All transcripts start from the point in the show where we head off into the meat and potatoes. They are the complete verbatim of Marcus and John’s discussion of the weekly plugins we have reviewed.
WordPress Plugins A to Z Podcast and Transcript for See complete show notes for Episode #349 here.
It’s Episode 349 and we’ve got plugins for Goal Meters, HTML Shortcodes, Cryptocurrency Price Charts, Floating Menus, Gutenberg Editor Block Options and Search Analytics. It’s all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!
Episode #349
Marcus: It’s Episode 349 and we’ve got plugins for Goal Meters, HTML Shortcodes, Cryptocurrency Price Charts, Floating Menus, Gutenberg Editor Block Options, and Search Analytics. It’s all coming up next on WordPress Plugins A to Z.
WordPress, it’s the most popular content management and website solution on the internet. And with over 60,000 plugins to choose from, how do you separate the junk from the gems? Join John Overall and Marcus Couch for this weekly unrehearsed conversation about the latest and greatest in WordPress plugins. This is WordPress Plugins 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.
Marcus: And from the sunny shores of the Beachside Bunker in Laguna Beach, California, I am Marcus Couch.
John: And we have the usual great show for you today but of course right off the top, don’t forget you can get all the show notes over at wppluginsatoz.com. And if you’ve got a few minutes, we’d greatly appreciate your time going to Stitcher Radio, Google Play, and in the iTunes Store, leaving us a review and/or subscribing to the show, which is as simple to do as hollering into your phone, “Hey, Siri! Subscribe me to WP Plugins A to Z.com Podcast.”
Marcus: Don’t say “zed” though —
John: That’s right.
Marcus: — because Siri does not know it.
John: That’s right, gotta say “zee.”
Marcus: Yeah. Siri’s not Canadian, eh?
John: Siri doesn’t understand Canadian, eh?
Marcus: Hey, check out our training videos, screencasts, and watch us live on YouTube every first Monday of the month at 10:00 in the morning PST. You can also follow the show on Twitter @wppluginsatoz and go to our website, wp – yeah – wppluginsatoz.com. Subscribe to our newsletter; that’s where you’re gonna find all the news and the happenings that’s going on in the week, because we don’t talk about that stuff here in this podcast. We are all about those plugins.
John: Absolutely, and with that being said, it’s time to jump right into the meat and potatoes. Off we go.
All right, and the first one I’ve got up here today was another plugin sent in to us, and this was sent in to us by Jared Hoylman, and it is called HTML Shortcodes. And this is a plugin that allows you to quickly and easily insert HTML tags as shortcodes right into the visual editor of your theme. The current version they’ve got supports the A, BR, BUTTON, DIV, HR, IMG, P, and SPAN tags, and they show you some nice examples of how to use the shortcodes and what available shortcodes are for your site, and this is a great way to insert HTML directly into your post itself or very specific types of displays that you’re trying to accomplish.
All in all, it looks to be a really great plugin and if you’re doing customizations, you might want to check this one out. It’s called HTML Shortcodes and I give it a 4-Dragon rating.
Marcus: Beautiful. I love the fact that you can just change those HTML values like class and styles, add buttons – all that kind of stuff, right? – with a shortcode. It’s pretty cool.
John: Mm-hm.
Marcus: That’s gonna save a lot of time. All right, this is a really unique plugin. It’s called Ultimeter, and what it does, it’s a nice, styled graphic meter or thermometer – kind of those things that you’ve seen, John, where somebody’s trying to raise money and they put, you know, color in the thermometer and goes all the way up to the top and that’s when they reached their goal.
John: Mm-hm?
Marcus: Well, this one does it with WordPress. You just enter in how far along you are in the goal and it uses a simple shortcode to display your choice of a couple different ones: thermometers, progress bars, or added in the lite version. And if you have the pro version, you can actually choose between a percentage or currency units, like raising money, or you can, you know, set a custom unit like this is how many pounds I’ve lost or, you know, whatever it happens to be.
So you can specify the total goal amount as well as the progress or the total raised amount. You can even choose the color of the meter to keep it in line with your own website and styles. It does have a pro version, as I mentioned before, that has two different designs: a radial meter and kind of a basic tracked meter. It has a third measurement unit that you can use with custom values, like, you know, if you wanted to say how many boxes or bags, you know, if you were doing a food drive or something like that, and it allows you to actually create your own custom meter by uploading an image that is suitable to their templates, which is very handy, especially if you wanted to do some branding and things like that and put kind of a goal thermometer, whether that before charity or otherwise.
