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 #382 here.
It’s Episode 382 and I’ve got plugins for Bulk Editing Events, Handling the REST XML-RPC API, Site Health Check and Troubleshooting, and Free WordPress Support. It’s all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!
Episode #382
John: It’s Episode 382 and I’ve got plugins for Bulk Editing Events, Handling the REST XML-RPC API, Site Health Check and Troubleshooting, and Free WordPress Support. 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 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 we won’t be having Marcus on the show anymore, but stick around at the end of the show for all the full details on that.
But right off the top, 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 over at Stitcher Radio, Google Play, and in the iTunes Store, subscribing to the show and leaving us reviews.
Also, you can check out our training videos, screencasts, and watch us live on YouTube every Thursday at noon, here going forward for the seeable future, so check it out and subscribe to the channel there. You can also follow the show on Twitter @wppluginsatoz. And also, get our Friday newsletter full of all kinds of other details that aren’t included in the show. The show is going to try to stay as much as possible just about the plugins, with only occasionally touching on the news.
With all that being said, let’s dive right into the meat and potatoes of the show.
All right, first up I have for you a freemium plugin. This one here is a bulk editing plugin, Bulk Edit Events in Spreadsheet. Now, this plugin started out as a hopeful plugin for one of my clients who has to edit a lot of stuff in their Modern Tribe events calendar, because that’s what this one is designed to work with. And what this does for you there, unfortunately being the free version, it kind of limits you on what you can do, and the free version can give you a vague idea of what you want. Currently, they have it on sale so you can get it at half price.
But one of the big fallbacks I found with the free version here was that all it would allow you to edit was three fields. Now, it has the ability to edit all of the fields in bulk and customize them up. You can customize up the status, the title, the organizers, the event category, and more, but only with the premium version. The free version here limits you to only using three of the fields that are available.
You get to edit simply the coupon code, the event status, and the event amount – not a whole lot – two out of the three are not a lot of use for most people out there. Coupon code and the event amount, not a lot of people with events calendars are coupon code no more, event amounting them. The event status, well, that one there, that would be a nice one to deal with in bulk occasional. But all the rest of the stuff looks promising but we hadn’t purchased it yet, so at the moment this plugin here – a bit of a disappointment for a freemium plugin – badly crippled. They should’ve enabled a few more of the more useful fields. Maybe not the premium fields, but a couple more of the more useful fields.
At any rate, I give this one a 3-Dragon rating due to how badly it is crippled. So take that one for what it’s worth.
Next up, I have for you a plugin called Finally Free Support. Now, this one piqued my interest when I saw the title. It’s like, “Free support for WordPress? Really? Okay, this’ll be a joy to check out.” Well, what it is – it is a plugin that is such a magnificent marketing ploy (I’m surprised I didn’t do it myself). Well, not really.
But if you’ve got a studio of developers and what not, this is a perfect kind of plugin. Not that you can use, but you could take and duplicate this plugin and use it for yourself. What they’ve set this plugin up to do is to allow for the average user – and they’re targeting the average user. They’re not targeting developers or people who know their stuff fairly well, looking for stuff.
They’re targeting the average user who has questions. You know, the usual stuff that ends up on the WordPress forums, etc. So they’re going after that and what they do is they offer up free support tickets. They can schedule a call, live chat, they can get peer help, recommended resources, WordPress Users’ Manual Base, eh, is coming soon, which will be an interesting one.
But one of the things they do is when they hit a point according to all of their information – once they hit a point where the problems the customer is talking to them about is going to cost more time or become something more detailed, they’ll stop it at that point and say, “Hey, we can offer to get this to you for X amount of dollars,” in other words, give them an estimate on what it would take to take the job to the next level.
I can see this one here driving a lot of business to these guys. They help fix a few small errors for people, do it all for free, and then those people come back for bigger areas. That happens to me all the time. I help people with little free, simple tasks all the time. Then when they hit the big stuff, they come and pay me the money to get it done. So hey, kudos to these guys here over at Soute Web Solutions for getting this plugin and for getting it into the WordPress Repository. I mean, it’s totally self-serving – fantastic. I really like it. I had to give this one a 5-Dragon rating.
