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 and Amber’s discussion of this weeks plugins that have been reviewed.
WordPress Plugins A to Z Podcast and Transcript for See complete show notes for Episode #550 here.
It’s Episode 550 and we have plugins for Embedding Google, Sticky Contents, Customizing Gravity, Sliding Simply, Wall of News, Failing Logins… and ClassicPress Options. It’s all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!
Transcript for Episode #550
(Plugins lead-in rock music)
John: Alright, we still have the ClassicPress options here open for anyone who uses ClassicPress to donate or to give us some information, you know, donate some time if you’re using ClassicPress too so we can showcase what’s happening in the ClassicPress world. I just don’t have time to go there these days and see what’s up because I’m not building a ClassicPress currently.
But we do have WordPress plugins. And the first WordPress plugin I have for you out the gate today is called Embed Google Drive. And this is a simple plugin to use. And it allows you to embed a link and preview Google Drive documents simply by pasting the shared document link into the Editor. No configuration needed for this plugin. It’s pretty decent, straightforward. If you use Google Drive for your documents and you share documents through Google Drive on a regular basis, you know all about how to go get the shared link that people can use. And then, you can embed it on your site and have that document right there on your site.
I can see a few uses for this in that, for instance, if you use Google Docs, Excel-type spreadsheets and you have got a spreadsheet maybe you track hockey game stats or something on a hockey website and you want to share that, you are always updating that file in Google Drive. Well, if you have this one shared link that document is always going to be up to date. You don’t have to constantly re-upload the document for your visitors to check it out. There’s lots of ways it can be a very handy tool.
Amber: It does sound really handy.
John: I thought it would be very useful for those that use Google Drive and a lot of people do. I personally don’t but because I use other sharing. I got into DropBox before Google Drive was a thing. So I’ve just sort of hooked into that environment. Anyway, go check this out. It’s Embed Google Drive and I give it a four dragon rating.
Amber: That sounds really useful. I can think of a few different sites we have worked that would probably make good use of that.
John: Yeah.
Amber: The first one I have is Simple WP Slider. I was kind of snagged on this one because the creator wrote down I checked everywhere for a simple slider, I just couldn’t find one so I built one. It really is a very simple slider. Really cool, totally free, up for grabs and it’s very easy to use. Once you download it, you go to Settings. Click on Simple WP Slider and upload as many pictures as you want. You can move them easily or even swap them around with this handy-dandy little arrow at the right hand side.
John: Nice.
Amber: You saved changes and add a Shortcode to whatever page you want. It works really well. All the slides are the same size. They have a great transition time. They have little arrows there for you so you set the people viewing it can click to check the next one. It’s an endless cycle so it’s not click through, reach the end, and then you have to refresh the page like I said I found in some places. It just keeps going.
John: Nice.
Amber: One complaint, there was no mention about what Shortcode to use either in the description or the settings page. The Shortcode is simple, WP Slider but I had to navigate over to GitHub page that he gives a link to in order to find that out. I personally think it would have been great if he had put it like what he shows you there in that one picture is that is the settings. So if he just puts down in the settings right there what Shortcode to use that will be very useful, I would really appreciate that.
John: It would be. The other question is does it do multiple sliders or just one?
Amber: Just one.
John: Okay.
Amber: It’s just one very simple slider, very easy to use.
John: Okay.
Amber: It’s like a code though. I am bringing the Simple WP slider down one dragon. So I rated it four dragons.
John: Cool. Okay, the next one I have for you and this is for those of you that write heavy duty documentation or big posts, and you use a lot of H1 to H6 tags throughout your site, throughout the page and post that you created, this is a Table of Contents that is sticky. This Sticky Table of Contents displays the headings on per poster, per page basis. In other words, when someone loads up a single page or post and you’ve got all these headings down there for different components of whatever you have written out, this creates a table that can be stuffed into a side bar at the top of the page however you want to do it. But it’s a full Table of Contents for the entire post, which means it makes it easy for people to navigate through the post if they are looking for something specific in that post. And you don’t have to go through and build out that map and menu, very cool tool.
Amber: Very nice.
John: You know, initially I thought it was something for building the Table of Contents for the site but not, turned out it was just for the individual page and its value is only there if you are remembering to use all the proper heading tags throughout when you do everything. And not everybody does that. And anyway, seems like a great tool for people who create more advanced contents. Go check this one out. It’s called the Sticky Table of Contents, Advanced Table of Contents, and I give it a four dragon rating.
Amber: That is really cool. I can see a lot of use for that. Next one I have is News Wall. This is a really cool idea. It’s a plugin where you can add your own news into the settings of it and simply use a Shortcode to add the news into your page. Every time you add new news to the settings area, it will show up wherever you have added the Shortcode in the past. If you, say you are someone who is always checking the news and you keep wanting to add in like five new things you find a day, just add it into the settings and it will automatically load after every page that you have that Shortcode on. Very cool, I really like it. It’s very simple the way it shows up, just a header and a short blurb of the news.
