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 #411 here.
It’s Episode 411, and I’ve got plugins for Selling your Videos, Re-Learning a Lost Art, Fixing Media Library, and ClassicPress Options, all coming up on WordPress Plugins from A-Z!
Episode #411
John: It’s 12:00, June 6th, 2019. And before I begin today’s show, I want to take a few moments to honor the fallen. Today is the 75th Anniversary of the D-Day invasion that changed the course of World War II. The following is in honor of all the men who gave their lives 75 years ago on the beaches of Normandy to preserve the freedoms we enjoy today.
And that was a moment of silence to honor the fallen. So, moving forward…
It’s Episode 411, and I’ve got plugins for Selling your Videos, Re-Learning a Lost Art, Fixing Media Library, and ClassicPress Options, all coming up on WordPress Plugins from 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 I have the usual great show for you today but of course right off the top, you can get all the show notes over at wppluginsatoz.com. And if you’ve got a couple of minutes, I’d greatly appreciate your time over at Stitcher Radio, Google Play, and in the iTunes Store, subscribing to and reviewing the show. And remember, you can catch the show live every Thursday at noon on YouTube, where you can subscribe, check out our training videos, and more. Go check it out at wppluginsatoz.com/youtube to find all the info.
You can also follow the show on Twitter @wppluginsatoz, join me on my Facebook page, or take a few moments and subscribe to the newsletter on the website, where you get even more information and tidbits that will help you out. And we are continuing that push toward Episode 420 and looking forward to having some fun with that. Ah, I just think about that one; it’s 420 time!
All right, well with all of that out of the way, let’s dive right into the meat and potatoes of the show.
All right, so first off here, I have a plugin that was sent in to me. I have yet to get a chance to review it, but these are plugins that are sent in regularly by different developers or people who think I should know about some plugins. And if I don’t get a chance to review them, I still think they might be of value to them, so I bring them forth for you.
The first one I’ve got here is called WP Pay Per View, and what it’s designed for you to do is using your WooCommerce store, it allows you to monetize your videos by charging people for access to them. You can set it up on your site so that they can subscribe to your videos, buy an individual video. It allows for one-off payments, subscription payments. You can set viewing limits on how many times they can watch a video. You can set it so that they can share the videos with others. It supports multiple platforms, including Vimeo, YouTube, Amazon S3, and self-hosted videos.
So this is something that could be pretty nice. It does have a preview set on it so you can actually set a preview limit on a video, like maybe you’ve got a 10-minute video and give them the first two minutes and poof – hey, want this? Pay for the rest.
It looks like a really great tool. It’s something I will eventually get around to testing, because eventually I’m going to have videos that I want to monetize. But at the meantime, it looks quite nice and it’s reasonably affordable. It’s $79 for a single license. Go check it out. It’s called WP Pay Per View, and currently I give it a 4-Dragon rating.
All right, and a little bit of WordPress news this week. I’ve got a great article here from WP Rocket, and this is an interesting article and you might want to go check this out if you’ve been dealing with your WordPress speed optimization. This is an article that helps you avoid eight specific errors while you’re setting up and going through your WordPress website. A very interesting article – an interesting read. It has a lot of good tips and helpful information in it for you.
Another piece of news that came out this week, this is an article off of the Tavern, and if you needed any further indication that WordPress is moving towards being a page builder, Automatic is testing an experimental full-site editing plugin. This is a plugin that goes through and helps you build out page templates, builders – it’s basically a builder content to, probably from the description of it, to be integrated into the Gutenberg system. This is going to be something of interest. As I kind of predicted – not just me, but many people predicted back in December when Gutenberg was forced into the core – that WordPress is wanting to be a full-page builder. This is a really good article to read; go check out the information in there. But this is an indication that they are moving down that path and direction.
I wonder what that’s going to do to page builder plugins or people that have built a business around page builders? ClassicPress, here they come.
Now, this is a bit of a security article here of interest: “Your WordPress Instance is Leading Data,” also with Gutenberg. This is talking about the data that is leaked via the REST API, and if you’re not using the REST API for anything on your site, you’ll want to turn that thing off. This is a plugin that describes the data that’s being leaked, how it’s being leaked, bits and pieces of information showing what’s being leaked out. They even give you some information on how to go turn off the REST API. You’ll want to go check this article out because if you’re concerned about the privacy of data content on your site, you’re going to want to lock it down pretty tight, and that’s what this is for. So go check out this article and help prevent your WordPress website from leaking out data.
