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 #404 here.
It’s Episode 404 and I’ve got plugins for Buddy Press Messaging, Comment Tagging, Cleaning up WordPress, WordPress Honey Pot, and Classic Press Options, all coming up on WordPress Plugins from A to Z!
Episode #404
John: It’s Episode 404 and I’ve got plugins for Buddy Press Messaging, Comment Tagging, Cleaning up WordPress, WordPress Honey Pot, and Classic Press Options, all coming up on WordPress Plugins from A to 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 have the usual great show for you today but right off the top, don’t forget you can get all the show notes over at wppluginsatoz.com. And make sure you subscribe and review the show over at Stitcher Radio, Google Play, and in the iTunes Store. Those subscriptions and reviews really help the show out.
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With all of that being said, let’s dive right into the meat and potatoes of the show.
All right, and I have the usual great set of plugins for you today. But starting off, I have a couple of plugins I have yet to use. You might want to know about they exist. These are plugins that are sent in to me by developers – have been – I’ve collected this list for quite some time now, so I’ve got a pretty big backlog to go through. New ones will get put into the queue and shown too, but they’re sent in, they’re asking me to review them, and I have yet to find a way to either take the time to review the plugin or to incorporate it in a project I’m working on. But they seem interesting enough that I thought you might want to know about them.
The first one I’ve got here was sent in by Andrij Tkachenko and it’s called – it’s a freemium plugin and it’s called Better WP Management. Oops, wrong one. BP Better Messaging – sorry. I’m reading the wrong line here. This is called BP Better Messaging. This is a freemium plugin. It has a WebSocket version which it plays better I understand than the regular version. What it is is if you use BuddyPress, this is a plugin you might want to look at. It helps your BuddyPress community be able to communicate with each other via the BuddyPress Messenger. It’s a very interesting plugin. It uses AJAX or WebSocket powered real-time conversations. It’s got an email notification, full concept, files uploading, embedding links, messaging sound notification – a whole lot more. You could have private conversations, multiple user conversations. This is a way to have messaging work in your BuddyPress setup if you have it. I myself haven’t used BuddyPress for several years now. I built one website on it and I just couldn’t make it work very well, so I abandoned it and moved on to something else.
Anyway, it does look kind of interesting. Go check it out. It’s called BP Better Messaging and I give it a 3-Dragon rating.
All right, and next up I’ve got for you here another plugin sent in by Ankur Vishwakarma – I’m getting better at names, I swear to God, folks. It’s called WP Tag You. This plugin allows logged-in users to tag other registered users of a blog while commenting on a post and contains the following features. It detects post comments, bots, autosuggest users while typing, you can tag more than one user in a single post. Each tagged in user will get email notifications, the email body contains a comment link where they can go check it out.
All in all, it looks like an interesting kind of plugin. It does seem to have the limitation of logged-in users on a site, so this seems like it would be something useful in a community website where people have to log in to get to the comments and other stuff. If it’s just an open forum, I don’t know how well it would work, but it does sound kind of an interesting thing to go look at. Anyway, go check it out. It might be for you. It’s called WP Tag You and I give it a 3-Dragon rating.
Okay, and currently this show brought to you by…
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Also, contests. Our contests are powered by the Simple Giveaways plugin, a very excellent plugin. They were kind enough to provide us with the premium version for all our contests. Currently, we do not have a contest, but we are working on getting one set up, and as soon as it is ready, it will be notified out either via the newsletter, the website, or at – well, definitely here on the show. But we will get it out there as soon as we have it set up. Sometimes we get a lull between contests. We’ve had several running for the last six months and we’re just kind of stuck. All right, so make sure you go check it out at the website at wppluginsatoz.com/contests, where you can find out all the information about the contests.
All right, next up the plugin I’ve got here for you is called Remove Norefer from Post Links on the Frontend, and this is a bit of a cleanup plugin for WordPress. Now recently, WordPress has implemented a change in the links – the embedded links in your website in that if you have a link and you’re like me, I set a lot of links to open up in a new page. They added in two items to it. They added in relative noopener and relative norefer, and while relative noopener is a really great thing to have in your site, what it does is it helps create some security because of the noopener. When it opens up in a new window, a new website could take over the previous one, thereby creating problems, creating a security hole, or a breach of some sort. So it sort of stops that issue.
