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 #381 here.
It’s Episode 381 and we’ve got plugins for Constant Contact, Recipes Publishing and Marketing Automation. It’s all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!
Episode #381
John: It’s Episode 381 and we’ve got plugins for Constant Contact, Recipes Publishing and Marketing Automation. It’s all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-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. And I am still off by myself right now and Marcus will join us eventually I think. I’m not sure. At any rate though, right off the top, don’t forget you can get all the show notes over at wppluginsatoz.com. And if you have a few minutes, we appreciate your time greatly over at Stitcher Radio, Google Play, and in the iTunes Store, subscribing to the show and giving us reviews. They really do help out the show quite a bit and we really appreciate your time for it.
Also for something else, you can check out our training videos, screencasts, and watch the show live every Thursday at noon. That is the new time it has landed, so every Thursday at noon, the show will be live. I will be here. I don’t know who else will be with me but we will see how time evolves with it, so make sure you come join us for that.
Also, follow us on Twitter @wppluginsatoz and also we have a Facebook channel – a Facebook page – so you can check us out there. And don’t forget, drop in over at our website, the lower right-hand corner, where you can subscribe to the show, leave us a SpeakPipe, and all of that great stuff also.
All right, well that all being said there, it’s time to jump into the meat and potatoes of the show.
Okay, first up I’ve got a couple of plugins here that are related to each other. The first one being Gravity Forms Constant Contact. This plugin here is one that if you use Constant Contact for managing your email lists, and I have clients that do use Constant Contact to manage their email lists. And while Constant Contact I don’t fully comprehend and understand because I’d never really used it for my own personal business, my clients do and you don’t want to push them away from something they’re happy with. This is a great plugin that will let you get in there and connect Constant Contact up to your Gravity Forms.
It allows you to map – to capture emails, map all of the fields – even custom fields – map them all to your Constant Contact. This is a great one and in particular for a client I’m working with right now that lets us create this very long form that collects a lot of information and then they wanted it all submitted into their Constant Contact. And so what this one does is maps all that data so that they can have it all and use it in their Constant Contact without any duplicate mapping.
So it’s a really great plugin. Go check it out. I kind of like it; seems to be working out really well with what I’m doing, and I give it a 4-Dragon rating, so go check out Gravity Forms Constant Contact.
And next up, what do we got here? Welcome to everyone who is watching the show. Next up, I’ve got Constant Contact Forms. Now, this is one I looked at initially, seeing how it would work. But I realized it’s more of a focus on signups for Constant Contact, creating your mailing list. It can be used even if you don’t have a Constant Contact account as an email form that is mailed to you from your website.
It’s kind of a basic system. It works really well. It looks like you can create most any type of form with it but if you’re going to do that, you may as well go to something that manages forms in a major way, such as Gravity Forms. So if you want to stay focused and use it for just a signup form for Constant Contact list, check this one out. I’m actually kind of using it as a duplicate because while Gravity Forms is great for forms and contact forms, for an email list form it works really well, too. But this is one I was looking at using as an additional just a sign-up for our email list right here form.
So anyway, go check this one out. It’s called Constant Contact Forms and again, I give it a 4-Dragon rating.
Let’s see…this show currently brought to you by…
Take the work and worry out of maintaining and caring for your WordPress website. JohnOverall.com has 20+ years’ experience and offers hosting, maintenance programs, emergency support, and more to keep your site up-to-date and running smoothly. We offer free estimates and only bill you for the time used, not by the block. 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.
Absolutely. I can handle just about anything you need for WordPress and in particular, get a hacked, cracked website? Anything like that or if you’re looking for good quality WordPress hosting? Come check me out.
Also by X2 Marketing. It is your full-service digital marketing and brand development agency. Whether you are a solopreneur, small business, or enterprise-level company, power up your marketing with X2. From WordPress to click funnels, landing pages to social campaigns, SEO, paid ads, Infusionsoft management, and more. Visit x2marketing.com and get in touch with Marcus about your digital marketing needs. Go check him out. Marcus does really great work.