All right, well go check that one out. You might not need it but hey, you might be able to recommend it to some people who can.
Okay, now this show, currently brought to you by JohnOverall.com, where I can help you with finding quality WordPress hosting and support. You know, bringing you top-quality WordPress hosting that is, well, virtually almost always online and – knock on wood, don’t say anything – excellent hosting at, you know, top-quality service on it – and my brain is mumbling at a thousand miles a minute, so hey, hang in there with me.
Anyway… 20 years’ experience, over eight years dedicated to WordPress. JohnOverall.com provides you all your web service needs from hosting to WordPress development and repairs. Go check it out – my site at JohnOverall.com or give me a call: (818) 850-7729. Send an email to john@wppro.ca.
Also brought to you by X2 Marketing. It’s 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. He really does great work.
And also, we are still running a contest which ends tonight, as today is the 15th of November. The contest running through the 15th of November where we are giving away WP Maps Plugin for the U.S. Map, donated to us by Botrous, and we reviewed that plugin back in Episode 368 – go check it out. Go into your email address, enter the contest, and get yourself a copy of this plugin. Winner will be announced in next week’s episode, but there will be another contest starting this weekend, so stay tuned and go check out the contest page for WP Plugins at wppluginsatoz.com/contests.
Next plugin I’ve got up for you here is one to help you manage the REST XML RPC data checker. This plugin here is one that helps you take control of the REST XML RPC API in your WordPress website. It helps you handle the following items: disable the REST API interface for unlogged in users, because if you’re logged in, you may need that. It disables the JSON-P support on REST API, adds basic authentication to the REST API, set up trusted users, IP networks, and end points for unlogged in users, change REST endpoint prefix, disable the XML RPC, and set up trusted users, IP networks, and methods.
So this is a way you can get in there without a whole lot of code wrangling to manage the REST API on your site. It can be something that could be of use and value, so make sure you go check this one out if you’re in need of it. And in particular, one of the things that’s really big is disabling the XML RPC API, because that XML RPC can actually create all kinds of grief if you’re on a shared hosting environment. There’s other ways to do it; there’s coding ways to do it, but this one here could be a nice, simple way for you to get in there and manage that problem.
So go check it out, the REST XML RPC Data Checker.
Next up, we have – well, we don’t have any listener feedback this week, but we do like listener feedback. I do like listener feedback, the good, the bad, the ugly – I take it all and we push it through for people to hear, listen to, read, and make sure that it’s brought to you, our listeners. So if you have any feedback for us, make sure you go drop on over to our website, wppluginsatoz.com, and you can go to the lower right-hand corner, click on the SpeakPipe to leave us a voice message. Get us on our Contact page, send a direct email to us, or email us direct. My email is in the bottom of the show notes and I will get back to you.
You can also get back to us via our Facebook page or via our Twitter page. And while I’m sometimes a little slow about it, I do always get back to anyone who emails me and contacts me with questions about plugins or questions about how to do some things. It depends on the workload.
Now this show, also a value-for-value model, meaning if you get any value out of it – in other words, if any of the plugins I bring help you out in any way, shape, or form, save you a few minutes – hey, please give some value back. And in that vein, we’d like to acknowledge those who have supported the show in the past week. All donations $50 and over are read out, their note is published here, and for those who come in below $50, they will remain anonymous and we thank you very much for that.
This week, we’d like to acknowledge and thank Jezweb Pty. Ltd., who sent in $50 for us and the note they’ve got for it:
This donation is on behalf of Verge Safety Barriers https;//www.vergesafetybarriers.com.au the experts in warehouse in Australia. It is a WordPress website created by https://www.jezweb.com.au built with Elementor.
Thanks, Jez!
Well, thank you, Jez. We really thank you very much. You’ve been a fantastic supporter of the show this past year and a half – much appreciated with your regular support of the show. And all donations here, none of them actually make it into my pocket. They all go to support the little things that we do, such as transcripts, the server space and bandwidth, etc., etc. So maybe eventually it’ll kick me up enough to go out for a beer and hell, since I live next to a brewery, not a bad idea. I can go over to the brewery and get some beer.