All right, this podcast is currently brought to you by…
Are you tired of the same old web hosting? Not having the resources you need to run your website properly? Having a lack of control? Then you need JohnOverall.com web hosting, providing you with all the resources you need to smoothly run your WordPress website or ClassicPress website. With strict limits on the number of clients allowed per server, JohnOverall.com provides high-quality, fast server performance. Visit JohnOverall.com for web hosting that won’t slow you down.
Absolutely, and any other WordPress you need, especially if you’re having problems. My specialty is fixing them after they’ve been broken, so come see me for all your WordPress needs.
And the contests – our contests are powered by the Simple Giveaways plugin, a very nice plugin that allows you to create fantastic contests off your site. They were kind enough to provide us with a premium version of the plugin so we can run all our contests. Go check them out at Simple Giveaways.com – WPSimpleGiveaways.com.
Well, the contests we were running for the Discount Suite for WP, we have a winner, and it is going out to Gary. Congratulations, Gary! You are the winner of the license. We will be in contact with you soon to get that out to you. So thank you very much and there is a new contest coming soon. We are prepping another one up. We may announce it out in the newsletter or on Twitter or Facebook, or you may have to wait until the next show. We don’t know for sure, but it is coming with another contest soon, so thank you everyone who participated – much appreciate it and keep on supporting the show.
The next plugin I’ve got for you here today – now this one here is kind of a cool one. It’s called Scout Tools. Now, initially I hoped it had a whole bunch of stuff, but I discovered its basically one tool. If you were ever a Boy Scout – or I’m a Boy Scout leader. I’ve got a son in Scouts, I had a daughter in Scouts. I like being a Scout leader; it’s lots of fun. But there’s lots of things they learn in there, and there’s some lost arts out there that are not taught anymore.
I remember back when I was a kid, Morse Code was a big thing. Well, you can make Morse Code a big thing again off of your website. What this plugin does for you here is once you install it, activate it, with a shortcode you can put in some text and then it turns it into Morse Code – dots and dashes to be read and deciphered – a really cool way to, you know, put that up. I put that up on the website for my Scouts that I run and as a way to put out “Here’s a message for you. Decode it. Learn Morse Code,” so it’s really kind of a cool plugin. It actually works very well. Just install it, activate it, and you just add your shortcode to whatever page you want. I love the little cool features like this and of course when we run into these, where do they go? Top 5-Dragon rating.
All right – feedback. Please, send some feedback. If you’ve got feedback on the show, anything, whether I’m doing good, bad, indifferent, you don’t like the sound, you love the sound, you hate the show, you love the show – come on, feedback. Send it to john@wppro.ca or go reach out to the Contact page and send us a message through there or even through SpeakPipe, and we’ll play your message or your question – anything you want – here on the show, and I will answer it. I’ll spend some time researching to get you an answer.
This show is a value-for-value model, meaning if you get any value out of it, please give some value back. And in that vein, I like to acknowledge those who have supported the show with donations of $50 or over by reading their show note out here on the show. And for those who come below $50, they remain anonymous and I thank you very much.
This week, I’d just like to give a big thank you out to our Patreon donors. Your Patreon donations have come through. Thank you very much. And for those of you who have set up other weekly subscriptions and small subscription amounts, thank you very much for those donations. They really do help the show out.
And a big thank you to those who have hired me because of the podcast. Thank you very much. That is as good as donating to the show. If you’d like to give some value back, please just go to wppluginsatoz.com/donate to fill out the form, choose your donation amount, and submit it to the show. It’s all done via PayPal, so please, thank you very much on that. And I still do have a Patreon account if you want to donate through Patreon.
And remember, there’s more than one way to support the show. I am in the process of finding the right plugin so that people can create artwork and submit it to support the show. I’ve had a couple of inquiries from people so far and I’m getting all of the information together to be able to do that, so that’s something that I look forward to having fully implemented and I’m going to make it a top priority to get done in the next week.
All right, so next up I have for you a plugin to help fix up your media library. If you’ve ever migrated an old WordPress website to a new theme or you’ve inherited a website that’s had some problems and jumped from host to host, sometimes you get one that has corruption in the database or has corruption in the media library, where thumbnails are missing or they no longer seem to connect properly to the pages, etc.
This is a plugin that will help you correct those issues. It’s called Fix Media Library and what it does for you is it helps create new thumbnail sizes that are registered, it gets rid of thumbnail sizes that aren’t used anymore. If there are media entries pointing to image files that don’t exist, it cleans that up. Some entries in the media library are not displayed while image files are present. It helps clean up that problem. If you want to update attachment to UID fields containing old staging URLs, it helps clean that up. It detects major database corruption affecting the media library and helps clean it up.