There is just one thing. For some reason, in the settings area where you add text into the add text box, the text is white. So you can’t actually see anything you’ve written down.
John: That’s bizarre.
Amber: There also doesn’t seem to be anyway to change that. News Well is a fantastic idea. I really like it but they lose one dragon for the light text.
John: Yeah well that’s due to they did something in the CSS and they are probably someone who does the development in a dark theme. The text can be white to see it and they didn’t think about the CSS when they were developing. And, of course, because you know each plugin has its own CSS for displaying and stuff and of course the theme is not overwriting it.
Amber: Yeah I rate this as four dragons.
John: Yeah, well. Alright, the last one I have for you and this one is kind of brand new. But I thought it might be useful for those that use gravity forms and add custom code to their gravity forms, you know, when they are custom coding out different things. I haven’t done custom coding in gravity forms for quite some time. But I do recall what a pain it was sometimes if you did some changes, you would lose track where that custom code was written, what place you put it in. Well, this allows you to create a folder in gravity forms. It creates directory specifically for storing custom code. It creates one called Gravity Hopper code. That’s where you stick your global code file. It’s all run with your gravity forms. I thought it was a cool little tool for those that work in those areas and something that people might want to be aware of. It is a relatively new plugin and something to check out if you’re doing additional coding adding to your gravity forms. Go check it out. It’s the Custom Code Keeper for Gravity Forms and I give it a four dragon rating.
Amber: That was so useful. I have done some custom coding on gravity forms. If I have had this, it would have made life a lot easier. The last one I have got for today is Limit Failed Logins. This is a pretty awesome little plugin. They have a beautiful dashboard too. Like I was really impressed when I saw it. Once activated, you will find the dashboard under the left hand column there. They give you a landing page that shows the amount of failed login attempts, offers you the tools to check out logs, and you can block or whitelist Usernames or IPs right from that first part so you don’t have go through all the options to do these things.
John: Yes.
Amber: Then, they also have different tabs for settings, logs and debug tab which I thought that was kind of cool having a debug one.
John: Yeah that is very cool and useful.
Amber: Under the settings, you can set the number of allowed retries before lockout, how long they will be locked out each time around, and then they have the option to put how long it will take before the reset happens. So like if they failed a login three or four times, you can set for 24 hours until they get to try again.
John: Yeah.
Amber: Very useful plugin. It helps to cut down on brute force attacks and allows you to whitelist those lovely forgetful people who forget what their password is and log in from time to time.
John: Yeah.
Amber: I rate this a five dragons.
(Dragon roar)
John: Cool. Anything to help out for security.
Amber: Yeah.
John: Alright, well we don’t have listener questions or feedback and we are waiting for it folks, kick it back to us. Listener feedback and questions, we are ready for it. Alright, we do have from our last contest where we were giving away the one-year license for the events calendar. Our winner of the events calendar single pro-domain license is Jason Lee. So congratulations Jason. Send that email back to me. I will get that code out to you, and you can start playing with the events calendar and you have it for a full year before you might have to buy it again unless you are not using it. So anyway, congratulations Jason. We greatly appreciate all of those who entered the contest. Sooner or later, we will come up with some sort of consolatory reward for people. Maybe we will start asking for discount coupons that we can give away in a contest for people. We will kick out a discount coupon for people.
Amber: That will be cool.
John: That’s when we got to start remembering to do when we are soliciting the license to say hey would you mind kicking us out a few discount coupon codes too for people that enter the contest but don’t win.
Amber: That would be cool.
John: Alright, we do have another contest coming. It will start next week. And what we’re going to be doing is we are going to be giving away a lifetime single domain license for interactive Geo Maps, a very fantastic mapping plugin for creating generic type maps of all kinds of purposes to highlight stuff and showcase things. You want to hear more about it, go check out the interview I did with I think it was Carlos was his name.
Amber: Yep.
John: And go check out the interview I did it with him. We got really into the plugin and a few other great things in the interview so go check that out. That’s starting next week. We’ll be running that contest for another four weeks all the way through the entire month of March into April. Alright, look for the contest. It will get announced as soon as we have it up and ready but the official announcement day will be next week.
Alright, cover up a few things here before we get into the Q&A segment. Plugins I covered in this show was Embed Google Drive which I gave a four to, the Sticky TOC, Advanced Table of Contents which I gave a four to, and the Custom Code Keeper for Gravity Forms which I gave a four to.
Amber: And I covered Simple WP Slider which I rated at four, News Well which I rated at four, and Limit Failed Logins which I rated at five.
John: Cool. Alright, a couple of quick reminders. There is a meetup that will be coming along in June. And as soon as I have it finalized, I will make the notes here on it.