And there are lots of ways you can support the show. You can go over to wppluginsatoz.com/donate and just choose your donation amount and set it in there, or you can join us on Patreon and become Patreon donors, so you can just go to wppluginsatoz.com/Patreon and that’ll take you to our Patreon page to set up a Patreon donation there. So to all our donors, thank you very much and please remember to support the show.
The last plugin I’ve got for you today, this one here is a Heath Check & Troubleshooting plugin. This one’s kind of interesting. It allows you to get in there and from time to time, you may be in need of checking up on your site to see what is happening with it. This plugin lets you have a look around at all of the setup for your site. You can check out the PHP configuration that’s running on your site, find out what version you’re running, find out what settings it has, your limitations, you can get some debug info on the WordPress and the installation, the size, what your active themes are, your plugins are, find out if any of them have a little bit of grief, you can find out how your media is handled, whether it’s using Image Magic or G-something – I can’t get the name in my head – find out how the server you are running is on, how that server is configured up for the data that can be returned back on.
It gives you a fair chunk of data that you can work with on here to go see what is up with your site and see what you might need to square up and fix out. So this is something that you might want to check out if you’re debugging a website or you’re having some issues. This may give you a clue as to what’s up, so it’s something you might want to check out.
Okay, well that closes out all of the plugins for this episode, where I covered up the Bulk Edit Events and Spreadsheet, which I gave a 3 to; the Finally Free Support, which I gave a 5 to; the REST XML RPC Data Checker, which I gave a 4 to; and the Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin, which I gave a 4 to.
All right, this is the end of the show here, but I’m going to give a little bit of a rundown on what’s happening with my co-host. Unfortunately, he has left the show. It occurred mainly due to my changes in my life and me having to reorganize a day and time for recording the show. It came about with me finding that Thursday was the only day I could do the show and the only time I could fit it in was at noon – noon to 2:00 on Thursdays. It’s the only time I could fit that show in.
I had a lot of changes a couple of months, as many of you know, my father passed way. It added a whole pile of work to my life, but I’ve also decided that my evenings I needed to reclaim. I was doing prerecorded shows in the evenings and it just was no longer possible with my scheduled life now. I became a Scout Leader, I go to the gym; I just wanted to do things that improved my life instead of constantly working all the time.
So in that problem there, what occurred is it became impossible with Marcus to have the same schedule as me. He just couldn’t make the schedule due to his scheduling. And as this show is mine and it’s been going on since the beginning, I wanted to keep this show going. Hopefully, one day Marcus’ schedule may change. He may come back and join the show with us. Time may tell. But in the meantime, it left on great terms as far as I’m concerned. Everything looks good. It’s a matter of just my life was in complete turmoil and I had to put it in order and I put it in order to suit my needs.
So I wanted to let everyone know that unfortunately we won’t have Marcus on the show. You may have heard a few bits here. We’ve got a new intro, we’ve got new outros, we’ve got new dragon sounds. A whole bunch of new sounds are coming to the show as I had to change up a lot of stuff in it. You will also see hopefully the audio and everything else. I brought a new computer online last month and it’s taken me a month to figure out the software and I believe I’ve finally got the software working correctly for good, clean sound. We’ll find out when this episode is published out onto iTunes, because it’s a different audio than is published here on the livestream for YouTube.
So those are where it’s all at now. The WP Plugins A to Z podcast will continue indefinitely going forward. It’s going to be continuing indefinitely at 12:00 noon live every Thursday, and that’s 12:00 noon Pacific Standard time or Pacific Daylight Time, depending on whether we’re in that insane part of the year or not. I’m pretty sure right now we’re in Pacific Standard Time; they moved us back an hour a week or so ago and I’m still trying to figure out where it went.
At any rate, that’s what we have for you here today. Thank you all for listening to the show today and a couple of final quick things. Be sure to check our YouTube screencasts and a note to developers who would like to support the show. If you’d like to offer up a premium license to give away, please go to wppluginsatoz.com/plugin-contests and leave us all the information. And that’s all we’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.