So check it out. It is called Ultimeter. I would’ve given it a perfect 5 out of 5, but you know, I always take one off if it’s a pro version as well, so it gets a 4 out of 5.
John: There you go. Nice plugin! I actually looked at reviewing that one myself, so yeah, I kind of liked it and it’s some of the best looking meters that I’ve seen on these plugins, so —
Marcus: Yes, very nice.
John: — you’ll want to check it out. All right, well this show here, currently brought to you by:
2018 is a year of growth. Your website should reflect the growth and change within your business. Show your customers where you are going in 2018 by letting JohnOverall.com work with you to update your website. Let JohnOverall.com take the work and worry out of maintaining and caring for your website with our maintenance program, hosting, emergency repair services, and more. While you’re caring for your business, let JohnOverall.com care for your website. Think of us when you think of WordPress. Visit JohnOverall.com.
And there you go! All right, and we do need to make mention of our contest that’s currently running for one more week here and ‘till April 1st. We are giving away a one-year license to FV Player Pro plugin from Foliovision, and this is a fantastic plugin for inserting YouTube videos into your site and allowing you to set up things such as pre-roll, post-roll, and mid-roll, and whole lot of other functions to go with it, so you’ll want to check this out and enter your name in the contest.
You don’t even have to enter your name; all you need is your email address. Just go to wppluginsatoz.com/contests with an “S,” enter your email address then share it out in your social media and get a couple of extra entries for every referral that comes in and enters the contest from your link, so go check it out. And the contest is running until April 1st and we will be announcing the winner on our live show April 2nd.
Marcus: Yeah, that’s Show 350 —
John: Yeah, 350.
Marcus: — if you’re keeping track at home.
John: Three hundred and fifty episodes? Wow, that’s actually a big number for us, too. Holy smokes.
Marcus: Yeah, I didn’t even think about it —
John: Yeah.
Marcus: — till now.
John: Yeah, until you just mentioned it and I’m like, “Holy smokes. That’s 350 episodes of week after week of doing this show.” We’ve had almost no weeks missed in the last six years.
Marcus: No, and even if I can’t make it (which happened a couple of weeks back) —
John: Yeah.
Marcus: — John just fills in and does the —
John: I still do the show, man.
Marcus: — does the captain’s chair.
John: Gets the show.
Marcus: Yeah.
John: Get the show done and out there so everyone gets to hear it. All right, well that carries us on to the next set of plugins we’ve got here. And the next one I’ve got here is one that again was sent in by a developer, Federico Magni, and this one here is a WordPress Cryptocurrency Price Charts. And what this plugin does for you is since cryptocurrencies are still fairly popular – though Bitcoin is falling quite a bit in its value – it’s still somewhere around $7,000, I thought — $7,000 to $8,000 the last time I checked.
At any rate, this one here displays numerous types of charts for over 20 different cryptocurrencies – and even more. They keep adding to it. It allows you to look at – see how those cryptocurrencies are doing, seeing if they’re rising or falling, seeing if there’s something you want to buy. There’s just a whole lot to it around the cryptocurrency world.
So it’s something you might want to consider checking out if you’re big into cryptocurrencies or you’ve got a website that’s displaying cryptocurrencies. This way, you can display all the different cryptocurrencies, their price charts, and values. Really an interesting plugin in the cryptocurrency world. Go check it out; it’s called WordPress Cryptocurrency Price Charts Plugin, and I gave it a 3-Dragon rating.
Marcus: Very nice! I don’t know a darn thing about cryptocurrencies —
John: Neither do I, man. All I know about them is like when I first investigated them, because my kid asked me about it. “Why didn’t you buy Bitcoin?” I said, “Well, I wish I had, because when I first investigated it, Bitcoin was 20 cents a coin.”
Marcus:
John: It’s like, ah, I couldn’t see a use for it then. I actually have a Bitcoin wallet that I found some information that showed I have a Bitcoin wallet – huh.
Marcus: Hm.
John: I don’t have any Bitcoins in it, but I have the wallet, so…
Marcus: Oh.
John: It’d be nice…
Marcus: Such is life.
John: If I had any coins, then I’d immediately sell them.
Marcus: Yeah, I would too. All right, the next one – this is a huge name for a plugin. It’s called WPB Floating Menu or Categories – Sticky Floating Side Menu & Categories with Icons.