Also, currently we are running a contest that runs through to the middle of November and it is we are giving away a copy of Interactive U.S. Map Plugin donated by Botrous, which we reviewed this plugin back in Episode 368. You can go check it out. The contest runs until the end of October – sorry, end of – got my dates all wrong. The middle of November – November 15th we’re running this to, because things were just out of sync for a little while and it’s slowly getting back into sync.
The WP Maps Plugin offers a wide variety of professional interactive maps plugins, including countries and the world. And this one here is just the U.S. Interactive Map, which gives an easy way to install a professional U.S. Map with clickable areas and clickable states on your site. A really great plugin; I’ve tested it out a couple of times, so make sure you go check it out.
All right, next up – my next plugin I’ve got here is one that was sent in to us by Justin Sheetz – tough name – and from https://boxystudio.com. Now, this is a freemium plugin and it’s really a nice plugin. It’s called Cooked – Recipe Plugin, and this plugin here is a recipe plugin that is a freemium plugin and it offers up a lot of stuff that you don’t normally get in a free recipe plugin. When I was checking it out (and I’ve been looking at replacing the recipe plugin for one of my clients’ sites. We’ve just had problems with it in the last few months) and this one looks like it might fit the bill entirely to deal with it.
It’s different; the free version has most of what you need. If you need a little bit of extended stuff, you can go with the premium version. What you get in the free version though, straight out of the box: drag-n-drop ingredients and directions, SEO optimized, Google structured data and schema support, a beautiful grid-based masonry recipe lists, prep cooking times, photo galleries, nutrition facts, difficulty levels, powerful recipe search with a text search categories and sorting options, author templates to list recipes by a single author (and this is a really great one if you have multiple authors on your website for your recipes), cooking times, developer-friendly with lots of hooks and filters, serving switcher to adjust ingredient amounts.
All in all, a pretty nice looking plugin as the online demo displays with it. You can, you know, check out some of the settings with it. It gives a really great preprinted version of the plugin for printing out for people, which what many people do with the recipe sites. I do that off recipe sites. Servings – you can – if you can adjust the recipes for the servings, it’ll automatically kick out the number of – the amount for servings if you build recipes in that way.
All in all, this is looking to be a really fantastic plugin. Once I get a chance to check out the pro version, I’ll be able to give it a better rating. But at the moment it looks like it’s going to be getting a 4-Dragon rating, so go check this one out. It’s called Cooked and it’s a recipe plugin for cooking – cooking recipe plugin for your site.
All right…as I get used to all the different screens and having all of my stuff contented into one window now…lots and lots happening here. Little by little, new software. Lots happening.
Listener feedback – we do love listener feedback on this show. It has been both the joy and the pain of the show but hey, I love all the listener feedback to come – the good, the bad, the ugly. Send it in. I will get it up here. You can send feedback via the Contact page, SpeakPipe, send it via reviews on iTunes or elsewhere – lots of ways to get your feedback in here. But this week here we do have a couple of pieces of feedback.
The first one here is an iTunes review from the U.S. It came in on the 31st of October. A two-star review – oh, my aching heart. That one’s painful – no, not as bad. It came in from Reality501. That’s who sent it in to us, and it went as follows:
Too many interviews. Used to love the show. Went back and listened to all episodes from beginning. (Well, that’s kind of scary, actually. The beginning was a really tough time for the show.) Was very helpful and insightful. New format not as helpful. Old show – 5 star. Now – 2 star, at best. Not going to listen any more. There are other shows more interesting now.
Are there? I’ll have to check it out and see what else is out there covering just plugins. At any rate, well, too many interview? Eh, I don’t know. There has been a lot that have suddenly been pushed out lately, but that was because I was backlogged. The interviews will start to come out at about one per week going forward. I’ve been doing lots of interviews but I had a major backlog I needed to clear all at once now that I’m beginning to get caught up with stuff.
Old format – I’m not sure what you’re talking about, old format versus new format. The format of the show we have now has been around for almost two years, give or take – maybe a year and a half we changed the format. The old format actually wasn’t as nearly as useful as the new format is, but I can understand. At any rate though, thank you for the review. Much appreciated, Reality501, and who knows? Maybe you will come sneaking back here and see what’s happening with the show at a later date just to see if we’ve changed.