But they added also norefer, and the problem with norefer is that – and this is something you may want to put on a link if you’re going to put links into your website – is that when it has norefer on it, when that link is counted by say the Google Analytics on the other website, it’ll be counted as a direct link, as if somebody typed in their domain, not counted as if it came from your website, which you may or may not want to occur. Having it automatic and not having a choice in the matter is something that you might want to take control of.
This plugin is very simple. It goes in there once you activate it, it removes the norefer item from the WordPress code so that it’s not automatically applied to your links. That way, if you’re giving links out to somebody and you want their website to know that the link came from you, you’ll want to have the norefer in there. Now, this doesn’t occur if you open links in the same window. It only occurs if you set links to open in a new window, which is something I do quite regularly because – I don’t know – something I learned years ago, I hear it’s not so good, but it’s mixed on what people say about it. I’m gonna keep doing it because I like it. I prefer that websites open links in a new window.
Anyway, go check this plugin out. It’s called Remove Norefer from Post Links in the Frontend, and I give it a 4-Dragon rating. And also, one quick note on this, there’s a really great article in the show notes. There’s a link in the show notes to give a full description about what it does and how important that is to your analytics or to the site you’re referring to their analytics, so go check that out.
Okay, and listener feedback and questions and etc. We do like – I do like listener feedback. I love when the show gets attention. We had a lot last week. Nothing this week but hey, it comes and goes. If you do have questions or feedback for me, feel free to contact me on the Contact page at WP Plugins A to Z. You can also hit the SpeakPipe button in the lower right-hand corner, record a voice message that I will then play on the show – anything also that line. You can also send an email direct to john@wppro.ca. That will also get to me. So feel free to get a hold of me in any way you can.
This show is also a value-for-value model, meaning it is supported by you, the listeners, and I really appreciate your support, folks. It really helps me out. All the donations $50 and over, you can get a note read out in the show with links back to whatever you put into the note, provided it’s within the realms of legitimacy. And for those below $50, I thank you very much. We had a few donations last week. I’d like to thank you very much for the donations that came in. They really help support the show by helping pay for things such as transcripts, server bandwidth, etc. So a big thank you to all those who came below $50.
Now, you can also give value back in other ways. WP Plugins needs other things besides cash. One of the things folks may have noticed is the artwork has been changing. I’ve been working on upgrading and doing the artwork myself. I don’t always do a great job, but it’s definitely different than it used to be, and it’s a lot cleaner. But if anyone wants to start donating artwork for me, I need a 2500 x 2500 image that I can then size down, because I use it in multiple places, and you can email it to me. I will be setting something up on the website so people can just donate the artwork there if they’d like. So if it’s something that you’re interested in, I’m always interested in that.
Now, the cover art that’ll be displayed on each show in the headers, it’s also displayed in the iTunes Store. And if you get my show through apps, you’ll notice the artwork has been changing in there on a regular basis lately. So it’s something I’ve recently started and finally figured out how to do. So you can support the show there.
And I do have a couple of comments here. So giftedones1981, oh, it sounded like the beginning of Do Not Forsake Me, My Darling. Yeah, it might’ve been. It was a cool little ditty that’s at the beginning of the show. And Hemdian, “Good show again, thanks.” Thanks for your comment. I greatly appreciate it.
Okay, and you can support the show by going to wppluginsatoz.com/donate to support the show.
Okay, and next up I have here a plugin that I had mentioned briefly when about two episodes back. It looks like someone finally took to heart my hopes that there was a WordPress version of the Honeypot plugin for ClassicPress that I covered in Episode 402. This is a new plugin and it’s called Honeypot WooCommerce WordPress Anti-spam – a little bit of a mouthful. It doesn’t quite cover everything it does, but it does cover its main points. It looks to be similar to the Honey Pot plugin that was covered in Episode 402 for ClassicPress.
All you do is turn it on and activate it. It activates a honey pot antibot in the following sections of your site: WooCommerce login, WooCommerce registration, comments box, WordPress registration, and the WordPress login form, and this may stop you getting all of those random registrations. Like I’ve had websites that have gotten, you know, 50 or 100 spam registrations in a day and we had to shut off the registration for the site for a while. So it’s something that I’m looking forward to seeing how well it keeps stuff out.