John: Wow, that’s a mouthful.
Marcus: Come on, guys!
John:
Marcus: Come up with something better. Well, I can only say that about the name. The rest of the plugin is awesome. This is something that allows you to put a sticky floating side menu – this is either with categories or different, you know, an actual menu, and it works with any WordPress theme. It has color customization options to match with any design layout. It integrates its icon support from the Icons plugin by ThemeIsle and you can add icons to your menu items and your floating menu will just show them.
So let’s just say you were gonna do like a computer and a phone and a GPS screen icon – you know, those things – and you could click on it and maybe open up a blog section that’s just about those specific things, or services, or what have you. So you can choose to just have the icon or actually have the name and the icon. You can also see them like that. It also integrates with Font Awesome to integrate more icons into your category options. And the plugin shows you everything that you have to choose from based on any of those options that you install. They have two different shortcodes to show the floating menu or category menu, and you can do it on specific pages or you can set it globally for the entire site.
So it’s pretty cool – long name, a really easy plugin. It is called WP Floating Menu or Categories – Sticky Floating Side Menu & Categories with Icons. It gets a 4 out of 5.
John: Very cool plugin; I like the demo. It’s actually quite nice. I like the way it displays the menus and floats them down the side for you.
Marcus: Yeah, I’d love to see this in mobile, because it would almost make it kind of a cool experience the way that it flies in and out.
John: Yeah, that would be quite a nice feature.
Marcus: I’ll let you know.
John: All right, well we’re always looking for listener feedback on this show and if you’d like to give us some, please go to our Contact page at wppluginsatoz.com/contact, send us your information, questions – whatever you’ve got there. Or, down in the lower right-hand corner, click the SpeakPipe button and send us a voice message that we will respond to here on the show and play your voice out for you, or you can email us direct. Just go to JohnOverall.com and email directly there. So lots of ways to contact us; also on our Facebook page or on our Twitter feed, which you can find the links on the wppluginsatoz.com show site.
Marcus: That’s right. And hey, you know, this show is a value-for-value model, meaning if you get any value out of it – and I know you do. If you’re a big fan of this show, you definitely get plugins that we let you on to that either worked for a client that you’ve been trying to find a specific idea for or you’ve asked us maybe on Twitter, maybe on Facebook, you’ve sent us a message asking for a specific plugin.
Anything in that vein, hey, that’s value that we give you, so give us some value back in the vein of donations. And we always like to acknowledge those that have supported us and any donation over $50, we talk about it during the live show that happens the first Monday morning of each month. For those that come in under $50, they remain anonymous and we thank them very much.
John: All right, and this brings us to our final set of plugins for this episode. And for this one here I have for you the Block Options plugin, and this Block Options for Gutenberg. What this plugin does for you is it allows you to assign restrictions per devices, users logged in, or state and custom display logic for your Gutenberg blocks. And if you haven’t hit Gutenberg blocks, don’t worry, you will in about six months to a year. You’re gonna be unable to avoid them as soon as Gutenberg is fully released. We’re not going to get away from it. And more and more, we’re seeing more and more plugins being developed to deal with Gutenberg as it advances.
This is a really great plugin that allows you to set feature options on a per-block setting, tabs to help you manage your editor blocks, and it is – it’s main goal is to let you have better content to serve your visitors on every device and page on your website. So this is something you’ll want to check out if you’re starting to experiment with Gutenberg. I’m starting to experiment with it on development sites to see what I’m facing, because it’s just something we’re gonna have to deal with.
But anyway, currently this plugin here called Block Options for Gutenberg, I give it a 3-Dragon rating. Go check it out.
Marcus: I don’t like Gutenberg.
John: I know. I’m not overly thrilled with it, but it’s gonna be kind of like everything else that WordPress has stuffed down our throats. We’re not going to be able to avoid it.
Marcus: No, not me, man. I’m using Cornerstone. That’s integrating into a lot of things, it’s growing, Version 3.0 just came out. I’m not getting off Cornerstone.
John: No, but —
Marcus: That’s my —
John: Cornerstone will integrate into Gutenberg in some way eventually.
Marcus: That’s true, but I’m gonna use the Cornerstone interface because it’s cooler.
John: Yeah, well that’s the whole thing. You’ll still be faced with Gutenberg; you just won’t be faced directly with the blocks.