And we do have a SpeakPipe though from Rob Cairns and I’ll let Rob take it away.
Hi, John and Marcus. This is Rob Cairns over at stunningdigitalmarketing.com. I wanted to take a minute and tell you two how much I really enjoy your podcast. There’s no question as Marcus says in his intro, you “separate the junk from the gems” when it comes to WordPress plugins. This is the number one WordPress podcast to be listened to on the internet. There’s no question about it. You two are an invaluable resource and thank you for bringing all these great plugins to light and sharing them with your audience. Have a great day, everybody. Bye for now.
Thank you much, Rob. Much appreciate your input and happy to do it. We’ve been doing the show now for – well, I’ve been doing the show for over seven years and I expect to continue doing it for the foreseeable future. I really enjoy doing it. It helps keep me on my game and makes me get out and do research on weeks where I’d rather just stay buried in other work. So anyway, thank you very much!
This show, value-for-value model, meaning you get any value out of it – and think about the value that we deliver to the show. You know, tell you about new plugins, bring you information, tips and tidbits occasionally – all the value that the show brings. So think about that and all we ask for is please give some value back. You can do that by going to our website at wppluginsatoz.com/donate to donate to the show.
And what we like to do in that vein, we like to acknowledge any of those who have supported the show in the past and it’ll continue now the past week. All donations $50 and over are read out, their note is published here, and any links they have in their show notes are also published and showcased. For those who come below $50, thank you very much and you will remain anonymous. And to start, I’d like to thank the Patreon donors. Your Patreon donations have come through for October, so thank you very much. Much appreciated. And for those on small amounts, thank you very much for that, too.
Every little bit helps the show. The money doesn’t actually go back into my pocket at all. I had an eye-opening this last week. I had to do some accounting for it and it turns out, well, the donations, they’re helping the show but they don’t quite cover the full cost that the show takes at the moment – just the basic costs between server bandwidth and transcripts, etc. So anything that you can put out, I really appreciate it and it really helps the show. Maybe eventually it’ll put money in my pocket, but who knows? Maybe not.
Anyway, this week here, I’d also like to thank Lawrence Snow and he sent in – Lawrence donated $100 this week and his note says:
Many thanks to the Marcus and John at WP Plugins A to Z for bringing weekly plugin reviews. I also want to thank John specifically for his help last week by reviewing and cleaning up a hacked website (spammy SEO). He is the first person I go to in the event of a hacked website.
Regards,
Larry
So thank you very much, Larry at Strategic Marketing Solutions. Oh, it seems like the same company, larrysnow.me at Strategic Marketing Solutions, a leader of providing online strategic marketing solutions and WordPress training for small to mid-sized security and executive protection businesses. Become a strategic marketing solutions Patreon member and receive an eBook Branding and Marketing for Protection Professionals go to https://larrysnow.me/patreon, so go check him out. Larry’s actually a great guy. He’s always listening to the show, so thanks Larry for popping into the show and thank you very much for your donation, even if my cold read was a little bit off. But my cold reads are getting better. I have another weekly show that I just started that is pure cold reading, so we’ll see how it improves over the next few months.
Okay, so a big thank you to all the donors that came in under $50 and for those that support the show. And remember, you can support the show by going to wppluginsatoz.com/donate to donate to the show. Just fill out the form, enter the amount you’d like, and donate it via PayPal.
Okay, and the final plugin I’ve got today – this one here was sent in by Robert Cairns. It’s a free plugin but it does have extensions for it and it came in from stunningdigitalmarketing.com – that’s who gave us the – see, I’ll make the connections. He gave us the SpeakPipe, so that’s who gave us the SpeakPipes – so thanks for the SpeakPipe, Robert and I didn’t even make the connection when I was going to review your plugin.
So the plugin today is called GroundHogg. Now, GroundHogg – this is a plugin for marketers that will help you in creating, implementing, and converting marketing funnels. It has some prebuilt funnels and email templates to help you get started, build out your funnels, and get started with the plugin. It has extensions that will allow you to focus it a bit more.
