you to all our donors who came in under $50 and to those who have set up small weekly subscriptions. All those really small subscriptions do help out. None of the money actually makes it into my pocket as of yet. It doesn’t even quite cover the costs that I put forth for putting this show together, which is my time, the transcripts, the server space, hosting, etc. – all of these things that go into running a website. If you run a website, you know all about that.

So I still would like to thank everyone out there who has supported the show with small to large donations. And if you would like to support the show, please just go to wppluginsatoz.com/donate, create a donation that suits your fancy, and donate it to the show direct to PayPal.

Another way you can support the show (and I swear it’s coming soon), I am still researching it. I’m trying to find the right solution. I am looking for artwork. I’ve been changing the artwork that goes out into the feed for iTunes and all of the podcast feeds out there, so I changed the artwork with every show, and it’s kind of cool. It gives it a different look each and every time. But I’m limited to what I can do. I don’t have time, I’m not an artist. I just put something together that looks cool. If there’s any of you out there that are artists or graphic designers that want to share it, I’ll happily use your artwork. You can email it to me in the interim, but pretty soon I will have a way to submit it off the website, and I’ll make sure you get credit for the artwork.

All of my supporters out there, you guys are becoming the producers. Little by little, you guys are helping become producers of this show, so thank you very much for all of your support.

And the next thing I have up for you here plugin-wise is called WP Broken Links Status Checker. Now, this is something I normally don’t recommend doing this. But if you are in need of checking out your site for broken links and don’t have access to tools such as Screaming Frog, this is a good option. Just be sure that if you do use this, activate it, and use it, you turn it off when you’re done. You don’t want it continuously running in the background.

The problem is broken link checkers have been around for years in WordPress, and back in the beginning they were a fantastic thing, but they did use, and they still use lots of server resources to do that. And if they’re continuously running, they’re continuously running calls to database, checking pages, etc., it can cause you grief on shared hosting, which is most people out there – the vast majority of people on shared hosting. And if you start sucking down resources, your hosting provider is going to shut you down; that’s all there is to is.

So this is a really good option. It’s a really decent plugin and it seems to work all right. The developers built it with the idea in mind for it sucking down resources and they did the best they can to improve performance on it. I myself don’t use this, but it is a good thing. I gave it a quick test on the lite site, and it looked all right. It seemed to function okay.

What it helps you do is discover any 404 errors, 400 errors, 302 directs – basically broken links on your website, which can impact your SEO in multiple ways, so this is something you’ll want to do regularly. I personally recommend using Screaming Frog, but that’s a pretty expensive program. You can get the free version, but it does limit you on how many pages it will index and if your site has more than 500 pages or 500 links to follow, it stops pretty quick (which most sites do).

At any rate, go check this plugin out. It’s called WP Broken Links Status Checker, and I give it a 4-Dragon rating.

ClassicPress Options – yes, and this section is starting to grow little by little. I don’t have any ClassicPress plugins this week – not specific, as I still haven’t found any recent new ones coming out, but I know they’re coming. I hear that there’s developers out there. Of course, since the release of Gutenberg and its fallout, ClassicPress has garnered a lot of attention and it is gaining ground. I really believe this is going to be a massive competitor for WordPress. It may take them a couple of years to get there, but it is going to happen.

This week though, I do have a little bit of information – just some news and tidbits. ClassicPress itself has added some new directors to their ClassicPress Limited board. They’ve got new directors on the board; it’s a really interesting article. You’ll want to go read that up if you’re interested in ClassicPress and find out what they’re doing. There is some information from the ClassicPress forums.

This is a really good article on the ClassicPress forums about must-have plugins. These are plugins that are listed up that are either built for ClassicPress or the developers are supporting ClassicPress. They’ve stated that they’re supporting and developing for ClassicPress. It’s a really good roundup of your main plugins you’ll want: security plugins, advanced editors, image sliders, backup, duplicators, migration plugins, etc., and they’re still looking for some other plugins along the way, so I’m sure this list is going to grow and improve as time goes on also. But go check it out; it could be of a really good value and interesting information for you.

Okay, next up what do we have for you here? Oh, we’ve got a little bit of information. This was a submission from a ClassicPress community member who sent this to me. He prefers to stay anonymous on this, but this is about the Asgaros forum. I never actually heard about this plugin for WordPress, but he was saying that in his email to me that it works fantastic on ClassicPress. So if you’re looking for a forum plugin for your ClassicPress install, go check out this plugin here, and it just might be – he says it’s a really good, solid forum plugin, so something you’ll want to check out.

And there’s other additional links in the show notes with general information and another developer, JediPress, who is developing four plugins for ClassicPress or WordPress. I liked that they put ClassicPress first. That’s kind of interesting. And then other links in the show notes for ClassicPress itself, and those links will continue in the show notes for the foreseeable future so more people will have information to everything.

All right, well that closes out this episode where I covered up the Rebusify Verified Reviews, which I gave a 4 to; the Email Users plugin, which I gave a 3 to; and the WP Broken Links Status Checker, which I gave a 4 to. And that wraps up everything from this episode.

And a couple of quick reminders – there’s been a few new interviews that have come out in the last week. I’ve got some more interviews lined up. I also appeared on the Be Busy podcast, a really great show. I’ll leave a link in the show notes that takes you to that podcast, so you can go check me out on another podcast just to hear what I say there.

The next WordPress Meetup is in Victoria on June 23rd and at the Boston Pizza here in Victoria, and it’s not going to be broadcast live. It’s just going to be a socializing event where we get together and talk about the WordPress community, the ClassicPress community, and maybe gather some ideas for next year’s monthly presentations from the WordPress Meetup group here in Victoria. So go to wppluginsatoz.com/meetup to go check that out.

Be sure to check out and subscribe to the YouTube channel here. Visit every Thursday at noon, catch the show live. I really enjoy it when people come in live and leave me comments here. It makes it a little more interactive and fun. You can also check out the training videos, screencasts, and other items that do get posted here on the channel.

And if you have suggestions about plugins you would like to have reviewed, please submit them on the website at wppluginsatoz.com/submit. And if you’re a developer, submit it there or if you’re someone who thinks it’s a plugin that people would be interested in, please submit it to me.

And for all developers who would like to support the show, you can donate a premium license to be used in a future contest. Please go to wppluginsatoz.com/plugin-contest to donate and fill all the information out for the plugin.

And finally, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter at wppluginsatoz.com. That’s all I’ve got for you now. Take care, bye-bye.

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.

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 and hit the bell to get notification of all new videos. Also, follow the show on Twitter @wppluginsatoz.

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.

 

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.

 

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