If you are a developer, no developer, or just like to turkey about WordPress, feel free to reach out to me for an interview at wppluginsAtoZ.com/interview and we can get you on an interview show. If you have plugin suggestions or plugins you would like to have reviewed, submit it to us at wppluginsAtoZ.com/submitpluginreview.
Alright, this is it. This is where we head of into the–
(Male speaker)
It’s question and answer time.
John: With Amber.
Amber: Before I get started on the questions, if anyone out there has any questions they would like to have asked on the show, please feel free to send them into me at amber@wppro.ca and I will get them in here and we’ll see if we can stump my dad.
John: That’s lovely.
Amber: First question is do servers make a difference in how sites run? For example, will a very crowded server run your site slower than a rather empty server?
John: Yes. That’s the straightforward answer. Yes servers make a difference. What kind of server, what chips it has, how much memory it has, you know, what its capabilities? The other thing that makes a difference is how it’s connected to the internet. But a very crowded server, yes that causes all kinds of slower stuff because you have got to remember, every website on there is begging the server for resources. If you’ve got 5000 websites and suddenly 5000 people show up at once asking for a page from each website that slows down the delivery time of it. Because then, the server has to process that request, send that request to the servers, and the server then has to produce the pages and then deliver them back on the internet. The more people are on one server, in fact, the slower it will actually run. Yeah servers make a big difference.
It’s like the computer you choose for gaming or the computer you choose for development or video editing. With today’s stuff here, it’s really hard to work on early 2000 computer and do video editing or gaming. Most older computers won’t run a modern game because the resources aren’t there. So yeah, server makes all the difference in the world and the population of the server makes a big difference.
Amber: Alright. Are there different kinds of servers or different kinds of sites? For example, if you need a fully hi-tech site that functions almost as fast as your mind, is there a particular kind of server for that or does it depend on how much space you have available in your allotment of the server space?
John: Okay, let’s see if I can tease this one apart a little bit because this is a little complex question. First part, are there different kinds of servers for different kinds of sites or processes? Yes, there are.
Amber: Okay.
John: If you happen to be running a server and you’ve got data on it, the server will be dedicated to just the data, and then you have a server that’s dedicated to the webpage itself. A lot of servers are multiuse such as my servers as multiuse. The data is on the same server as the websites are but I don’t have ultra high-end clients that get tens and thousands of visitors. Well, some of them get tens and thousands of visitors a day. But let’s take it up to me as a visitor, if they are somebody such as Amazon or whatever, you know, you have to have, you specialize your data out depending on what it’s doing. If you’re looking for something that a hi-tech functioning site, I would say it’s like video streaming, something that needs to function as fast as your mind. If you can back to, when did YouTube hit? I think somewhere around 2010, I think, YouTube.
Amber: I honestly don’t remember.
John: Well, think of it like well when you first started using Bitchute or Odysee.
Amber: Oh yeah.
John: You had a lot of buffering problems.
Amber: Yeah.
John: Because they didn’t have fast enough servers to deliver the amount of video people were asking for.
Amber: Okay.
John: And so what they had to do was they had to add more servers and then spread that data out or for more machines so that it would be able to deliver it as fast as they might wanted it. That’s basically what you’re looking at here. And it’s not so much how much space you have, it’s how much processing ability and how much bandwidth is available to the server in the data center.
Amber: Okay.
John: Because the bandwidth and the processing ability are a lot dependent upon the delivery of it. You could have a server with teraquads of storied space, but if it doesn’t have a computer chip, the chips and other things available for processing that data fast enough and it doesn’t have enough connection to the internet to deliver that process data fast enough, it will still be slow.
Amber: Okay.
John: It’s a combination of everything. That’s what it comes down to. It’s a combination of everything to make it work well. And, of course, the bigger you grow, the more you do, the more space you need, the more bandwidth you need, the more processing power you need. And nowadays what they do is they just add another server and they spread the data across the servers which can be done.
Amber: Okay.
John: It is done.
Amber: That kind of leads into my last question here which is are there servers that designate themselves for one thing like one server for one government. Only that government, no other government is allowed or is that entirely up to the server custodians I guess it would be a good name for the people who are in charge of it.
John: The server managers, the dudes named Ben, the tech support. We’ve got all kinds of names for them. Dude named Ben is my favorite.
Amber: I like that one.
John: Okay well that’s a great question. And what we will do is we will come back to that question after we close out the show and let my girl take us along out of here.
(Female speaker)
Reminders for the show: All show notes can be found at wppluginsatoz.com, and while you’re there, subscribe to the newsletter for more useful information delivered directly to your inbox. WP Plugins A-Z 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 the show at Stitcher Radio, Google Play, and in the iTunes Store. You can also leave us a review on our Facebook page using wppluginsatoz.com/facebook. 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 notifications of all new videos. Follow the show on Twitter @wppluginsatoz.
John can also be reached at his website, JohnOverall.com, or email him directly 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.
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