The extensions library will take you to do things such as – what do we got here? Form styling, all-access pass, Social Proof, email countdown timer, WP Simple Pay, contracts, it connects with Contact Form 7 and Gravity Forms. (That’s probably one of the more useful ones I would think, because Gravity Forms.) Or Easy Digital Downloads connecting up to Easy Digital Downloads if you’re dealing with digital content and WooCommerce.
So what this plugin does is it allows you to build your funnel. It creates some actions – as soon as those actions occur, it helps trigger events such as emails and other things to go out to your clients or prospective clients to get them to take action on your website and accomplish whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish with your marketing funnels on your site.
It looks like quite the plugin. I have not started into it yet; I’ve been reading it over and seeing how I can incorporate it. The biggest problem is I don’t do all the marketing for my business anymore. I’ve turned that over to my marketing manager because I just don’t have time for the marketing with all the other work I have to do. Somebody’s gotta make the money while somebody goes and spends it on marketing. It’s a game. What can I say?
So at any rate though, it does look like a fantastic plugin and you’ll want to go check it out. And due to the extensions of it and everything else, we’re gonna give this a 4-Dragon rating. But go checkout GroundHogg. It looks like a plugin that’ll be well worthwhile.
That’s pretty much all I’ve got for you. I’m gonna close out this episode here with I gave – I checked out Gravity Forms for Constant Contact, which I gave a 4 to; Constant Contact Forms, which I gave a 4 to; and then Cooked – Recipe Plugin, which I gave a 4 to; and then finally, GroundHogg, which I gave a 4 to.
And just a few reminders to go check out – check out our YouTube channel and subscribe to our channels down below. Let’s see if I can do this right here. We’re slowly working it. You’re gonna start to see buttons appear in the upper – where’s? Oh, there we go. Right over there…follow the microphone; it’ll point you right up there where everything is at – going to be in the future. I’m just getting used to the new software here. I’ve finally set up proper streaming software which brings everything in, organizes it up. Like I said, little by little over time, over the next few months as I have time to work in all these bits and pieces. But having another show on Sunday mornings, it is going to help me, too. So check it out, subscribe to the show, subscribe to the channel, share it out to people, tell folks about it. We’d greatly appreciate it.
Note to developers: If you’d like to support the show, you’d like to offer up premium licenses to give away, please go to wppluginsatoz.com/plugin-contests. If you’re a developer also and you would like to appear in an interview show (which is a separate show from this podcast here), the interview focuses just on the developer, his products, his plugins, or whatever he does, and it’s released as a separate show in the same stream as the rest of the podcast is. You can go to the – I don’t have the URL off the top of my head, but it’s right off the front page of the website and you can find it…book an interview. You can go book an interview on WP Plugins and choose whatever time works in your time zone. Book the interview and I have certain time slots open for interviews on a weekly basis, so go check that out at https://wppluginsatoz.com/book-an-interview-on-wp-plugins-a-to-z-podcast/
What else do I want to say before we sign off the show? This a point here where I’m just gonna ramble for a couple of minutes. The show is taking some new twists and turns as I move forward. It’s going to expand and going in slightly different directions for a little while. Marcus may or may not return to the show; we’re not sure because of the way I’ve reorganized it for my life. It interferes with his possible schedule, so I don’t know what’s going to happen there fully yet. I have yet to have that one worked out. But if it turns out I’m by myself for a while, well, so be it. I’ll be by myself for a while; I’ll just add a few more things to the show to bring you more value, because I want to make sure that this show is valuable.
If you have suggestions to me, please put them in the show notes below or send me an email, contact me – show notes below – in the, you know, comments below – down below, put comments. If you’ve got comments for me, put them there. I will see them if you contact me via the web page or any other area, that could work also, but we’re just going to make some changes. It’s going to go forward and it’s going to change, but it’s gonna change for the better, not change for the worse. I’ve – the show is constantly growing. If anyone’s ever listened to the show – well, I think there’s a couple of listeners out there such as – you know who you are. Manny, you’ve been listening since like Episode 7, which is like impressive. Thank you. Thank you – it’s always nice to have long-term listeners. It’s just gotten better over time, and it’s going to get better now because I know a whole lot more.
Okay, that wraps it up. We’re gonna close up this episode of wppluginsatoz.com, so take it away.
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.