A really great plugin, very simple and easy to use. Just install it and activate it and away you go, and I love little freebies like this – and it is brand-new. It’s got less than 10 installs as of this show, so make sure you go check this plugin out, folks. And I give it a 5-Dragon rating.
Honeypot WooCommerce WordPress Antispam.
And ClassicPress Options, and of course everyone knows since the release of Gutenberg and its fallout, ClassicPress has garnered a lot of attention and they’re gaining even more attention. I see them getting more and more attention and who knows? I may have to segue off into an extra show just for ClassicPress, because I think it’s going to grow up to be quite big. I really do. And more and more people pick it up, more and more plugins start to join them, more developers start to join them, especially with some of the WordPress drama I’ve seen this week of people making it hard for plugin developers to create plugins. WordPress seems to be never-ending going down a bad path right now.
At any rate, this week’s ClassicPress plugin is called Add Twitter Cards by Azurecurve… and I lost the link for it. Huh, bad me. I’ll have to get the link into the show notes. Anyway, Add Twitter Cards by Azurecurve, this is is a plugin you will want on your ClassicPress site so that when your visitors are sharing your posts on Twitter, it adds the proper Twitter card. Add Twitter cards to attach rich photos to tweets, helping to drive traffic to your website.
The options it has set up for it is card types of summary or summary with images, excerpt or first 200 characters about posts added to the card, thumbnail or first post image will be added to the card, integrate with the Floating Featured Image plugin that they have. This is another plugin that they have for ClassicPress and all in all, it looks to be a really great plugin for integrating Twitter cards into your ClassicPress website and not having to depend on something that is WordPress-related and may or may not work down the road.
So go check it out. It’s called Add Twitter Cards by Azurecurve and I give it a 4-Dragon rating.
And of course a little side note about ClassicPress. If you’re using it and you do a search in the plugin repository behind backend where they’re still using the WordPress Repository, just add in the tag ClassicPress and you’ll find lots of plugins that are supposed to be tagged to be actually working in ClassicPress, and they do have two great lists going right now at the ClassicPress forum, where they have a listing of plugins that are written specific for ClassicPress.
They have a pretty big list of WordPress plugins that have been tested to be working well with ClassicPress. So this is going to be something, folks. So if you’re unhappy in WordPress, you may want to consider heading on over to ClassicPress and joining them.
Okay, at any rate – closing out this episode, I covered up BP Better Messages for 3 Dragons and WP Tag You, which I gave a 3 to; the Remove Norefer, which I gave a 4 to; the Honeypot WooCommerce WordPress Antispam, which I gave a 5 to; and the Add Twitter Card, which I gave a 4 to.
And a couple of quick reminders. The next WordPress Meetup is going to be here in Victoria on May 21, 2019 and will be broadcast live here on the YouTube channel. Location and information, go check out wppluginsatoz.com/meetup where all the details will be there. I’m not certain whether I’m presenting yet, or I have another presenter. The presenter said he’d do it, but he hasn’t confirmed yet, so if not, I’m not entirely certain, but I think my presentation if it’s me is going to be on performing maintenance on your WordPress website and doing all the maintenance stuff that’s required to keep it up-to-date and not overdoing it.
Also, be sure to check out and subscribe to the YouTube channel for WP Plugins A-Z, where you’ll find training videos, screencasts, and of course, the live show every Thursday at noon.
And if you have suggestions on plugins you would like to have reviewed, please submit them on the website at wppluginsatoz.com/submit and you can submit your plugin to appear on a show. Even if it’s not your plugin and you just have a suggestion and you say, “Hey, this is a cool plugin I’ve used. Why don’t you check it out and review it? I think others would like to know about it.” I’m more than happy to take that information and share it with the world.
And a final note to developers who would like to support the show. If you would like to donate a premium license to be used in a future contest, just go to wppluginsatoz.com/plugin-contest. I will create a contest around your plugin, and you can get a whole lot of promotions and advertising for your plugin. And I hear it works from some of the people that have provided their licenses for contests, so make sure you check it out.
Okay, and that’s about it. I’ll let my girl take us out of here.
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.
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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.