Marcus: Yeah, so I was watching – Bob Dunn did a thing called 48 Hours of Content —
John: Mm-hm.
Marcus: — and he put a bunch of stuff. And he went through a video – I watched it while was on the elliptical and it was like his first impression of Gutenberg, and he’s pretty much like, “Eh, I don’t really see anything that’s that great. But, you know, it’s coming.”
John: Yeah.
Marcus: So whatever, I’m still gonna stick with what I’m doing.
John: Yeah, well you’re at Cornerstone. My big one these days is WP Bakery, so…
Marcus: Yeah. Elementor is getting a good review, too.
John: Yep, and all of those blockers – as I’ve been working with them, I’ve realized, you know, they’re just like what Gutenberg is trying to be. And —
Marcus: Yeah, and I’m sorry, WordPress and everybody that’s developing it. But you need to spend like a couple weeks playing around at wix.com.
John: Hm.
Marcus: That’s where you need to start going.
John: Yeah.
Marcus: Not this. This is a waste. I’m gonna say it. I’m gonna say it.
John: That’s okay; that’s probably what it is.
Marcus: Ugh…all right. So, last plugin for this show, it’s called Search Analytics. Now, this is not like a Google Analytics thing where it analyzes Google searches. What this does is it analyzes when people search on your website for things using the search icon and typing something in there. What it does is it groups all of those searches into statistics, including the number of posts that resulted from that search, so it lets you kind of change that and craft it a little bit. So when somebody searches for something, maybe you can send them to – oh, I don’t know – a more relevant post or something that’s a landing page to something you are selling – something like that.
So what it does is it lets you completely see the backend of just your internal WordPress searches and this is huge and almost nobody does it. It’s amazing; they go to Google Analytics and go, “What are people searching for?” Well, here’s another one: “What are people searching for that are actually on your website?”
John: Yeah, that’s more important.
Marcus: Yeah, so this is very cool, very well thought out, and I will definitely use this on all of my sites going forward. It gets a perfect 5 out of 5.
John: I think I’ll be adding it to the wppluginsatoz site, because I’d like to know what people are searching for there.
Marcus: Yeah! And where are they going?
John: Yeah.
Marcus: Where does it take them?
John: Absolutely. Where are they ending up? All right, well that covers up this episode. I covered up HTML Shortcodes, which I gave a 4 to; WordPress Cryptocurrency Price Charts Plugin, which I gave a 3 to; and Block Options for Gutenberg, which I gave a 3 to.
Marcus: And I talked about HTML – uh, no. You did. I talked about —
John:
Marcus: — Ultimeter, which gets a 4 out of 5, WPB Floating Menu or Categories (I’m not saying the whole name) gets a 4 out of 5, and we just talked about Search Analytics, which gets a 5 out of 5.
John: All right, and to wrap it up, a couple of quick reminders. Please stop into our YouTube channel. Check out the screencasts that are there. You can also check out our training videos and more. And a note to developers, if you would like to support the show and you’d like to offer up a premium license that you have to give away, please go to wppluginsatoz.com/plugins-contest to submit all the details for that.
Marcus: Yeah, and don’t forget next show we’re giving it away!
John: That’s right.
Marcus: We’re giving away that premium plugin, so April 2nd, Show #350, we’re going to announce the winner. Go to our website, wppluginsatoz.com/contests – with an “S” at the end —
John: Absolutely.
Marcus: — and register to win.
John: Absolutely, and I already have another premium license in the queue, so another contest will continue right after that one.
Marcus: Yeah, and John, are you telling them I need a premium license as well for everything? Is that in the contract? Is that in my rider?
John: Well, no. It’s not in the rider but we can talk to the guys that are giving them away.
Marcus: Yeah.
John: They seem to be more than willing to help us out by, you know, giving us premium licenses occasionally, so…
Marcus: All right, no red M&Ms, either. That’s also in my rider.
John: Absolutely, absolutely. Well, that’s all we’ve got for you now, so 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 by developers because you support the show. Help keep the show honest and unbiased by going to wppluginsatoz.com/donate and choose one of the weekly donation levels or make one 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 to us on YouTube, or follow the show on Twitter @wppluginsatoz.
John can be reached through his website at www.JohnOverall.com, or send him an email to john@wppro.ca. Marcus can also be reached through his website at marcuscouch.com or Twitter @marcuscouch. Thanks for watching 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.