Basically, it helps you clean up your media library if it’s a mess, so this is a really good plugin to look at if you’ve got problems in that or you’ve inherited a website that has media library issues, so make sure you check this out. It is the Fix Media Library plugin and I give it a 4-Dragon rating.
And ClassicPress Options – what do I have for ClassicPress? Well, I don’t have any new plugins for ClassicPress yet, and if you’re a developer working on ClassicPress plugins, please send them my way. They’re kind of hard to find right now. I’ve gone through a fair number of the ClassicPress plugins that do exist and I’ve kind of run out of them and could use a few more, so please submit them on the website at wppluginatoz.com/submit and/or just click the link in the menu bar to submit a plugin and I’ll get it here on the show.
But I do have a couple of pieces of news this week from the ClassicPress world. I’ve got an interesting article from Code Potent here, and what he’s done is he was testing the speed of WordPress versus ClassicPress. How do they compare? Is ClassicPress faster than WordPress? Well, I’m going to leave you in suspense. You’re gonna have to go read the article. Which one is on top? He actually went through and did some tests on VPNs, shared hosting, and bare bones and some plugins, so go check this out.
This is actually a really good article where he went testing. He used the current version of ClassicPress 1 Beta2 and WordPress 5.02. So that’s what’s in the article, so it must be a little bit older. Oh yeah, it’s an article from – it was updated on March 6, so it’s not too old. So go check this out. It’s a really good article on this.
I’ve got another article here from ZigPress, and ZigPress and what they have to say about ClassicPress and how they’re moving forward in that ecosystem. A quote from the article, “ZigPress is now committed to ClassicPress as a key platform in our business activities.” So more and more, I’m starting to find information about organizations bigger and smaller that are seeing ClassicPress as an actual viable option to WordPress.
And this is an interesting article to read through about what they thought about ClassicPress, where they were, and they were kind of on the fence, giving it a wait and see, and how now they’re looking at, okay ClassicPress is an actual viable option and we’re going to start moving clients towards ClassicPress. Now, maybe not everybody will be needed to be on ClassicPress, but there’s going to be options for it – or there’s going to be needs for it.
A little bit of other information, just some general stuff. JediPress, their developers for ClassicPress, some ClassicPress resources. You can go check out their ClassicPress club, a must-have list of ClassicPress plugins from the ClassicPress forums. And to find a list of specific plugins, you can check out the link in the show notes that takes you to plugins built specifically for ClassicPress. So this one, the information is growing. It’s just at the moment I’ve kind of used up everything I can find and I’m really looking forward to hearing more and more from the ClassicPress community to help me create more content in the show.
So that pretty much wraps everything up for this episode here. I covered up in this episode the WP Pay Per View plugin. I covered up the Pay Per View plugin, which I gave a 4 to. I covered up the Scout Tools, which I gave a 5 to and the Fix Media Library, which I gave a 4 to.
And we do have a new interview coming out and…yeah, where did that information go? Ah, there it is. I have an interview coming out with Martin Gibson from – oh, something Beach. Yeah, let me get that one up right. I don’t like to do that. Ah, Martin Gibson from northernbeachwebsites.com.au. It’s a really great interview from the guy down under, and that interview will be out in the next few days, so looking forward to it. I’ve got a couple more interviews lined up with developers and if you’d like to be interviewed, please just go to wppluginsatoz.com and click on the link in the menu that takes you to book an interview, and I can book you in for an interview if you’re a developer.
I did make mention last week that I was on the BeBizzy podcast. There’s a link in the show notes that’ll take you to that. And the next WordPress Meetup in Victoria is on June 23rd at Boston Pizza in Victoria. It’s not going to be broadcast; it’s just a social meetup this time around, where we’re just going to get together and chat. So if you live in the Victoria area, come on out to the Boston Pizza and join us for the Meetup. Lots of fun, be happy to meet people there. We’ll be talking all things WordPress and ClassicPress.
And be sure to check out and subscribe to the YouTube channel for wppluginsatoz.com, where you can find training videos, screencasts, and of course the live show every week here.
If you have suggestions for plugins you’d like to have reviewed, please submit them on the website at wppluginsatoz.com/submit-plugin-review. And for all the developers who would like to support the show and if you have a premium plugin and you want to donate a license to be used in a future contest, please go to wppluginsatoz.com/plugin-contest.
And finally, just be sure to subscribe and listen to our newsletter. And for those of you that are on live, hey, hang around after. You can chat with me after the credits roll. Thank you very much. I’m going to 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.